by Laura Lovell

Created on: November 23, 2009

My story is that of a WOW Widow. Did you know that there are support groups for loved ones of World of Warcraft that have been neglected or are suffering in some way due to their loved one spending too much time playing the game?

I couldn't believe it when I stumbled upon it, but I signed up and delved deep into the dirty underground secret of role playing games, the place that Blizzard, the company that makes World of Warcraft, doesn't want you to know about. I signed up with this group of WOW Widows, as they called themselves, and thought it was a bit on the dramatic end, being that my husband was a gamer not an alcoholic. But I soon learned that this was a very serious site and this addiction was very difficult to stop. At least with alcoholism or drug addiction, people have more weight behind their arguments of addiction, others take the addiction more seriously.

My husband played or shall I say wasted about 4 years of his life on this game. So, much where I wish I had made of those videos where he was sitting on the couch with his laptop in his lap while the world went by without him, the kids grew older, seasons changed and yet he stayed right there on the couch. It's like he had no clue just how much time went by, or how much time he was missing out on in real life.

He was not your typical gamer or someone you would expect to be playing this game until it became an addiction. He is in his thirties, father of four, wore a suit and tie to work. But he loves video games and it is a slippery slope to addiction. First he would play a little, here and there, then he continued to play more and more, until he went straight to his laptop when he got home from work at 6:00pm, and played until 2:00 in the morning. He would bring his dinner to his game, he would hurry back from family functions because he had a raid (a raid is like a planned attack that a group of his guild members would meet to go on a quest together) or he would decline invitations to go places because of planned raids or just to play. He was there in theory, but he might as well not even have been there in our house, because he was like an empty shell, a zombie whose mind was controlled by this game.

I began to hate it, resent it, even wished we could find a way to hack into Blizzard's website and shut this evil game down forever. The worse part of it was reading all the sad stories from the WOW widowers. New member after new member would join up and share their heart wrenching story of neglect,

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>