To play or not to play?

Use the extra $12 a month to buy her flowers.

I used to play, quit, haven’t looked back, what have you been filling the time gap with? In my case quitting /significantly/ improved my social life, so unless you really think it had no effect I wouldn’t start again.

I used to play just casually, about an hour a day, maybe two or three on my day off. Mostly at night and usually while watching tv or a movie so its not like there was a time gap to fill. Other than that I work 60+ hours a week so its not like I have time for a social life to be improved anyway haha.

Save the $12 a month and buy her something nice. When the decision is between a living breathing companion and a game, the choice should be easy.

@evelyns_pet_zebra I’m not saying this a relationship ending decision here, its just something I would like, and in rebuttle, why should the extra $12 a month automatically default to the wifey lol. I’m the one that’s sacrificing.

$12 a month is $150 a year. And think of how expensive a divorce is.

Happy wife. Happy life. WoW is a waste of time and money. Your wife is real. Make her happy.

I like how any money not spent should always go to the wife. Well, by “like” I mean “dislike”.

WoW is well worth the $12/mo for quite a few months for your entertainment.
I mean, end-game is horrible, raiding is a joke these days, but all of the questing and adventuring, leveling up, joining guilds, even a little raiding, are all great.

@PerryDolia Waste of time is debatable. Waste of money? $12 for an entire month. You spend more than that on ONE night at the movies, or for one plate of dinner at a restaurant.

Consider the brownie points you get when you walk up to your wife and say “Honey, I cancelled my WoW subscription and bought you these flowers with the money I saved.” That’s gotta be worth more than $12.

Why are we equating ‘buying an enjoyable game’ with ‘breaking the marriage’?

That said, since this is a financial matter, proceed with caution.
How much enjoyment do you get out of WoW?
How much enjoyment relative to spending $12 a month and your wife’s inevitable disapproval?

If there’s something she (or you) need to fix up or replace, like a faulty water heater or a broken washing machine, it’s probably wise to pay for that first, before taking the matter up again with your wife.

Also…$12 a month is not a significant amount of money, especially if you are more financially stable. So it’s possible she’s opposing it for another reason, and you could talk to her and see if she has other concerns. Maybe she hated you playing WoW before because you spent less of your free time with her, or something similar? Of course, she might not be very opposed to it. If her attitude is closer to ‘indifferent’ than ‘very against it’, and you have a lot of fun, then maybe it’s worth to go ahead and play.

Ultimately marriage is about compromise. If you feel that she has good reasons for not wanting you to take up WoW again, and you want to make her happy, do what others have suggested and buy her something nice. Maybe go out for sushi.

@mistered well, in the words of a very wise woman named Evelyn, Life is about choices, your results may vary.

Make a list of the things your wife can do for you, and then make a list of the things that WoW can do for you. whoever gets the longest list, wins. Personally, it would be a no-brainer for me, but then, my wife can give me things no game ever could.

@evelyns_pet_zebra This was a game I played recreationally, not religiously. Sort of how you like to answer questions on fluther or some people like to read the newspaper. Playing or not playing this game will not make or break my marriage and from what I’ve gleaned from talking to my wife the main reason she doesn’t want me to renew my subscription these days is because it will potentially cut into HER use of the computer which has been near close to monopolized since I stopped playing and didn’t ask to share the computer on a nightly basis.

Maybe I misinterpreted @mistered‘s question. But you guys are all acting as if he plays WoW or keeps his wife, and it’s impossible to do both.
I don’t get where this mindset comes from where people think that every single WoW player neglects everything in their life except for WoW.

@Sarcasm no you did not misinterperet.

I just wonder if it is the $12.00 or do you spend a lot of time on the game that maybe could be spent in a mutual endeavor?

If it is solely the $12.00 and your economic crisis has passed then I think your wife may be just a tad over the top in saying don’t renew.

But if the time spent is taking you away from household duties or interaction with her or children(?), then perhaps you should bow to her request.

@rooeytoo no it never interfere like that. Imagine laying in bed reading with eachother before sleep and reading your own books. Its like that but I play a video game instead.

Don’t play. That’s my vote. Your wife might want to save $12, but the underlying reason is probably because she wants to spend time with you. Life is too short for such addicting video games. My advice would be to not play; instead use that time and money to make some real memories.

I don’t play WoW but I might try a subscription for a month just cause it’s only $12 and I might as well see what the fuss is about. I say go for it, that’s a relatively small amount of money per month and it seems to give you a good deal of enjoyment. And unless you would be taking all or most of the computer time, why should she say boo?

As someone who’s survived 20+ years of marriage, I would vote on not playing WoW and gifting her the $12 in some format (nice dinner/flowers/etc)...It’s much easier to make decisions once you’ve lost your pair of balls :)

there are a lot of other good mmorpgs that you can play that are FREE.

If your wife doesn’t want you to go back to playing, it’s probably not about the $12 a month. It’s about the 15 – 20 hours a week you spend totally disconnected from your real life while you’re online with a game. That’s 60–80 hours a month where you’re completely unavailable. and I’m willing to bet you played more than you thought you did.

@mistered then simply get a second computer. That’s what I did, and my family life has been much happier. Check out the deals at TigerDirect dot com as they have some great deals on bare bones kits.

Never meant to assume you would have to choose, but since we have two computers in the house, sometimes I forget not everyone does. Mea Culpa

$12 is very little for the amount of entertainment you can get from WoW, even on a very small budget. That’s like a meal out for one person or one movie ticket at some places, which is only going to last you a couple hours at most. As some others have said, I would wonder if she really had a problem with the money or if it was more about something else and she didn’t want to say it outright.

I’ve played the game for 5 years, and it’s been a problem between my wife and I at times so I’ve cancelled a few times, but almost always go back to it. I’ve now found a much more happy medium where I can play and not cause a problem, also she’s realized that it’s ok for me to do something I enjoy on my own sometimes and that we don’t have to be together 24/7. She kind of realized every guy has his “thing” whether it be video games, movies, sports, drinking, making furniture, racing something, and on and on. At least with WoW or other games I’m at home and available and not out getting drunk and screwing other women or making a jackass of myself.

And the times I did quit playing we still had disagreements at times and the times I was playing we still had plenty of good times. When I wasn’t playing she would sometimes encourage me to play again because she could see that I still wanted to play it and she was taking something I really enjoyed away from me. WoW is not some sort of magical marriage-ending game. No more than any other activity is.

If you asked the same question but about what some of the other answerers were passionate about, I’m sure they wouldn’t be so quick to say throw out the game and spend every waking minute making your wife happy. They may enjoy building model cars or smoking cigars or knitting, but since they don’t see the appeal of a video game themselves it’s very easy for them to say toss it out and spend all that time and money fawning over your wife instead.

Also, seems like some women would take offense to what some of you are saying that they can be so easily wooed with a few flowers and shiny things put in front of their face. My wife doesn’t like flowers and buying her trinkets to try to apologize or substitute for spending actual time together never works. Maybe other people’s wives are different but that would be insulting to my wife to imply that if you just spend $12 on something shiny for her that she’ll be happy.

My girlfriend plays it.
For hours and hours and hours.
Then, some months ago the subscription expired.
Guess who payed for the new one?