Is having a wife or being old a reason to constantly go AFK?

I'm 39 years old, and most of my friends are my age or older. Most of us are married and have kids, and most of us play WoW together. I never experience situations on WoW where people have to go AFK every 5 minutes before ultimately leaving the group after contributing little to nothing for the last 2 hours. All cuz alleged "wife aggro."

But for some reason this is rampant on EQ TLP, and I don't believe it. I think in the mind of the average EQ player, they think everyone is old so they can just make up dumb excuses like "my wife" and assume no one will question it. I don't think they realize that the average WoW player is also over 40+ years old, and that you literally never see people going AFK for 95% of a dungeon "cuz my wife."

This is not normal even if you are married (which I don't think most of these people are).

And I know I'm not the only one who feels this way because I've had multiple groups where people are making fun of the fact that people will be like "omg, I have to go u guys because my wife needs a drink."

Like dude, it's just not believable. Especially if you really are 50 and have been married for 20+ years.

TL;DR Getting tired of having 2-3 people in every group constantly going AFK cuz wife / "have to pick up kids" only to show up 30 minutes later and be like "sorry u guys, i gotta go <my kids, my wife etc.>" No one actually believes this non-sense. You would be better off just being straight up like "I'm too lazy to play this game and just wanted to leach some AFK experience until y'all got mad and kicked me out." -- Also notice how it's never a Cleric, Tank or Enchanter, it's always the DPS who are exclusively plagued by this problem.

My theories on why wife aggro is a meme:

-Early era EQ is a very simple gameplay loop that gets monotonous during long grinds. Especially if you're a DPS class and/or not boxing. So, people look for excuses to AFK or leave.

-You make a commitment when you join a group due to the time investment it requires. So, people feel compelled to provide an excuse for why they have to break that commitment.

-People don't want to outright leave a group due to aforementioned time investment. So they'd much rather AFK than leave.

Also there's a very simple solution to this problem that not enough people employ: the disband button.

I get having wife aggro and having RL priorities that can cause you to have to take breaks. I do think that it's in good taste to let your group / Raid know ahead of time if possible though. If you're joining a group or raid, you're committing to that time, and should be transparent. You shouldn't make other folks waste their lesson burn, or whatever it might be, to wait for you. And you definitely shouldn't get DKP if you spend half the raid afk while others do the work and pick up your slack.

There's definitely players that intentionally join groups and go afk just to leach XP. It's mainly only during the initial launch rush that I see it. Once the server has been active for a while, most of those players seem to disappear. The best way to combat it is just kick them from group if they're gone more than 5 mins without saying anything. I think too many people are afraid of "being the bad guy" which is how these players get away with it.

If you've been playing any MMO for longer than 3 months & haven't figured out you need to schedule your life around it to allow for family time, wife time, friends in the real world time, other hobbies, reading a book etc. then you need to figure that stuff out or you will be miserable, your wife will hate you or leave for for some other person and your kids will hold it against you later in life.

Managing your time IN game is less importantant than manging your time OUT of it, AFK'ing for some Wife Aggro means you haven't set the boundaries in place and established a healthy routine for yourself that your family can work with.

Consistency helps, established "game days" for your "me time" and established days for the people in your life so that you are there for them on their days & they leave you alone to play your MMO game on your days is easily done.

And if they won't negotiate then they are not being reasonable anyway so get in touch with your lawyer.

And if you have a player in the situation who has no planning/negotiation with their partner etc. well they are gonna be a liability, of course if they are caring for a sick person, family member or partner and that's short-term it's only being kind & considerate to make allowances, but if that's a long-term situation they need to consider who they play with too and not be constantly AFK'ing at the drop of a hat as that isn't fair on the rest of the group.

And suddenly for no reason at all, lots of players started boxing their own groups.

Just start booting people from the group after 3 minutes. They'll get the message. Or not. But you don't care any more because you don't have to carry their water for them.

Anyway, there's considerate people still out there. I love grouping with returning players who will throw themselves up against a mob they stand no chance of surviving just to try to contribute.

People who /auto then /afk and abuse it will find themselves without a group and on my ignore list.

my wife plays more EQ then me /shrug

They do it in EQ because they can get away with it. The group is just sitting there, stationary, at a camp. Finding a rep and getting him to the group can be a pain. They'd rather just carry the dead weight hoping the player will come back rather than deal with it.

In WoW you're not getting anything for afking at the entrance as the group moves. Booting you is as simple as anyone in the group initiating a kick vote, and everyone is more than happy to just vote yes because the queue system will usually replace you within a couple minutes. Also, it does kind of happen in WoW, usually it's a tank who's constantly afking knowing the group can't leave him behind and will be reluctant to boot him because of tank shortages in the queue.

Tbh, the full group bonus is such that I usually just leave them in until someone else comes along, like a kind of useless pet. Maybe there's some secret leaderboard we're not aware of where players compete to go AFK for the longest possible time without getting booted. Do you lose points if the group ends leaving you standing at the camp, like being caught by the boss still connected at the end of his weekly meeting on mute?

It's an EQ problem / classic player problem and it runs rampant but I'm not afraid to call you out for doing nothing in my group for 30 minutes. Sorry but we have a varying degree of player skill in these servers and I just don't have the patience to hand hold in this game anymore.

Yes this is the secret leader board. It only happens when servers merge

If there is still a conflict, the character with the highest number of minutes played will retain the original character name.
https://www.everquest.com/news/eq-coirnav-to-vox-2023

Yea ive never understood the people who seem to always have wife agro either. Especially when raiding. Like raids are scheduled now, we all know when we start and when we end. If your spouse (Wife or Husband) are so controlling and overbearing that you cannot set a few hours a week to do your hobby, well find another spouse. My wife is respectful of my game time and I am respectful of her alone time.

Play with people who has their wife playing also like mine....

Never say never lol.

Had a cleric in my group, went AFK totally random, without any announcements in group chat, sometimes during fights, sometimes was absent on engage, interesting times. I have to say that the tank was utterly patient because I would boot him after a second wipe.

Because you are just pixels to some people. People look at you the same way they look at the NPCs. You are there for their convenience and entertainment.

This game is a hobby more than just a game. To me, its like a bowling or softball league. Is it recreational? Yes. Is RL > EQ? Of course. Does stuff happen? Yep.

But for the most part, if you make the commitment to a group or raid, you are making a commitment to meet people and do stuff. That's how it should be anyway.

Wife "aggro" is so pathetic. Grow some backbone.

There is no reason for that.

Occasionally something might come up that's unavoidable, but if it's happening constantly, that player needs to get their priorities in order.

As a young single mom back then, it usually involved changing a diaper or getting the older one a juicebox. These days they play their own games, thank god.

The older you get, the more you'll understand. Bladder control is the first thing to go, not your hearing.

Comparing WoW to EQ isn't entirely apples to apples. Most WoW activities are shorter term commitments allowing players to do things IRL between dungeons ques or whatever.

EQ grind sessions can be hours and hours long. In which case it is understandable that people need to eat, use the restroom, feed the kids or whatever.

Every time I've had someone that seems to have disappeared for way too long or I feel like is abusing my trust I just boot them.