There was a time, I think the summer of 2012 or 2013 that I played at least 10 hours a day. Those times during the summer I had absolutely no obligations and so I just spent the entire day, from waking up to going to bed playing NW and other games. My social life didn't really suffer as I still managed to make time for friends, but when the school year started again I had completely lost any good work habits and self discipline, and I nearly flunked that year. Luckily I stopped playing NW after only about 750 hours, which is pretty low compared to a lot of people in the community. Can't imagine what it must be like for people who have 2,000+.
2000+ no longer playing Warband checking in. I feel like this thread is good time for an honest reflection for those who stuck around for a while and can't fully check out because of old ties.
I started freshman year of high school with some social life, with the potential to grow within school. Instead of doing that I pretty much turned into a socially awkward yet normal looking kid without friends or desire to make any because I grew more attached to a team speak of people online dedicated to having fun in a niche game doing niche shit. The Internet allowed me to have friends who shared more common interests instead of being stuck with a few potential ones (phones make it easy to escape social situations as we all know). My interest in the game at first was purely immersion, I remember being giddy as fuck just to join a server then die in a line after shooting a single ball at the enemy. I saw videos about MM because of CHkilroy (still am a fan because of his Shacktac content) and that really got me interested. However, this interest eventually turned me in the average narcissistic community leader or someone more interested in power and organization (not necessarily totally but other people I remember seemed to embody this). I felt like I got my online community experience but neglected to leave earlier (thus the original topic, wasting time). I did neglect grades often times but I think that's unrelated. I legitimately wasted weeks of time when I was not actually playing the game so when I did play the experience was better. I still have this issue but at least it's not invested in a community that's toxic with narcissism. I do more productive things now like make videos and generally just have an attachment to being online instead of playing games.
This seems to be an epidemic in the maturing world of youth in developed countries nowadays. Shit, look at Korea and Japan with a staggering loss of birthrate faster than other developed nations currently. But there's good news, and that this is mostly a phase thing instead of lifestyle. I'm going off to college like you did, Walko. Hopefully on a personal level I don't continue these habits excessively there.
Sorry this post may be near the epicenter of people who may have these tendencies unknowingly but now that NW is getting older and more people are leaving like I did I hope to at least have some sort of closure with those who have been through this. If you read this, don't understand it or think it's a problem then you may not have invested enough in online communities to at least realize that some people struggle to balance their lives offline.
What is wrong wasting your time and throwing away opportunities? You waste your time hanging out with your friends, you waste your time eating, watching TV, going to see movies, you throw opportunities down everyday and step on them and move on.
What is the definition of wasting time? What are these so called opportunities? You dont waste time, you spend it, you spend it for entertainment and on the forums, for socializing, all of it is being spent into this community and game, what is wrong with that? It wont matter in 20 years? No, you are wrong, you are living an experience that is unique and can only be defined to yourself. What you people are doing is trying to reject this game and you are trying to reject yourself and attitude towards the game.
You have wasted no opportunities, you spent opportunities to use this community and organization of your own personal regiment to create new opportunities for yourself and others. There is nothing wrong with that, whats only wrong with this is that you are trying to reject the opportunity that you took.
I don't think that was the message, it was meant to be directed toward those who neglect priceless things such as family and their own futures. That or I just exploded randomly and I thought the thread was close enough.
tl;dr: if you read this first you shouldn't be in this thread, go find somewhere else to boost your post count or fill the void of boredom.