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How Warcraft Really Does Wreck Lives

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the something-to-think-about dept.

An anonymous reader writes "There's a great blog post about how World of Warcraft can ruin lives, it's written by a person that was for a long time a member of the largest council on what is now one of the oldest guilds in the world." This is a story that is very familiar to a lot of folks. I know people who are actively wrecking their lives and risking their jobs by playing too much of a video game.

2 of 617 comments (clear)

  1. Secret Weapon by sidepocket · · Score: -1, Redundant

    +25 Unwrecker of Life

  2. QFT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant

    This blog hits on a lot of good points. I used to play DAoC with my ex-wife before we got married. We would play long into the night but we both held regular jobs and enjoyed playing *together*. I enjoyed the game, especially once my character got to the point where I could easily compete in PvP. But I never felt addicted to it. Just before we got married we started playing WoW as she tired from playing DAoC.

    So WoW was fun but she was sucked in. We grew apart quickly and that pretty much was the end of it, in only a few months. I never really enjoyed WoW as much as a I did DAoC, even though Mythic couldn't code to save their lives.

    I much rather prefer to play games like CS and DoD as they are not time sinks. I can log in and play DoD at 4:1 ratios almost any time I like but I don't have to do it every night. In fact, I haven't played DoD in about two weeks since Comcast screwed up the Adelphia transition and my cable modem is all wonky. I'm not worked up about it, I have a lovely fiance to spend time with and other committments in life that take up my time.

    What WoW and games like it do is bring out personality defects in people, not in real life but online. You can be a complete failure in life but be somebody important online. There are virtually no real life reprecussions for your online behavior and that encourages acts and behavior that would otherwise not be tolerated.

    The problem isn't WoW, or games like it, however. The problem is the people who allow something like WoW to become the centerpiece of their lives, not the important things like family and friends.