http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/17/AR2006081700625_2.html

Quote :

"Lost in an Online Fantasy World As Virtual Universes Grow, So Do Ranks of the Game-Obsessed By Olga Khazan Special to washingtonpost.com Friday, August 18, 2006; 3:52 PM They are war heroes, leading legions into battle through intricately designed realms. They can be sorcerers or space pilots, their identities woven into a world so captivating, it is too incredible to ever leave. Unfortunately, some of them don't. Video games have often been portrayed as violence-ridden vehicles for teen angst. But after 10 people in South Korea -- mostly teenagers and young adults -- died last year from game-addiction causes, including one man who collapsed in an Internet cafe after playing an online game for 50 hours with few breaks, some began to see a new technological threat. Participation in massively multiplayer online role-playing games, also called MMORPGs or MMOs, has skyrocketed from less than a million subscribers in the late 1990s to more than 13 million worldwide in 2006. With each new game boasting even more spectacular and immersive adventures, new ranks of gamers are drawn to their riveting story lines. Like gambling, pornography or any other psychological stimulant, these games have the potential to thrill, engross and completely overwhelm. The most widely played MMO, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft, has 6.5 million players worldwide, most of whom play 20 to 22 hours per week. Thousands can be logged in simultaneously to four different WoW servers (each its own self-contained "realm"), interacting with players across the globe in a vast virtual fantasy setting full of pitched battles and other violent adventures. Brady Mapes, a 24-year-old computer programmer from Gaithersburg, Md., and an avid WoW fan, calls it a "highly addictive game -- it sucks the life out of you." An MMO differs from an offline game in that the game world evolves constantly as each players' actions directly or indirectly influence the lives of other players' characters. In WoW, players can simply attack one another, interact with the environment, or role-play in more complex relationships. More time playing means greater virtual wealth and status, as well as access to higher game levels and more-exciting content. In addition, online gamers can join teams or groups (called "guilds" in WoW) that tackle game challenges cooperatively. Fellow team members see membership as a commitment and expect participation in virtual raids and other joint activities. The constant interaction with other players can lead to friendships and personal connections. 'All I Could Think About Was Playing' Everquest II The box cover for a separately purchased add-on module for Everquest II.(Ken Murayama) "The main reason people are playing is because there are other people out there," said Dmitri Williams, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has researched the social impacts of MMOs. "People know your name, they share your interests, they miss you when you leave." As MMO fan sites filled with raving gamers proliferate, so have online-addiction help blogs, where desperate recluses and gamers' neglected spouses search for a way out. "I don't want to do everything with [my husband], but it would be nice to have a meaningful conversation once in awhile," writes one pregnant wife on Everquest Daily Grind, a blog for those affected by excessive use of another popular fantasy MMO. "He does not have much interest in the baby so far, and I am worried that after it is born, he will remain the same while I am struggling to work and take care of the baby." Another gamer writes that she was angry at her boyfriend for introducing her to online gaming, which began consuming her life at the expense of her personal and academic well-being. "But I think deleting [your] character doesn't work, because the game haunts you," she said. "All I could think about was playing." Kimberly Young, who has treated porn and chat-room addicts since 1994 at her Center for Internet Addiction Recovery, said that in the past year video game fixation has grown more than anything else. "In MMOs, people lead wars and receive a lot of recognition," Young said. "It's hard to stop and go clean your room. Real life is much less interesting." "Everquest" players log in to a swords-and-sorcery world to challenge or cooperate with other players as they so choose. (Sony Online Entertainment) The trend echoes across the continents, with game-addiction treatment centers cropping up in China in 2005 and this summer in Amsterdam. In South Korea, where 70 percent of the population has broadband Internet access, the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity offers government-funded counseling for the game-hooked. 'The Real World Gets Worse' The games are set up to be lengthy, with a quest taking six hours or more to complete. The organization of players into cooperative teams creates a middle-school-esque atmosphere of constant peer pressure. "You're letting other people down if you quit," Young said. "If you are good, the respect becomes directly reinforcing." According to research performed by Nick Yee, a Stanford graduate student and creator of the Daedalus Project, an online survey of more than 40,000 MMO players, the average player is 26 years old; most hold full-time jobs. Seventy percent have played for 10 hours straight at some point, and about 45 percent would describe themselves as "addicted." Yee believes escapism to be the best predictor of excessive gaming. A person who plays MMOs in order to avoid real-life problems, rather than simply for entertainment or socialization, is more likely to experience what he calls "problematic usage." "People feel like they lack control in real life, and the game gives them a social status and value that they are less and less able to achieve in the real world," Yee said. "As a result, the real world gets worse and the virtual world gets better in comparison." Liz Woolley, a Wisconsin software analyst and veteran of Alcoholics Anonymous, founded Online Gamers Anonymous in May 2002 by adapting AA's 12-step addiction recovery model to help gamers quit cold-turkey. Woolley recommends getting professional help for underlying issues and finding other hobbies and real-world activities to replace gaming. "Addicts want to live in a fantasy life because you can't do a 'do-over' in real life," she said. "It can be hard to accept. You have to let them know, 'Hey, this is real life. Learn to deal with it.'" 'Every Player Has a Choice' "People are reluctant to point a finger at themselves," said Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developers Association. Excessive use "is a reflection of friction in that person's life. They shouldn't use the game as a scapegoat." Casual gamers may find it difficult to advance to the game's highest levels in the face of more dedicated rivals, such as Mapes, the Gaithersburg WoW fan, whose highest-level warrior character is a force to be reckoned with. "If I go up against someone who only plays for one to two hours, I'll decimate them," he said. "There are other games out there if you only want to play a couple hours at a time.""

