by Abhishek Tadepalli

Created on: May 28, 2008   Last Updated: August 05, 2011

I was introduced to World of Warcraft roughly three years ago. Any gamer would agree that it's a fascinating game. There's a whole world to explore, quests to do, and a continuously ongoing battle between your faction and the opposing faction, wherein you get a chance to kill the enemy and gloriously win battles against players and monsters alike.

I used to play the game on a friend's account and liked it so much that I eventually bought an account of my own. I had a great time moving around in the ethereal world which Blizzard has developed so well. I got to meet a lot of new people through the various guilds that I joined.

At some point, I hit the highest level the game could offer, and a few months after that, I quit the game. Honestly, I was never addicted to the game at all.

My belief is that people often mistake games which are quite complex to be addictive. Anyone who has played World of Warcraft would agree with me when I say that the game has a way of keeping you on your toes. And because it involves a variety of different dimensions, there's always something different to do when you get bored of one aspect of the game. For example, you might get bored of questing, and switch over to player vs. player combat in the form of battlegrounds and vice versa. In fact, if you get bored of one class you can simply roll another class and explore a whole new set of abilities. The game isn't easy either, and requires a certain amount of skill in order to achieve various objectives. All these aspects contribute to keeping players involved in the game.

But essentially, you can't keep going on forever. When you get to a certain point in the game where you've pretty much seen and done everything, you'll get bored and quit playing. Just because someone has been playing World of Warcraft for the past four years of more, he or she isn't necessarily addicted to the game. That person has simply taken longer to explore all aspects of the World of Warcraft, or the person just enjoys the game more than you or I do.

Addiction is the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, such as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma. I will admit World of Warcraft has had that effect on some people, but I'm sure that if you look at the statistics, you will find that such cases are very, very, very rare. Getting addicted to World of Warcraft is almost as rare as getting addicted to peanuts. As I have pointed out before, the game is in effect, quite complex and the definition of complexity is not even close to the definition of addiction.

I thereby conclude by stating the obvious. World of Warcraft is a fun-filled harmless game - nothing more, and nothing less.

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