World of Warcraft Abuse (article)

World of Warcraft is the closest a person can come to doing hard drugs without ever actually taking any drugs. That's not to say that it's a mind altering, euphoric, rush that can't be described. It's actually pretty easy to describe WoW; imagine clicking pixelated dragons for six consecutive hours and you've got endgame content. It's saying that it ruins people's lives.

I've always considered myself a weekend warrior when it came to the World of Warcraft epidemic. I've played off and on since shortly after launch, but never for more than a month or two at a time. In the hundreds of hours I've frittered away running around clicking gnolls, I've wrestled into submission a pretty daunting image of what effect WoW has on people.

I really first noticed it after coming out of a multi-day binge of quest grinding and instance running. For three days I'd done nothing but play the game, sleep a few hours, and hastily eat enough to keep my stomach quieter than my speakers. Eventually, I emerged, blear eyed, from my bedroom; squinting against the light of the hallway. I remember my internal monologue spouting off "Well... time to get my life back together.".

Because that's what World of Warcraft does to people. Like a drug addict coming off a long stint of some conglomeration of household cleaners cooked on a hotplate in a dropout's basement, I realized how filthy I was, how badly my clothes smelled, how little I'd eaten, and how many of my friends' calls I'd ignored.

I'd like to say, "Online games like WoW appeal to us at a most basic level.", but I know that in reality I should just say that "WoW appeals to us at a base level" because the Warcraft Jabberwocky spends its time either consuming money, or picking competitors from its teeth. Either way, there's shockingly simple exchange happening when a person plays the game; that is, they click a button and something good happens. The parallel between B.F. Skinner's pigeons and teenage shut ins with skin problems is stifling.

World of Warcraft has always designed itself to take a long time to play. This really works to their advantage. With a difficulty curve as gradual as a hole in the Amigara Fault, it's easy for players to learn and adjust to what's happening to them; never wanting to stop clicking their buttons for rewards. Three expansions later the length and gradualness of the game's curve rivals Mt. Fuji. That's a long time to lose yourself.

None of this is to say that World of Warcraft is bad. I can't blame the game for people ruining their lives. There are messages in the loading screens explicitly telling you "Go outside, you loser", you can dictate the number of hours per week you can play; since the outbreak of deaths due to online games, Blizzard has tried to remain something of a harbor.

I've actually renewed the old weekend warrior status myself in the last week. I also haven't missed any school, have seen friends regularly, and, oh shit! wrote an article. I don't exactly know what to derive from the hard drug analogy and my own "middle way" approach to Warcraft. I don't want to say that doing heroin or crack is cool as long as it's in moderation, but, well, I have a newly rolled Orc warrior that needs to explore just how overpowered the Fury tree is now, so I'm not going to worry about it.