- 03
- Sep
World of Warcraft is a game that should be classified as a drug. It might not be smoked, swallowed, or injected… but it’s symptoms are the exact same as an illegal drug. It is horribly addicting and is getting renowned for ruining lives.
The following are first-hand accounts of the devastation WoW has on it’s devoted players… all quotes are completely unedited and pulled from a number of online forum threads, discussing their experiences with WoW players. Posters and names are not included for anonymity.
I knew this guy in college that used to be really social. Had a hot girlfriend, lots of friends, was physically fit and looked decent.
He got WoW and within 6 months his girlfriend was gone. Started fucking his best friend who is also no longer his friend. Guy ended up gaining 30lbs and turned pale as a ghost. I went in his room and he had like 15 bottles of urine stacked up along his desk because he ‘couldnt leave the raid’
He had 20+ pizza boxes stacked up along the wall of his room. His room smelled like death. His sheets were stained brown from when he did sleep. he lost his job and flunked out of school. He lives at home with his parents now I think, I havent seen him in a year or so.
Im glad I never bought that game, cause I feel like I wouldve turned into something like the people in these stories. I never want to touch this game.
my MMO horror story:
…played for over 4 days straight, 103 hours.. was camping for a Ghoulsbane in Guk.. I only stopped after 103 hours because I fell out of my chair and passed out from exhustion .. spent the next 6 days in hospital .. still didn’t get the bloody sword.. a guildy gave me one off of one of their twinks..
my friends brother was married, had two children and a home and all that stuff.
he got hooked into wow and quit his job and stopped supporting his family.. his wife eventually left him and took the kids/house, he moved back in with his mother. the guy had met some girl in wow that lived 1000 miles away and actually disappeared to go meet her/live with her. fast forward a few months, my friend brings over his brothers computer asking if theres anything i can do to help find him. all they knew was he left to go meet a girl he met online.
well, i dug through the computer and found wow screenshots and chat logs of the girl and her name, and eventually found an address and we tracked him down.. but afaik it’s done no good, he’s still living with the girl he met in-game and has completely abandoned everything here. his ex-wife and children live with her mother i think.
I’m 22 now, and the guy I’ve been best friends with since we were 14 started playing WoW about a year ago.
He never leaves his house, I could never get him to go outside and do anything, and now he doesn’t work or go to school. He lives with his mom, and just recently, he stopped returning my phone calls because he couldn’t put down his mic during a “raid”
Now we’re not really friends anymore, and I can’t even remember the last time we spoke.
Fuck WoW.
Friend of mine went from a B student to a D-E student in the last year because of WoW… I tried to warn him, tried to get him to quit but “my guild needs me”
My best friend was into WOW.. bad.. Like your story bad. It got to the point where he would shower by sitting in the chair and pour bottled water on himself.
Well, Me and my buddy went over one night because we were going to just have a few beers and his parents weren’t home. Turns out my buddy invited a few more people and when I arrived there were 10 people with us.
Anyway the WOW guy thought they were from the computer game and came to invade his house. WTF! This is when he really fucking lost it.. I mean mental hospital “lost it” So I sat there and was like I got in one little fight and my mom god scared, said your moving with your auntie and uncle in belair.
I had a room mate in a guild that he said required him to play like 48 hours a week. He spent everyday in his room on WoW and hardly ever went to class. The only time we saw him is when he ran in the kitchen to get a hot pocket.
i have a buddy i work with who is a heavy WoW player. his wife is also a heavy WoW player.
i don’t really understand the details, but he almost went through a divorce with her because of this. apparently he noticed she’d been on a different “server” than usual. something seemed amiss. there were like five nights in a row she was up all night playing. she didn’t want to play the game with him at all. turns out she was talking to some other guy and doing “quests” or something with him.
it really sounds ridiculous, but i can’t even describe the rage with which he realyed all this to me.
