While I can emphasize a bit (I used to play WoW, but "grew away from it" and now spend a large portion of my time in search and rescue and musical performance), I have to say that this is a very judgmental POV to take. You're seriously going to compare playing WoW to smoking? Even in the worst case, at least playing WoW is a step up from watching some inane TV show with no interaction. It's not like anybody suffers from second-hand MMORPG.

And you can always play moral superior: instead of reading a book, why don't they start their own company? Instead of going for a walk, why don't they run a marathon? Hell, I could see how someone could look down on the activities I choose ("why rescue idiots who got themselves into trouble? Let natural selection sort it out!" or "why perform music that's already been performed thousands of times before by better performers?"), but FFS, sometimes "wasting time" is some of the best time well spent.

"It's not like anybody suffers from second-hand MMORPG."

this is flat out wrong. Kids suffer when their parents can't bother to change them because they are in the middle of a raid and this boss hasn't been killed yet. Spouses suffer when the amount of time they can spend with their WoW playing spouse dwindles to zero. Parent's suffer when their kids grades head to zero.

So any behavior that can warp your life to that extent is a relatively poor choice with respect to any other behavior that does not.

Addicts always say they're making a personal choice that doesn't affect anyone else, whether it's WoW or booze or blow. And they're always wrong.

The last AA meeting I went to, someone spoke for the first time and told a story about a typical night at the bar. Drinking, watching the game and minding his own business. Just like every night. Except this time, 8 beers deep, his daughter walked from home to the bar and tugged on his sleeve - there was nobody at home but her and she was scared.

Bet you'd never heard of "second-hand drinking" either.

Until someone gets a case of cirrhosis of the liver from someone else's drinking, there is no such thing as "second-hand drinking", just as there is no such thing as "second-hand carpal tunnel syndrome" from someone else playing too much WoW. I'll be the last to say that addiction doesn't affect others, and yes, I will agree that people can spend too much time playing video games (or getting drunk). But much like the alcoholic telling someone else they should never drink because it's "Evil", I won't take my advice from someone who obviously thinks that WoW is inherently evil.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/nordrassil/Spink/advan... is my main WoW toon (already level capped for the current just-released expansion and raiding), with weeks of /played time.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/stats/2444699-jane is the last couple of years worth of books I've read. How many people do you know read 50+ books a year?

I prefer to run, and I sustain an average of 8 minutes per mile in 5ks so I'm not an unfit slob. I don't run marathons though, I just run and swim for fun and exercise's sake.

I do all of this because it's fabulous stress relief, it's a great time-filler when I don't have the space/time to work (e.g. cooking/restaurants, boarding flights, random 5 minutes at places, right before bed), and WoW in particular enables me to spend time with friends no matter where they're located. I can do this in the first place because I don't do things many people do such as watching TV.

It's funny how people are incredibly judgmental about WoW but they find it incredibly impressive I read a lot of books and sustain reasonable times in runs. I find more rational reasons to play WoW (reasonably, that is, and not by ignoring people to do so) than to read. They're both hobbies. Take anything to an extreme and it's bad. But WoW overall is not as bad as the one off horror story you'll read about about parents ignoring their kids to raid.

How do you play for 5 minutes? Don't you have to fight big complicated battles with lots of people at a scheduled time?

Statistically, Zero. Trust me, they are all madly typing on forums, mashing refresh, trying to find out / talking about what happened.

> How many WOW addicts will have time to think "never again" and follow through.

A few.

Granted the time invested is likely a little different.

/posting from my kid's room while she falls asleep.

Who the fuck are you to tell people how they get their enjoyment out of life?

It's the same fucking thing. They use the same mechanics to tickle your dopamine receptors so you'll come back instead of looking out in the outside world for that same feeling of reward - family, friends, relationships all get fucked up because you spend your time seeking reward from {cigs, booze, drugs, WoW}.

Look, I'm sorry you've had a bad time and got addicted to WoW. That doesn't make it an inherently addictive thing. Some people can play it in their spare time without issue; others can't. Not everybody is the same.

Me, I can play a video game for 20 minutes and stop and go on to something else and not care. My husband used to play WoW for hours and hours at a time at the expense of work and family, to the point that it was having a negative impact on his health, his relationship with our child, and putting a huge strain on our marriage.

But I think WoW was just feeding the problem, not causing it. I think it was a reaction to a deeper depression and WoW was just something to get sucked into and escape reality.

He stopped playing WoW, switched jobs, and is going back to school, has friends over on a regular basis for some real interaction and is happier than he's been in a long time.

Now he sits down some nights and games for an hour or two after the kid's in bed and that's that, unless we have something else planned, and then he doesn't. The tendency to get sucked in for hours at the expense of all else has disappeared.

I think, in the wrong circumstances, that escape that WoW offers can be addicting, dangerous and damaging, but I think it's less often the game that's the actual root cause of the problem.

Like anything, which is why it's not helpful in this context to cast the net so wide as to include cigarettes and all the other stuff that the above poster tried to shovel into his point.

In 10 years time certain types of video games that leverage addictive elements to hook users will be widely understood to be just as addictive as your average slot machine. They will have comparable awareness groups, treatment programs, etc as those seen for gambling or prescription drug abuse.

Somewhere between -infinity and zero.

Stereotypes are fun, aren't they?