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40 Percent of World of Warcraft Players Addicted
Heartless Gamer writes "MMORPGs and game addiction. If you're suffering from dry eyes, headaches, back aches, erratic sleep patterns, it may be more than just your average hangover: according to Dr. Maressa Orzack, you could be suffering from video and computer game addiction. A clinical psychologist, Orzack is founder and coordinator of Computer Addiction Services at McLean Hospital in Newton, Mass., and is also an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. Computer Addiction Services is one of the few outpatient clinics in the U.S. that provides specific treatment for game addiction." but I'm feelings much better now.
This is very true. I played in a small raiding guild. When I quit, I had been playing that character for 9 months. I had 7/8 tier 2 gear. For about 2 months prior to quitting, I wasn't even enjoying it. I was showing up because we had a schedule and we had to make it. Systems are in place in major guilds to perpetuate that (DKP/Loot Priority/etc). So I was spending 20-30 hours a week playing a game I was bored of.
Now I've quit. But I still read all the WoW news, I read my guild's website and forums regularly, and I still have the account. I even consider if I'm going to play again when the expansion hits. I haven't played for over 2 months, and I'm still thinking about it many times a week.
That alone is probably enough reason to never play it again.
My brother lost his job 5 weeks ago. He's been playing WoW for about a year prior to his layoff, and his addiction to game did not cause him to lose his job.
He has no motivation to go and look for a job, he only eats maybe once a day, and his house is pig sty.
He came by yesterday asking for $150 to pay his rent or he was going to be kicked out. I loaned him $40 two weeks ago, and I am sure that he used that towards his cable bill or his WoW account.
He looks like a crack or meth addict (having been around those types of people myself), and he doesn't care about anything but playing that damn game.
I almost got into to playing that game shortly after he started a year or so ago. I am glad I have not purchased the game, and I have no interest in WoW after seeing my brother play the game for three days straight with no sleep (yellow jackets were used to keep himself awake!).
I know it's not the game that is the problem, it's the person with the addictive personality. How can we recognize, and then treat video game addiction? Is it recognized as a real problem, or are they told to just grow up? 12 steps have been proven to NOT work for ALL people, and my brother is one of them.
"Fortunately, I'm adhering to a very strict drug regimen to keep my mind limber..."
I play WoW (yes, a real girl with boobs and everything playing WoW! Who'da thunk it!), and at first, it was kind of addicting. There was so much to explore, so many things to see and do. I think that first weekend, I played til 4 or 5 AM both nights. When I realised how unhealthy that was, I stopped, and vowed that if I EVER refused a social engagement in real life to play WoW, or neglected my real life duties for it, I'd uninstall it immediately. I'm now in a casual raiding guild (we raid once a week on Fridays), and log in at other times only to play with (local) people I know if they need some help.
But I'm one of those people who's lucky enough to not have an addictive personality. I didn't get addicted to IRC or the 'net. I can go weeks without logging into a computer outside of work without any problem. When my laptop (my only computer) crashed at home two months ago, I puttered for a few weeks before even bothering to reinstall the OS; WoW got reinstalled a few days later when I felt like it. I can even go without coffee for days on end if I choose to.
Honestly, I'm thankful for that. The LAST thing I want to be is one of those people who lives and breathes on a videogame. It's scary to think that it's so addicting; I have to wonder why, though? There's nothing physical there to draw you in. It isn't like alcohol or nicotine. Is it the social aspects? Being able to completely control your surroundings, as you can't in real life? What is it about a videogame like WoW or Everquest that sucks people in so completely that it makes them ignore friends, family, and real life?
I think, as someone who's not an addict, I'll never really understand it.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
I was in a fairly casual guild that only raided two nights a week (weekends). I would have preferred to raid more often, but it just couldn't be scheduled in a way to get enough people. I remember many a raid in MC where we started clearing with just 30 people, hoping we'd get 10 more to log on before we got to the first boss. Heck, we'd be lucky if we could get 8 people to show up on ZG night, when that started. Anyway, the guild fell apart after only 19 people showed up to an Onyxia raid. The casual people pretty much doomed it. I couldn't find another raiding guild (it was a PvP server and people didn't seem to care much on my faction) and so I quit the game.
