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How To Help a Friend With an MMO Addiction?

Posted by Soulskill on from the napalm-solves-more-problems-than-you'd-expect dept.

sammydee writes "I have a friend who is addicted to an MMO (Pirates of the Burning Sea). On a typical day, he will wake up around 9am, browse the forums for a bit, then go online and stay online all day, playing until about 3am the following morning, taking only toilet breaks and stopping to eat ready-meals. While the rest of the house works hard revising for exams, this friend will be playing his MMO instead. Now, I am pretty confident that this comprises an unhealthy addiction; unfortunately, I have no idea what to do about it. Any attempt to physically prevent him from playing the game would most likely result in an outburst of anger and possibly physical violence. Attempts at telling him he has a problem have been met with derision and angry retorts. Slashdotters, what would you do to help out a friend in this situation? Perhaps you are a reformed addict yourself — if so, how did you break out of the habit? Or maybe I should just leave well enough alone and allow him to continue? Any thoughts are gratefully received."

5 of 811 comments (clear)

  1. You can;t save someone from their self. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I learned that with my regular old drug junkie friends.

  2. That is retarded by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Informative

    For one, all the MMO companies I've ever encountered have plenty of records of what has happened with an account. That was if something goes wrong, they can restore it. If it gets hacked, they'll just roll it back to where it was before then. So the company will fix the problem and he'll just get to keep going. Now if you keep doing it, you WILL get caught. That's how criminals, and make no mistake that's what you'd be, get caught: They keep doing it. Each time there's more chance you slip up, each time there's more patterns to look for.

    In this case you'd get found out fairly quickly because those involved would realize the only way someone could keep getting his password is to have physical access to his computer.

    So this is an excellent way to not fix the problem, and to land your ass in jail. Hacking can be a very serious offense if they want it to be.

  3. Re:It's Called S.E.X by Rip+Dick · · Score: 5, Informative

    A girlfriend will want to evaluate his character, tell her friends, make him want to go out on dates and shit like that... and if all is good, will "perform".

    You're doing it wrong.

  4. Re:It's Called S.E.X by ta+bu+shi+da+yu · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's amazing what people with rate as +1 informative these days.

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  5. Re:It's Called S.E.X by bjourne · · Score: 5, Informative

    terrible isn't it?

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