Another horror story Ive heard was about this one guy that was into WoW, and one day he ganked this shit out of this one low level guy. His girlfriend was a psychologist or something and was working on counseling a 12 y/o kid that one day went crazy and pulled a knife on his family. She was talking to the kid and found out he played WoW, she said her boyfriend played and told the kid his name and server he played on, and the kid went apeshit after hearing it.
Turns out her boyfriend was the one that ganked the kid, causing him to attack his family with a knife. There is audio somewhere of the guy telling the whole story
I buddy of mine in my Army unit dropped out of school (which was being paid for by the Army) and got out of the Army so that he could play WoW and work part time at a Walmart photo center.
I lived with this weird ass dude in college. He bought WOW…
…and stopped coming out of his room. He was literally home every time I was home and I only saw him 3 times in 6 months. He bought a refrigerator, did all of his dishes in his sink, and never let his two cats out of his room. He’d wait until I was gone and then put post its on my door to tell me things (bills, etc).
One day he showed me some character of his that was a girl and he’d solicit the other players to give him gold and pretend to be a girl.
Psycho.
good friend’s fiance dumped him over the game.
best friend of mine, grew up together… both dreamed about going to UT… and being there at the same time to have a ridiculous time in college…
dream comes true. we both get in. the dude gets ridiculously addicted to WoW. he completely stops going to class. academic probation -> flunked out. walking into his room was so nasty. he’d have 5 cups full of spit where he’d dip when raiding and not do anything about it. he wouldn’t answer anyones calls. he’d stay up all night and play… one time he fell asleep in his chair with his fingers still on the keyboard… and then we heard him bragging about it later on his microphone.
we actually stole his computer at one point to force him to not play for a few days and he threatened to call the cops on us
A guy I know through one of my best mates started playing wow roughly when it came out. He dropped out of school in year 10 (we are currently just about to finish year 12 and complete our HSC), he went to T.A.F.E for 6 months (aussie version of community college) then dropped out of that. Its taken him another year to get a f**king job, at pizza hut…and know all he does is punch cones and play wow.
He’s been doing this shit for 2 and a half years and is just turning into a degenerate, I feel sorry for all the kids who turn out like that.
A guy at the office used a vacation day last Friday just so he could be in on a raid.
kid failed out of college and and when he moved back home his parents knew it was because of WoW and would not let him play in their house. so he moved in with his guild leader (in france).
i failed out of med school and then went on to start a successful career as a night time rent-a-cop security guy because of WoW
And in the press:
http://www.techspot.com/news/19487-chinese-13yearolds-death-linked-to-world-of-warcraft.html
In China, the parents of a 13-year-old Tianjin boy are suing the makers of “World of Warcraft” because they claim that the game was responsible for the death of their son! Seemingly, the boy jumped to his death after re-enacting a scene from the game, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua. Anti-Internet addiction advocate Zhang Chunliang is backing the parent’s suit against Blizzard Entertainment. Chunliang has apparently spoken to 63 parents whose children have allegedly suffered from online gaming addiction, and has a class-action suit in the works.
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=59697
A Korean husband and wife are facing criminal charges after their baby daughter died when they left her alone in order to play World of Warcraft.
According to news site Chosun, police say the parents left their four month-old child alone in a bedroom while they went to play the MMORPG at a local Internet cafe.
When they returned five hours later, the baby was lying on her stomach and had died of suffocation.
“We were thinking of playing for just an hour or two and returning home like usual, but the game took longer that day,” the couple is reported as saying.
This is all from a video game… quite scary actually.
September 3rd, 2007 at 2:55 pm
[...] World of Warcraft Obsession » This Summary is from an article posted at Harry Maugans on Monday, September 03, 2007 World of [...]
September 3rd, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Ugh I was addicted to WoW for a year or so. Stopped talking to my friends, gained 30 pounds, sucked ass in school, and sunk into depression. I eventually started hating the game with a passion but I still played constantly because I felt like I had to. I yelled at my parents and was in denial. “They just don’t understand,” I would say to myself, “this game is my life. These in-game friends are better friends then the real world ones.” I eventually figured it out and stopped playing for 3 months. I remembered I was still paying monthly so I canceled my subscription back in May. Thank god I got out.
