Thursday, January 7, 2010

Staying fit while playing WoW


Many of us tend to spend a whole lot of time in front of the computer playing WoW. I actually find myself thinking "jeez, did it already go an hour?" many times while playing. You just don't notice how much time WoW is stealing away from you! I thought I'd highlight some addons that help you keep track of time and to encourage you to take a moments rest from WoW to do something else for a short while. Nothing too fancy since the time one can take for breaks depends greatly on what you're currently doing. When grinding it's easy, when raiding it's not so easy.

TwentyTwenty
This is a very simple addon that is there to remind you to look away from the computer screen now and then. Although computer screens have come a long way since those bulky, ugly things we had ten years ago, screens still tend wear the eye out. The biggest problem being the fact that by constantly staring at something 50 cm away you won't properly keep the eye up to date with how to look at stuff further away.
Every twenty minutes this addon will display a text in the chat frame saying it's time to look at something twenty yards (about 5 meters) away for twenty seconds. When twenty seconds have passed you will hear a whisper sound that notifies you the time is up and you can go back to playing. I've tried this addon myself and it's not particularly intrusive, without being too easy to ignore. I recommend it for anyone who feel they'd like to train their eyes a bit every now and then.
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info14881-TwentyTwenty.html

BreakTime!
An alternative to TwentyTwenty, and which also allows for any kind of breaks, is the addon BreakTime! You simply set a selfchosen message to go off on your screen anytime between every 15 minutes and 2 hours. This way you can for instance type "do 5 pushups" to popup every 30 minutes, and hopefully you'll obey your own suggestion. What differs this addon from say the built in alarm system is the possibilty to have it display a message that will catch your attention, and not just sound an alarm. I haven't tried this one out yet but it seems simplistic enough.
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info8751-BreakTime.html

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