8/23/2006 8:14:14 AM

Quote :

"That dedication sometimes pushes Mapes to see the game as more of a chore than a pastime. "Sometimes I realize that I'm not having any fun, but I just can't stop," he said. Several of the MMO researchers interviewed for this story pointed out that many game companies employ psychologists who analyze the games and suggest ways to make them easier to play over long stretches of time. Della Rocca argues that because online games' monthly subscription rates remain constant regardless of how many hours a subscriber spends on the network, developers profit less when gamers play more intensively. The psychologists "monitor subjects playing the games in order to eliminate flaws and points of frustration," Della Rocca said. "The notion that we are trying to seduce gamers is a fabrication of people who don't understand how games are developed." Since Blizzard Entertainment released WoW in 2004, calls to Online Gamers Anonymous have more than tripled, according to Woolley, who said the industry is directly at fault for the suffering of the people she tries to help. "I think the game companies are nothing more than drug pushers," she said. "If I was a parent, I wouldn't let them in my house. It's like dropping your kids off at a bar and leaving them there." The signs of excessive MMO use are similar to those of alcoholism or any other dependency -- tolerance, withdrawal, lying or covering up, to name a few. However, many in the industry are hesitant to call it an addiction because, in the case of MMOs, the nature of the problem is based on how it affects the user's life, not the amount of time spent playing. According to tvturnoff.org, Americans spend an average of 28 hours a week watching television, a fact that has yet to spawn a bevy of dependence clinics. "If a person was reading novels excessively, we'd be less likely to call that 'addiction' because we value reading as culture," said the University of Illinois's Williams. "We see game play as frivolous due to our Protestant work ethic. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence out there to suggest this is a problem, but it's not the role of science to guess or bet." Mapes, who has played other engrossing titles such as Medal of Honor and Diablo and eventually set them aside, said the decision to control excessive gaming is one any player can make. "Ultimately, every player has a choice to stop," he said. "I've stopped before, and I've seen other people stop if they get burned out." 'No One Was Talking About It' Woolley disagrees, especially after witnessing the bitter outcome of her son's Everquest obsession. Shawn had played online games before, so she didn't suspect anything different when he picked up the newest MMO from Sony. Within months, Woolley said, Shawn withdrew from society, losing his job and apartment and moving back home to live a virtual life he found more fulfilling. After a number of game-induced grand mal seizures sent Shawn, who was epileptic, to the emergency room repeatedly, he chose to pay ambulance bills rather than stop playing. The medical professionals he saw treated his external symptoms but dismissed his gaming condition. "They told me, 'Be glad he's not addicted to something worse, like drugs,' and sent him home," Woolley said. On Thanksgiving Day 2001, Woolley found 21-year-old Shawn dead in front of his computer after having committed suicide. Everquest was on the screen. Readers' responses to an article written about the incident in a local Wisconsin paper poured in, and the national attention Shawn's story subsequently received prompted Woolley to start up a self-help Web site. In the four years since its launch, Online Gamers Anonymous (http://www.olganon.org/) has had 125 million hits and registered more than 2,000 members, Woolley said. "I realized that gaming addiction was an underground epidemic affecting thousands of people, but no one was talking about it," she said. "I wasn't worried about pressure from the gaming industry. I thought, 'You already took my kid, you can't take anything else.'""