While all of my game-time was reserved for WoW, I was hardly an addict. I did plenty of other things in my other time, socialized, did work, went to classes, ate, slept, etc. Probably most telling was that I didn't spend every waking moment thinking about the game. I quit without second thought and went about occupying my game-time with other games. I did see people who were definitely addicted though. The interesting thing about taking large lectures in a tech school is that you see many people playing WoW on their laptops!
I'll probably go back to WoW when the expansion comes out, and hopefully I can avoid addiction once more.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
I don't need to eat, I have 250 spirit!
That always did bug in The Matrix though. Do people in the matrix actually die from not eating? Aren't they being fed through tubes while they sleep, or does the mind make it real?
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
The game pissed me off for another reason (hence why I quit): you CAN'T be a "normal" in WoW. To explore a great deal of the game content, you need to play with others. But if you want to play for an hour and then leave to do something, you CAN'T. People kick and scream when you ditch them, and they are unable to finish their raid experience without you (the latter problem due to game design by blizzard). So, people will stop grouping with you if you play like a "normal" person. Another good reason is the $15 a month. Nice waste of money.
I went through all this shit with EQ. I wouldn't say I was hardcore, but I did feel like I had to play 2 hours a day just to feel like I was making any progress. Once you got beyond level 18 or so, the game was almost impossible to play without extensive periods of camping in groups. Fortunately Verant snapped me out of it during the Shadows of Luclin launch debacle when the game crashed on an almost nightly basis. Thanks to their own ineptitude I canceled my account and I'm so glad I did.
I've played MMPORGs since and I enjoy some. But in general I think for anyone thinking of playing an MMPORG, they should play the free trial period or the initial 30 days included with the retail box and realise that that's as good as it's probably going to get. Give me something like Oblivion any day.
To be honest, if it gets to the stage where you have to take drastic measures like this, something is wrong. I was addicted to WoW for just under a year. However I was too old for anyone to stop, being in my early 20s and at uni. I wasted a whole fucking year on that crap.
You (and his mum) are adults, uninstall the game. Tell him if he can't use his computer responsibly then he can only use it at certain times. Disconnect the router after a certain time at night. It's not up to negotiation. He doesn't know best, it's not his choice. Don't let him waste his time on this, There is nothing wrong with certain games in moderation (most games) but there is something about WoW that is unique and uniquely destructive. When I was playing it, I wasn't dealing with my life, socializing or doing the stuff I needed to (like uni). I don't care about all the people who will jump forward and say it's perfectly easy to have a normal life and play WoW too, this isn't useful to the discussion of someone who is playing it too much. The only solutions is as far as i'm concerned, cold turkey.
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
Hey, I was without internet for some days and I had to play solitaire spider. Luckily not enought to get addicted ;)
Playing too much sometimes it's ironic, like once, playing the sims, when I was trying to keep a thight schedule on my sims and made them sleep 8 hours at night, or they'd be useless the next day. It was 2 o'clock in the morning and I had to get up at 8. Irony detected and went to sleep shortly after (just one day more please).
And those sympthons could be related to too much work or other stressful situations where an imaginary world is better than the real one, be it (the imaginary) a mmorpg, drug induced or watching too much TV. But some non-gamers don't get games, so they attack them.
That describes my guild pretty well. I'd probably describe us as "half-casual." I joined primarily so that my girlfriend could also make the raid times (she works weeknights). We've got 20 people who are there 75% of the time, 20 who are there about 50% of the time, and about 80 who are there off and on.
Rant ensues: The good thing about this system (well, if you're in the top 20) is that DKP confers exaggerated benefits on the 20 people who are really holding the guild together. Basically, high attendance affords not only maximum points, but maximum opportunity to collect loot.
Example: I'm the highest attending warrior. I've spent 80% of my earned points on loot, not counting fringe benefits from being an MT which would probably bring me up to 110%. The average utilization in warriors 2-5 is 70%. 6-10? 50%. And if you look below that (which is basically people who showed up for one night and never returned), only 7 out of 30 have actually received any loot.
