The dangers of WoW addiction
I have my next column to write for Friday, and so I’ve been trying to think of things to write about. But sometimes, the best stories just fall into your lap. I was having lunch yesterday with my family when my sister told me that her roommate’s boyfriend had failed out of college. He was a huge World of Warcraft (WoW) addict and ended up playing it in preference to just about everything else, including doing homework and going to class. The roommate, who is also a huge WoW addict, is now really depressed without her boyfriend, and is going to fewer classes and playing WoW even more. So she might fail out as well.
These aren’t isolated phenomena. Too many students are failing out of college due to videogame addiction. In my Freshman year, back when I was still living in the dorms, I remember two people failed out because they were always playing games rather than doing work. Now, it’s hard to establish whether they failed out because they were just slackers and if it wasn’t videogames it’d be something else besides going to class and doing their work. But in my Sophomore year, I remember another kid failing out due to WoW, and he had previously been a good student. He just started playing the game obsessively to the exclusion of all else. We hardly ever even saw him after that. It had all the hallmarks of addiction.
I was actually tangled up in World of Warcraft during my Sophomore year as well. I played it through my entire second semester, often playing it to the exclusion of working on some necessary computer science projects. At least I never put it ahead of going out on weekend nights and having fun, but in the end, the educational part of college is more important than the partying aspect of it. I played it over most of the summer, when it really didn’t matter, as it wasn’t causing me to miss my job or anything. And then I just quit playing it before the summer ended, so that I could more fully focus on my studies. I haven’t looked back. How did I manage to do this? I’m not sure. The game just stopped being fun for me. The endgame, post-level-max parts of RPGs just really never appealed to me.
But many others aren’t so lucky. I read countless horror stories on the net about students failing out of school, men and women failing out of relationships, and workers failling out of their careers. Playing 8 or more hours a day for some of these people is routine. That’s one-third of their life! It’s scary. If you could put the total cost to society of WoW into real numbers, it’d easily be in the billions of dollars. And yet Blizzard keeps humming along like always, sucking up money from these unfortunate saps and frequently ruining their lives in “thanks”.
What can ultimately be done about it though? Don’t people ultimately have the freedom to do with their life as they wish? We’re not Communist China (who, incidentally, is trying to limit MMORPG-playing by its citizens to less than two hours per day). And what’s to say that if it wasn’t World of Warcraft it’d just be some other game, or some other distraction? I’ve heard stories from my dad about kids failing out of college for stupid reasons; one of the guys my dad lived with failed out because he spent all of his time making authentic chainmail, bending one ring at a time from raw materials. Is that really substantially different than World of Warcraft?
I just wish Blizzard would do something to help fix the situation. Ultimately, it is their game, and they have total control. They can’t be ignorant of all of the woe their game is causing, and although nobody can force them to fix things, I would say that they do have a moral obligation. The game was basically designed from the ground-up to be addictive, to get players on that leveling treadmill and then get them to pay month after month. It’s the pinnacle of addiction. WoW isn’t such a better game than all of the other MMORPGs, rather, it has finally perfected the addictive qualities. Can Blizzard really be so surprised that it ended up working, and that so many people now have to pay the consequences?
Update: See more reflections on my time spent playing World of Warcraft.
May 29th, 2007 at 11:42
Im an addict, but im not such an addict not to realise that, playing for almost 10 hours a day is just insane, and yet i wake up every day none the less and log on. Its reached such a stage when im permantly convinced that if im not online im letting people down cause im not there. Even when im not officially online im just browsing the forums or checking up on people through ventrillo. Now that ive left school and officially on study leave im presented with this huge amount of time i never had before. I should be studying for my exams, i should be finishing my assignments, basically anything else, instead its wow. I see it as an escape from reality more than anything else, its where id rather be in my mind, this isnt right and i know it. I tried to quit a few weeks ago and lasted 8 hours before i was so convinced that id be wrecking havoc in my absence before i went back. Thats why wow is addictive, its the community from it. You cant get addicted to a game like quake because when you log on you play alone, you destry virtual zombies and finish the game quietly by yourself. Wow however is different, when you log on first thing you do is say hi to your guild, exchange latest news and get aquainted for another evening. Sometimes you just stand around waiting for something to happen. You depend on each other and form bonds accordingly, depending on your group role you have a certain priority. Being a support class im not no1 but im very often still needed. If it wasnt for this wow would be just another game.
From this you can see that me playing for nearly a year now, starting with a few hours every other day and resulting in 10 hours every day is a story of rapid and like you said treadmill progression, the more you put in the faster it gets. Once on you cant relax for a secand, i cant get out mainly because i tell myself that im not addicted. I am. Yet i keep going because every day i tell myself that when i finish my exams and all is well i can play to my hearts content. Basically im telling myself that when ive failed my exams i can then fail myself and loose myself in this game.
This is not a game.
For some its a life, i know people who play 16 hours a day every day. They live for it.
Eventually wow will end, when it does i will finally realise what ive lost, if blizzard pulled the plug now they would loose a lot, but players would gain their lives back. All 6 million of them lost in this game.
Call me what you will but you cant deny the fact that this is no ordinary game. It was made for addiction and im weak enough to become addicted to it.
If you have any comments to this please post them to my email adress at “hammymham@hotmail.co.uk”
June 14th, 2007 at 09:10
Blizzard do reward you for not playing all the time by giving you “rested XP”, but they could probably do more, maybe if your character actually got tired and needed a minimum amountof rest time, that would make things better.
January 9th, 2008 at 07:12
To Andy,
If this was the case us wow addicts would just play our alts more. Gotta say I would be pissed I couldn’t run my warrior through a raid cause he needed some freaking rest. Like wtf, leave me to my addiction. Gotta go. Need to grind out some more gold. L8r
January 23rd, 2008 at 16:10
Blizzard purposefully makes their game extremely slow, so as to require a lot of time from its users. Wow fans might disagree all day, but it’s a fact, the game takes a long time. They apparently rely on the monthly fees, so they have to keep people playing. To do so, they make it easy yet time-consuming (which is different than “difficult”), all under the guise that it’s a “deep” game with “a lot to it.” In reality, what types of games you like is up to you, and while I personally dislike MMO’s, you can like them if you want. However, what is NOT a matter of opinion is that, as you say, wow has made messes of people–any gamer has probably seen it. Even if the consequences are not so dire as failing out of college, wow can definitely negatively impact a group of gamers, because when some start playing wow and realize how effortless it is to spend time in the game, they’ll be less likely to put forth the effort to have, say, a LAN party.
February 26th, 2008 at 15:17
[...] has been two years and two months since I quit playing World of Warcraft. I wasn’t really into it “that” badly as I “only” had 23 days of [...]