8/23/2006 8:15:05 AM

so, are you addicted?

personally I agree with one of the bits in this article relating to reading or watching TV...

saying that gaming is more addicting or more harmful than either of these other 2 mediums is ridiculous and absurd.

that and some people just have addictive personalities

8/23/2006 8:16:50 AM

what's so absurd about saying gaming addiction can be more harmful or addictive than reading or tv? I see nothing absurd about that.

8/23/2006 8:20:34 AM

none of the several studies on video games has shown a statisticly significant effect

8/23/2006 8:23:00 AM

Quote :

"On Thanksgiving Day 2001, Woolley found 21-year-old Shawn dead in front of his computer after having committed suicide. Everquest was on the screen."

OMGZ

8/23/2006 9:31:19 AM

Quote :

"thousands can be logged in simultaneously to four different WoW servers"

ahahahahahhaha

the geek inside me just came out to breath

[Edited on August 23, 2006 at 9:39 AM. Reason : .]

8/23/2006 9:38:49 AM

seriously, if you cant figure out why an MMO could be more addictive than reading or tv, you've got issues.

8/23/2006 9:43:04 AM

you don't need a study to realize that people fuck up when they get addicted to shit like this


I can name you examples... many on tww


I mean, it gets to the point where these people won't go out, won't clean up their stuff, change their sleep habits to accomodate their game playing


pretty lame

8/23/2006 9:44:27 AM

^ yeah, you could say the same about tv, except id imagine it is harder to become that addicted to tv. as the article says (and is obvious), the "social" aspects really change the nature of the beast, not to mention, it is completely interactive.

8/23/2006 9:54:38 AM

yup, so interactive, you're no longer interacting with the people you know irl

8/23/2006 9:59:01 AM

I have a friend that is on WoW every minute he can and he confuses the real world with what he talks about with people on the game

its crazy

8/23/2006 10:05:09 AM

So Arab must obviously be huge into one of these games and in denial?

At least be addicted to online gambling where you can make money wasting your life away.

8/23/2006 10:09:19 AM

there is a 200 page thread in tech talk about this one game


read a few pages and tell me if there is something wrong with it or not

fictional world, fictional people, fictional terms... and some people on here live for that game

8/23/2006 10:21:54 AM

lol nah, i stay the hell away from most MMO's

the only one i'm in is EVE, that's b/c you can 'level up' without being there (time based training rather than action based)

which means it plays like an FPS to me, i can log on for 5 minutes change somethings and log off and not touch it for a week.



i've never been too attracted to games you HAVE to play hours to get good in them online...

8/23/2006 10:31:13 AM

I tried WOW and my neighbors wife who was playing some atrocious looking MMO called Runescape made the switch a week or two after I got WoW and showed her what it was like.

Fast forward almost a year, I played about 3 months and then cut it off. I didn't even play that seriously. Never had time. My highest guy just got up where he could get a mount and had that. 30 something I think.

The neighbors wife is now completely and utterly addicted. Doesn't clean house, doesn't take care of her 4 year old son, doesn't work, etc. etc. She is on WoW day and night. She is midlevel in her guild, and has about 7 characters all above level 18 and a couple that are at 60.

I guess I just don't have the attention span to deal with one game for that long. I jump around. Will play Civ 4 hardcore for a week or so, then I want to play with my car and work on it, and then I get into something else for a while. With kids, full-time job, and going back to school its really hard to play a MMO and not have it be detrimental to your career or your family.

8/23/2006 11:01:25 AM

i had a co-worker friend who was extremely sociable and great to hang around. apparently he had problems with online games in the past, but said he was done with them.

after a couple months, he had a "relapse" and got back into them. we literally never saw him again. his roomates would have parties at their place, and he would stay in his room and play. he would come to work, go home, and lock himself in his room.

he evenually left the company and vanished.

