by James Lightbody

Created on: April 14, 2009   Last Updated: April 15, 2009

A young man of 17 years is sitting in his dark bedroom on a warm Friday night. He has just gotten off the phone with a friend. He just told this friend that he was too busy to hang out. Staring at the luminescent monitor, the only sounds that can be heard are the clicks of his mouse. Moments earlier, this young man had joined a dungeon raid that will surely last deep into the night. He has opted to skip an outing with his friends in order to pursue a chance to receive a piece of virtual armor that will advance his video game performance. Has World of Warcraft arrived at a point where its events are taking precedent over real-life activities? Are these online raiding environments a strong supplement to social development, or are they just an empty addiction? When does a hobby become dangerous? Where can the line be drawn?

In the beginning, those who purchase World of Warcraft (and other online video games) are merely seeking an entertaining alternative reality to their own intermittent boredom; a fictional world in which to roam, compete, and socialize with others. These games, however, have been designed to capture the player's attention for tremendously extensive periods of time. They boast an intricate system of achievements, reputation gains, and other means intangible progression. The user lives by the philosophy that the fights they take part in and the armor they collect is furthering their character's (and often, even their own) success. There is always the thrill of betterment and the psychological gratification that comes with games centered around the "progression curve." So when and why do people start becoming addicted? This lies in the game's everlasting hamster wheel effect; it is unbeatable (at least, by the traditional definition of "beatable). Players may invest days, months, and years with the hopes of arriving at a definitive level of "victory" that does not actually exist.

Family, friends, and co-workers of WoW players will often label them as addicted once they reach a certain amount of hours of daily playtime. This threshold of hours spent playing cannot be accurately translated into a definite level of addiction; an amount of time spent playing a video game differs from person to person, and what one person regards as "absurd addiction" may be viewed as "casual play" to someone else. On the whole, however, there is almost a universal agreement among non-WoW players that addiction has definitely occurred when players begin to circumvent

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