Unfair? Well, in the strict definition of fairness, I suppose it is. But the way I look at it, the top players ultimately benefit the more casual ones by trivializing the bosses, and will make loot more accessible by turning a 3-day dungeon into a 4-hour dungeon. By that point, the bottom 80 will be in candyland because the top 20 are already decked out. And since we're constantly recruiting, eventually we'll get a badass-enough group of people that we'll be able to tackle BWL.
As for sex, it doesn't really interfere that much - certainly not as much as the fact that she gets off at 9:00-9:30 every night, exhausted and grumpy. But she's going back to school in the fall, so hopefully things will improve:)
I don't know exactly how it works, but my youngest brother fucked up enough that he got put on a sort of system where, if he starts acting up, my parents just call the sheriff to come pick him up and take him to the juvenile detention center. Threatens to run away? Locked up. Runs away? Locked up. Threatens suicide? Locked up, solitary, on suicide watch, evaluated by psychiatrist. My brother, since being put into this system, has drastically altered his behavior for the better and the sheriff hasn't actually ever been called. If a kid threatens to kill anyone, that is waaaay illegal and grounds for a longer-term lockup.
If a kid is going to play with fire, (s)he should get burned.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
So what happens if he threatens to run away, suicide, and/or being violent (killings)? I have seen that happened (not related to WoW and gaming).
If that's the case, then the parents have bigger problems that WoW. If he's that out of control, then you get them psychiatric help. Why you don't EVER do is give in to their threats and emotional manipulation. That's how they got screwed up in the first place.
All this is pretty theoretical anyway. If the parents are firm enough to implement a strong disciplinary policy, they were probably firm enough when they were children, and the kids aren't screwed up enough to need the strong disciplimary policy.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
This is a big problem with casual players. I'm part of a casual player guild, and am a casual player myself. Whlie we do have one or two members who would love to be doing the 5 night a week raiding, the rest of us just aren't able or willing to put in the time. For myself, I just don't have the time. I work 8-5 and have an hour commute each way. So, by the time I get home and get dinner cooked and eaten, it's around 7pm. If I want to get a reasonable amount of sleep, I go to bed by 11. this leaves 4 hours each night of "free" time. I can't spend all of that playing a video game. Somewhere in there I have laundry, house cleaning, and everything else associated with living a normal life. In the end, we do most of our raiding on weekends because that's when everyone has plenty of free time. Even that is irregular, since most of us actually have lives that we like to go live.
The worry that is now facing the guild is that we have several people hitting 60, but no where near enough to do some of the large raids. And unless we have some huge membership boosts, it's just not going to happen. We have about 20 unique players, most of which are somewhere between levels 20 and 40. Even if everyone made it to 60, we still wouldn't be doing the 40-man raids without either half the group being a pickup or teaming up with another guild (which is what we are planning to try to do).
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
From a long-time obsessed text-mudder, I've gotta say I'm somewhat disappointed that none of these issues that plauged text-muds in their day were resolved.
XP curves and "power players" have been a problem for ages in text-muds. Item hoarding and general economy screwing as well. And balance issues are always a constant problem...every new thing added is always ridiulously overpowered and then eventually goes through a nerfing phase.
*laugh* Things haven't changed.
Sad thing is...the end result is always the same. People get fed up and leave. The truly addicted die-hards are the only ones that remain in the end. No one wants a game to feel like "work"...and most muds/MMORPGs eventually do.
Personally, I believe the best solution to the "endless leveling" problem is an aging system based on active time.
"Uber-levelers" would get their higher levels much faster, but they would also rush forward to the end of their character life.
People who don't get as much time to play on the other hand would enjoy a longer life as a mid-to-high level character.
It would solve lots of problems, including the need for "high level content." That one there is an endless problem with no solution. Once you put in a area for the level 60s to actually feel challenged, you need to include a worthwhile reward, which makes them even more overpowered. Then they eventually get to level 70. It doesn't take long for balance to spiral out of control.
All too true... There are quite a few people I know whose relationships have broken down over WoW. For one girl, her boyfriend wouldn't even stop playing for sex.