8/23/2006 11:04:20 AM

that sounds like people I know


people that are on tww also

8/23/2006 11:31:40 AM

Well, I can add this to my list of "Things To Stay Away From":

Crack
Heroin
Coke
Meth
MMORPGs

That said, I can't wait for the new Zelda and Super Mario Galaxy to come out...

8/23/2006 11:34:42 AM

i played WOW from nov 2004 - april 2005 - it just got old

8/23/2006 12:02:28 PM

MMO's are definately addicting and fun.

I played UO a LONG time ago, but was moderate in playing.

I played WoW 6 months straight and don't remember much else

QUIT cold turkey and vowed to never play another MMO until either my g/f or wife is dead and I'm retired.

8/23/2006 12:03:22 PM

I agree that these games can be very addicting. I played WoW for over a year and it got to the point where I would come home from work and play. thats all i did.

Granted I still went out with friends, did physical activities on the weekends, but 6+ hours a day even on the weekends was spent playing that game. 10 hours in a row was easy to do too. any hobby that takes that much of your time requires a re-evaluation.

Weak minded and/or addiction proned individuals need to treat it like anything else. Moderation is key. I would put it on a higher level than TV or books. There is feedback here. Rewards for time invested unlike television or books can offer.

The fact that the games are very social and require teamwork and interaction with real people is a good thing IMO. I see nothing wrong with making friends via games like this and enjoying that as you would any other social interaction. Just dont make it your only social interaction.

8/23/2006 12:07:07 PM

yeah

8/23/2006 12:09:30 PM

I played WoW for the first time during the 2nd closed beta, then the open beta, then I bought it and played until I was level 40.

Then I quit, I just got bored of it.

But all the friends still played. I used to party with them on saturday night, now the have Molten Core runs with the guild on saturday night.

8/23/2006 12:43:27 PM

I knew a dude who was totally into UO. It was wack. He played for years and years. He would play at work, he would fall asleep at work cause he'd been playing all night... this dude was in his 40s and had a wife.

He would talk to me every day about waht was going on in his UO world. Sometimes I wouldn't know if he was talking about UO or real life when he started talking to me. Then I began to realize it was always UO and never real life.

I did work at a computer game company, so most everyone there was a huge gamer.

I remember he would tell me that he would dream about UO and wake up, and log into the game and shit would be going on that he dreamed about. He'd log in just in time to claim some house that came off of ownership or something that he had dreamed about.

8/23/2006 12:44:33 PM

Meh, I've played WoW off and on since it started, and I've never had a problem with playing it too much. I've probably played it on average 4-5 hours per week, not including the six months or so that I stopped playing completely. I just cancelled my account again, but I'll probably renew it when the expansion comes out.

8/23/2006 12:53:58 PM

I got into an awesome guild that was hardcore... that was my problem

Just glad I quit.


Any time I want to play a game, I load up BF2 and pwn noobs.

8/23/2006 1:18:30 PM

1 Word: Paraphrase

8/23/2006 1:34:36 PM

w3rd, n00bs deserve a good pwning

i almost feel sorry for the poor bastards that are at the bottom of the rankings of every round

but then i remember that their sucking makes me look better

8/23/2006 1:35:14 PM

6 words "Lost in an Online Fantasy World?"

8/23/2006 1:35:48 PM

whenever I play any online game, I'm always last or second to last (and if I'm second to last its cause the last-place guy got DC or had horrible lag)



[Edited on August 23, 2006 at 1:53 PM. Reason : s]

8/23/2006 1:52:46 PM

MMORP fulfills the needs of many nerds and closet nerds. It provides a comfortable location to do this and though you can be bullied (pvp) you can always kill them back later.

Hi, my name is Chad Stinner and I played Everquest. I played it so much that after my 4 year stint my play time was 376 days 13 hours and some change. That means for 1/4 of my life I did nothing but play EQ. Those who play WoW, you're dealing with about 1/50th the content that EQ has in it's present state.

You don't know about REAL camping of a mob. You don't know about timesinks. Look up epics in EQ.

So who the fuck am I to talk about this? I was Ratskeller Planeswalker, prolly the most infamous enchanter in everquest. You can still find shit about me 3 years after I left the game. Top geared, top enchanter... and one of the first people to make a shitload of money off EQ. I paid off my college loans with it. $34,000 over a period of 6 months and I sold my character... the digital being... for $1300.

