One interesting thing with WoW, or at least pre-cata WoW, is that the longer you play the higher amount of social interaction is needed. Up to level 15 you play almost completely alone. Then you start being pushed into meeting some randos; maybe having joined one of their guilds by 30. By 50 you’re playing mostly with the same people, and by 60 you look forward to scheduled interactions with those people one to five times a week.
I haven’t played the new versions, but my impression as to why the recent versions are less addictive:
1) More time with randos, less with friends. No ramp up into the parts that require social ties so it’s harder to get over that hump.
2) More randomization of rewards leads to less strong feedback loop of “work hard → get stronger”
3) Homogenization of rewards and fewer social ties lead to less strong feedback loop of “get stronger → get prestige”
I view the social connections and the ability for anyone to feel prestigious with relatively simple work as a core part of the addictiveness.
*What is the injury risk*
To establish what the concern is: 1) the next joint up is the elbow* and that is the one that will have extra stress 2) “joints” tends to either mean tendons or ligaments. I doubt there are any studies on Beat Saber, but this is similar to tennis. In tennis you hold an object of ~1lb at the end of your arms; plus when you hit the ball there is much more force than just weight of the racket. I expect any injury from the weights would be similar to tennis elbow, which is inflammation of the tendon in the elbow.
I wouldn’t expect this to be a big deal at all. 1) Most people over 40 have scar tissue in their tendons, most people are basically unaffected by it 2) Not everyone in tennis gets tennis elbow 3) Because there is a more consistent force rather than the sudden impact of the ball I expect this to have a lower injury rate than tennis (note how pulling the slack out of a barbell before lifting it drastically improves safety when the movement is less sudden)
*Yes the shoulder is a thing, but based on watching a single video of Beat Saber on youtube I don’t expect much additional shoulder stress from the weights
*Should you use them while playing*
Eh, I’d base that more around what’s fun for you. If ya wanna get ripped, you’ll need more than this. If you wanna get skinny, that’s mostly in the kitchen. If ya wanna improve your cardiovascular health this will help but I don’t expect the wrist weights to make or break it.