I watched WoW bring my nephew down. Amazingly after his life went to shit he quit WoW. Too late.

s/mmorpg/mud/

Back in my days we didn’t need any of these fancy graphics to drop out of college.

OTOH, I’d claim it is perfectly natural and healthy to get addicted to something like WOW, or MUDs, or going out partying, for a couple of years. Life shouldn’t be a conveyor belt with a fixed play guide. The real crime is societies increasingly ridiculous preoccupation with college degrees. There are few, very few, jobs that can justify requiring such pieces of paper.

One of my college roommates spent all his time playing pool in the Student Union and dropped out, yet, outside of “The Music Man,” I haven’t heard anybody taking billiards to task!

Where is Dr. Wertheim when you need him? We need you back, sweet prince.

I doubt anyone stayed up till 4am grinding Elvis rump shaking rep.

I doubt anyone canceled plans with friends to read comic books.

Some people can drink, snort coke and live normal lives. Some people cant.

Trust me, ive known a few dudes that where unemployed playing wow when they should have been out getting a job. And its easy to boot up your comp and not take care of shit around your life.

Im sure everyone here that posts is “normal” but you have to admit that some people that play have problems, and the rewards in the game, and the rushes it gives arnt things you can get in normal life.

Studies have shown a strong coorelation between basements and college dropouts: a statistically significant percentage of college dropouts leave school in order to live in their parent’s basement. Therefore we can conclude with certainty that parents should move into a house with no basement if they want to ensure their child will complete their college education.

Actually, thinking on those lines, if you’ve *never* “canceled plans with friend” for another task, does it not just imply that that “plans with friends” are what you are addicted to? Excessively social behaviour is as pointless and crippling as excessively individualistic behaviour.

Games, drugs, gambling, etc. are all escapes from what you consider “life.” How you view “life” is dependent upon you, your parents, your teachers, etc.

In all those cases of people blaming WoW for their firing, drop out, and divorce, can they really say that if WoW was not around they would have avoided their trouble? The need for escape is still going to be there and a path to that escape WILL be found. However, I’m sure they’ll blame something because that’s easy.

Out of the alternative escapes society has come up with, my position would be that online gaming would have to be the least destructive all around. However, don’t take the easy route and make it the cause. It just isn’t.

Well, I never knew anyone who dropped out of college due to spending too much time with comic books. I’ve known about a dozen people who failed out due to playing an MMO obsessively, including myself, though I went back later “clean” and was much more successful.

When you’re addicted it’s very very easy to just keep on playing instead of going to class. Unlike a job, there are no immediate penalties, and I think we all know just how time-sucking MMOs are.

In all those cases of people blaming WoW for their firing, drop out, and divorce, can they really say that if WoW was not around they would have avoided their trouble? The need for escape is still going to be there and a path to that escape WILL be found. However, I’m sure they’ll blame something because that’s easy.

If not this then that does not hold true.

For most people who have a problem, it is a specific problem. Gambling? Stop gambling and most a huge chunk of their problem is solved. Probably not going to be replaced by some other addiction.

For some people WoW really is/was the addiction that brought them down and if not for WoW they would never of had a problem.

What’s wrong with admitting that some people are more easily addicted to MMRPGs than they are everything else addictive?

For example W was/is an alcoholic. Are you saying that if he’d never touched a drop he’d have just been addicted to something else? We all know that’s bullshit.

“For most people who have a problem, it is a specific problem. … Probably not going to be replaced by some other addiction.”

I’m sorry, D-One, but the vast majority of research into the nature of addiction disagrees with you. As does the personal experiences of the majority of alchoholics and drug addicts to graduate from a rehab clinic.

Some people are prone to addiction, and some people aren’t. For people that are it doesn’t much matter what it is, they are going to be addicted to something if they aren’t consciously fighting that tendancy every day of their lives. It is not that they have a specific problem, it is that they have a specific pattern of behaviour that will lead them to a problem, usually repeatedly and with different substances of one sort or another.

Undoubtedly there are some few people who are not generally prone to addiction but do fall into an MMO habit and mess up their lives because of it. But they’re in the minority. And they’re in the company of that minority of alcoholics and drug users and sex addicts (and etc) who also weren’t generally prone to addiction but ended up with one anyway.

I like Wilhelm’s “Music Man” reference. That’s been going through my head a lot lately. I expect WoW players listen to ragtime music, too.

Hah! This link is absolutely hilarious.

Reminds me of all the “video games causes violent acts” talk.

Pentagony :
I’m sure D&D is also responsible for some misc. bad stuff.

Of course it is: http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp

Amen.

Vetarnias: Oh God. I clicked the link and didn’t really pay attention to the site. I thought it was a webcomic spoof about D&D. At the end, I had a big ‘WTF!?’ moment.