This game does more than provide a means to explore your dnd side. It's more than slaying dragons, or adventuring with friends. It's an escape from life. It's a place where you can be someone... where you can be famous!

I've led guilds to doing content most of them never dreamed of doing, I played with tops guilds taking on the end game... and I was respected. People knew who I was. I warped into town and I'm swarmed by people. It's hard to explain the feeling you get when you're nobody in RL, in college, hate where you are, you hate your life... and you log into this world and you are treated like royalty. It covered a very hard part of my life.

When I left it wasn't because I wasn't famous anymore it was because I beat it all. there was nothing left to conquer that I wanted to conquer and it was old. I had grown out of it. I no longer wanted nor needed it and I was starting a successful career. There was also some problems in the guild I was in where they had become corrupt and started selling shit online like I was, except that it was guild property and they were making around $10,000 a month selling items and gold to Yantiz (mysupersales.com). When I left... I dropped the bomb about this on multiple forums and the guildsite.

So yeah I am probably the most famous and infamous enchanter in EQ history (to my knowledge).

WoW... is refreshing. It's new, it doesn't take the approach of being a timesink. You can log on for an hour and accomplish something. In EQ you're lucky if you even find a group in that time.

EQ leveling to 65 (it's 70 now but bear with me) takes around 6 months real time. Sure if you hardcore 8 hours a day everyday it'll be 2 weeks.

WoW... I got to 60 in 4 weeks without powergaming. You can get to 60 in 3 days with some help.

WoW takes ALL the fun that EQ had, takes out a bunch of content which it's slowly replacing, and throws in good pvp and better animated combat.

EQ doesn't have automated dash attacks or cloaking etc... WoW did.

EQ 2 tried to mimic EQ while going to a new engine but they failed on so many levels. There's nothing like getting your ass beat by an octopus 2 miles inland. In EQ mobs don't stop following you until you zone. Thus the term "train". Ever seen 140 mobs running after someone? Look up some EQ SS's. You'll see some of me on a horse with 30+ dragons after me in Western Wastes.

What's my point? WoW is not such an investment that one cannot leave and have a social life. It's why it's so friggin popular. It's like counterstrike but for AD&D'ers! EQ is a huge investment. When you see someone with a glowing weapon... it means something.

In WoW... a glowing weapon costs you 4g.

8/23/2006 2:26:39 PM

wow that guy's a loser`

8/23/2006 2:33:52 PM

that's exactly what i was thinking

i enjoy pussy and tits too much to sit at a game rather than playing with those

8/23/2006 2:36:32 PM

wow, you are REALLY full of yourself.

8/23/2006 3:26:57 PM

8/23/2006 3:32:53 PM

i have no idea what this thread is about. I guess i will post anyway.

8/23/2006 4:33:34 PM

Quote :

"One of my good friends fell compleatly in love with a girl he had met. I didn't like her at all and had never get or gamed with her. She used the loneliness of the young men she met in the game to exploit them in and outside of the game. When her own addition would cause the loss of a job or home she would have men lined-up to help her out, places for her and her daughters to live and money sent to help them out. My friend would tell me all these things about her but he himself was totaly hooked by her and ended-up doing all the same. "

Damn. Talk about loserdom.

8/23/2006 4:37:23 PM

Raige nailed that shit. even hardcore wow players dont impress me much. i played wow a ton, but it was nothing compared to those good 2 years of eq.

when i started (the game first came out) getting to level 50 was pretty impressive. doing a cazic thule run, heading to sol b, or taking out the frenzied ghoul in lguk was the shit. people bought expensive armor that had no stat or AC benefits just to show off status.

it was amazing to see such changes in as short a run as 2 years. the economy had a huge shift, expansions expanded the zones by 3-fold, and there were people continually finding new places to go and new heights to reach.

asside from wow's enhancement of pvp and battlegrounds, i think it really lacked something (though fun wasnt it).

8/23/2006 4:50:12 PM

Raige, i can't find any screen shots of you.