September 5th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
[...] read the full article here [...]
September 7th, 2007 at 11:18 am
It’s not the game that causes these deaths and whatever else, it’s lack of the power of will. I, for one, played WoW since its release, but I never got that addicted, yeah it’s true, there were times when I would play a little longer than was supposed to, but I kept telling myself I would not get addicted, and I didn’t. Even though I still play occasionally; the game isn’t so ‘appealing’ to me anymore, but it’s quite fun to lose time when you got nothing to do. My oppinion is that the game may be like a drug, but like every ‘drug’; if you have enough power of will, you can stop playing.
September 11th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Wow what retards…. Like the otha dude said its merely power of will and how mentally strong you are that keeps you out of it.
September 28th, 2007 at 11:15 am
It seems to me that those who “drop out of school” etc over playing a video game and end up “doing something meaningless”, were unlikely to be doing anything particularly useful with their lives anyway. *If* you break what you believe is a personal addiction of any sort, there is nothing stopping you from going back to whatever you blamed WoW from stopping you achieving and trying again.
Except that its easier to blame a popular game than your own shortcomings.
October 3rd, 2007 at 5:37 pm
hello there. im an obsessed too, but in a different world of warcraft - Dota… I have a post about my experience on my blog. i also would like to let you know that i have added a post and a link to this on my blog. thanks!
October 13th, 2007 at 6:16 am
[...] read more | digg story [...]
October 15th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
The level of addiction these stories present have absolutely nothing to do with the game itself. If you can get that addicted to something, it’s clear you lack the willpower to make decisions and have an addictive personality to begin with. Get off your ass and stop playing the damn game. Otherwise, shut up.
October 15th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
hey i played wow i got a little chubby but i was only 12 when i started. Now im 14 and im thinking of picking it up during the winter. i have lost alot of weight because of football but all im doing in the off season is working out so Wow is a normal video game… IN MODERATION.. i mean a few of my friends played and were htinking of going back to kick back, you know video games are for a entertainment experience just like tv and ssex, but too much and fuck you up so do all 3 and a sport and your ok!
November 7th, 2007 at 1:13 am
Yea, im 16 and ive been playing since it came out, im doing great in school still and i do a sport while im at it its just whether or not the person is willing to control how long they play and make sure to still do stuff instead of video games. i wouldnt say its a drug
November 18th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
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November 20th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
I played WoW for a while and I must say, it can get pretty addictive at times. However, these horror stories are, for the most part exaggerated. There’s no smoke without fire, but I used to make the same exagerations for their obvious dramatical purpose myself: “Oh man, I spent the whole fucking night grinding primals” waiting for the pat on the back or whatnot.
There were days when I used to play 6-7 hours or so and I was a “raider” so I spent some of the evenings in the game, raiding with my e-buddies. But after a while, the game simply died down, as it probably does to most people and now I have a succesful company and what I hope to be a bright career in PR and advertising. It’s a question of will.
P.S. I managed to get the will to stop wow, but everytime I try to “quit” masturbating, I fail after 1 day(s).
November 30th, 2007 at 5:58 am
“Addictive” MMOG are not drugs. Just because a real drug has the same effect on everybody, even if it may be better or worse depending on people.
MMOG can be addictive to somebody, but another player playing a lot will be able to stop even being in a raid. I knew lots of players that said, in a middle of a raid “I set my character following you, I have lunch” and the next 30minutes, just because it is lunch time, the half of characters in a raid are active, the other are “zombies” just following their friendly target until the human that control it finished.
When a MMOG become as addictive as a drug for someone, it is pointing another problem. It is alwayd psy problem : reality deny, real life problem avoiding, etc.. The addiction to a MMOG is always hidding a psychological problem. All drifts as violence (attacking supposed troll at a bus stop) are the fact of a few weak minded people who need psychological care. In the least serious case, just speakinh to a psy (everiday problems), in most serious case, a real psychiatric follow-up.
