My wife is not a fan of Warcraft.  I don’t think its WoW so much as all the time I spent playing it. This is a common issue that my friends face too.  I found for myself that the best way to handle it was to set a schedule and stick to it.  I would take the same 3 nights a week every week to log on early (raid nights).  Other nights, I would wait until everyone else was sleeping.  I would cheat a little and do things a little afk outside that schedule, but for the most part I held to the schedule.

It was important that I set that schedule.  My wife knew what nights I was free and could plan things for those nights.  it could be anything from going out, to fixing a large supper, or just catching up on the DVR. It created that balance with the game where it was not taking up more time than my family.  One thing many guys don’t understand is that time spent close to each other doing your own thing or time spent watching tv together does not count as spending time together.  Yes, technically you are together.  If you know whats good for you, thats not the argument you want to win.

I understood this and was able to get a lot more quality game time in than they did.  I can’t tell you how many times I have been running something with someone and you can hear them over vent arguing about being able to play wow.  Many times that they stay online, they spend it in a bad mood.  You hear some remark like ” she is already mad, so I may as well keep playing”.

I can’t say that I have never had an argument about how much I play games.  Lots of people have that argument. Once I started sticking to a solid schedule, that argument never came up while I was gaming.  I don’t have a Starcraft II schedule yet,  but I don’t think it will take long before I set one up.