8/23/2006 4:51:42 PM

i was no means like Raige, but i'd say people knew me in the early years. the best part was coming to NCSU (from PA). in the first few weeks i met one of my new friends brother and his friend, avid eq players as well. sure enough they had been on my server and knew me with my favorite response ever..."oh yeah, i remember you....i hated you, so fucking loud" har har har.

8/23/2006 4:58:20 PM

Quote :

" I was Ratskeller Planeswalker, prolly the most infamous enchanter in everquest."

LOLOLOL

8/23/2006 7:23:27 PM

this thread reeks of pathetic

8/23/2006 8:16:52 PM

hey pwrstrkdf250

Quote :

"I can name you examples... many on tww"

Quote :

"... and some people on here live for that game"

Quote :

"that sounds like people I know people that are on tww also"

i couldnt help but notice that all you do on tww now is act like youre so different than the other users on this site.

its called denial, dude. dont be ashamed to be a twwer.

8/23/2006 8:28:54 PM

^I get that vibe too. And he's obviously itching to out the obsessed gamers.

If I was any good at these games, I'm sure I would get hooked. I've never played them, but I imagine they are too complicated for me. I'll stick with Donkey Kong. (Can somebody help me figure out how to do the water skip jump? There's a bonus level that I need to water skip to get to.)

[Edited on August 23, 2006 at 8:44 PM. Reason : sss]

8/23/2006 8:34:48 PM

hahaha i just love this part

Quote :

"that sounds like people I know people that are on tww also"

people on tww also?!?!11 i would have never known, its not like he didnt mention it 3 times in this thread alone.

8/23/2006 8:42:59 PM

^Hey, did you hear about the TWW users who play too many video games?

8/23/2006 8:48:56 PM

Cause I heard they also use TWW.

8/23/2006 8:54:32 PM

that sounds like some people i know

they're on tww

8/23/2006 9:06:29 PM

http://web2.airmail.net/naomi/gallery/eq-dd/drawn-ratskeller.html

That was some fan art made of me.

Holy crap most of the google shit is gone now. Most of it is the aftermath of me leaving by a few people. Placing blame, spurring rumors and shit.

I apologize if I sounded egotistical but that's how it was lol. I was the shit in EQ. But it's digital, and you know what? I wish I had my 376 days back. It was great then. I was someone, I lead hundreds of REAL people to do VERY COOL things. I was there for the waking of the sleeper (one time server event). Similar to the AQ gates but much fucking harder to do.

There was not ventrilo, there was no teamspeak, there was no private channels... this shit was done in tells or in group or in guild. Sometimes by phone. *we walked both ways in the snow 20 miles* blah blah blah.

At the time it was an incredible accomplishment to be part of what I was part of. I was very lucky to be in the 1% of the 1% of all of the players who played EQ who got to see some of the things I did. And do some of the things I did.

MORPHS like EQ and WoW are so enraveling you forget your life. There's so much you can do in them you can forget about bad grades, or bad relationships... its a place to escape and a place to have a shitton of fun on ANY level. Casual gamers, hardcore, can both have a good time. WoW learned from EQ's mistakes and targeted the casual gamer. Most hardcore gamers in WoW are what I consider Casual when it comes to EQ.

In WoW you spend 6 hours clearing a zone. In EQ we spent 6 hours getting to the fucking boss. Why? cuz that shit was there and someone needed to kill it. Fuck i dunno. I love MMORPHS. I don't need them anymore but I love playing em.

Sure you can't walk up to your common friends and go "Man I pwnt the SHIT outta some big mouthed 13 year old with my mage". If you did they'd look at you like you were nuts. But you get that group of friends to play and it's like a game of basketball or a Quake 2 match. Now it's targetting our hidden geeks in each of us.

Now there's MMORPHS for all of us. DND (EQ, EQ2, WoW, DoAC, DND etc), Final Fantasy, Space (Eve). Hell there's even MMORPHS for those god damn teenagers who make those fucking ascii faces all the time and have their cutsey little world! You know the type you wish there was an invention that let you reach through the monitor and stab their fucking heart out. No I'm not bitter or anything.... *stab*.

Just beware. They are incredibly addicting. The moment you can't just walk away from your computer is the moment it affects your life. Those who have never played will probably never understand. Those of us who played EQ, or are in guilds who are doing AQ/Naxx do know what I mean.

8/23/2006 9:37:20 PM