Years ago, when role gaming (I mean not on a computer) was the target, a french police superintendent investigated. He was in charge of some cases where some guy started to believe he was an orc, an elf or whatever and started to wound his friends in outdoor roleplay.
So he started his investigations whith a strong opinion against role play. He thought it was dangerous and that it could turn a teenager in a criminal. But after monthes of investigations (he encounter role player, psys, etc..), he was forced to notice that problems were only the fact of a few weak minded people. People who were rejecting reality an were confining them to an imaginary world.
I knew this through a classmate who gave a talk about that.
So I think it the same with MMOG, except MMOG is world wide, and can concentrate weak addicted people just because sensible people are sleeping, eating, having anything you can have in real life after a few hours game party. MMOG are just a giant magnet for people with psychological problems (and mainly ignore it). A safe haven where they can escape reality.
So no MMOG is to blame. It only reveal a society problem that we should look at.
December 7th, 2007 at 6:19 am
regarding “…played for over 4 days straight, 103 hours.. was camping for a Ghoulsbane in Guk.. I only stopped after 103 hours because I fell out of my chair and passed out from exhustion .. spent the next 6 days in hospital .. still didn’t get the bloody sword.. a guildy gave me one off of one of their twinks..”
This is a reference to Everquest, not Wow.
I applaud your ability to harvest the worst media possible. Please consider that, while many of your stories are likely to be valid, any product whose usage rate is in the millions will have oddball fanatics. Realize that the vast magority of wow players are casual players, logging no more than 3-5 hours per week. An extremely small percentage will be in the 80+ hours/week range, and these individuals usually have more problems in their lives than WoW - WoW become an exercise in escapism for them. MMO’s are not drugs any more so than books, movies, or sports.
I personally do not think that WoW is a good game, and happen to think that it has been specifically tailored to waste time and build social commitment. It’s their profit model, that’s all. As with Joachim’s comment, I strongly assert that the problems you’re citing are societal issues. For these people, if WoW did not exist, it is quite likely that they would have found another method of relief. Review any scientifically-sound study of violence and game playing — games help. Crime and violence among game players is lower than among non-game players.
Please don’t spread neivity across the internet,
Thank you.
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February 11th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Wow seems to have a great deal in common with military type “brainwashing” methods used in a number of countries.
February 24th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Cure for WoW or any other MMO? Try a bunch of different ones. I was very addicted to the first major MMO I played, I thought it was the best ever. Of course it wasn’t perfect, but only when it began to become impossible to play due to inflation and game hacks did I eventually quit.
Afterwards, when I tried other MMOs, I realized that it wasn’t that great at all. I even went back to it years later to see if I’d still like it, and I didn’t. I couldn’t even get past level 15. Now all MMOs I play don’t seem to have the same addictive properties of the first one. I can play them in moderation, although occasionally I do play too much, but never to the extent of the first one where I’d do 12 or 18 hours in a single party.
The more and more games I try, the more I am disenfranchised with the whole MMO genre. For me, variety was key to breaking the addiction. I think that gave me perspective on the whole thing; how much of a rat race it really is, and how most MMOs aren’t really FUN to play. It’s all about getting levels and good gear. People get caught up in their own greed and envy.
I also agree with the other posters who said that it’s a symptom of the player’s personality, not necessarily of MMOs, that leads people to become addicted. I think a lot of the folks who become really addicted are addicted to the feeling of accomplishment. They’re type A folks, who thrive on the reward system in MMOs. They may not achieve much in real life, since the path to success there is not so easily observed, nor measured. You may do well in school, for instance, but that does not necessarily mean that you’ll succeed in your career life. In an MMO, time spent always equals measurable success. In real life, you may waste many years doing something and never really be recognized or feel the benefit from it. I think addicted players have a lot of anxiety that revolves around failure, and it’s so much harder to fail in an MMO.
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