I've lost a friend to world of warcraft
 

this might be the most disturbing thing that I've ever heard of involving this game. . . and it ranks in the craziest Internet things I have heard.

About a year and a half ago my buddies and I introduced a woman my buddy works with to world of warcraft. She likes that kind of stuff and we thought she would like the game. We stopped playing the game about 6 months ago, but she got badly addicted to it. She has a husband and 3 kids and basically her life became the game. she would come home from work, change into her pajamas and sit in front of the computer until she was too tired to stay awake. She sat in front of it the entire weekend. Once, her computer had some problems on a wednesday and my buddy was going to go over and fix it on Saturday. She couldn't wait that long to play so she went out and bought a new computer. Anyway, after many months of this her husband and kids are starting to get pissed because she doesn't want to do anything but play the game. I find out today that she has met some dude in the game and is now going to leave her husband and kids and move 3,000 miles away to be with this guy that she hasn't even met in person.

what the fuck is wrong with some people?

I would guess that they feel they have more power or status in their fake little online world than in the real thing. So they want to live in wonder land online.

I like online games but I can only play them like a hour at a time. To me playing a game online is just something to give me a break from my websites.

People get obsessed. They get addicted. Some with porn, some with video games. Some with their cars. Some with their house, some with gadgets. People are people :) WoW is just another outlet like everything else.

Send this link to her...

http://www.wowdetox.com/

It might help.

this woman is totally fucked up ...:)

Same here... I used to play Counter-Strike a lot, until it went to CS:Source, and my comp at the time couldn't handle it.

Some people.

Sounds like it! When people become obsessed/addicted they are completely unpredictable to what they will do for their next "fix".

Incredible. I've watched a few people play WoW, and have noticed a few things.

#1 - Visually, it's very, very dull.
#2 - Playing, it's very, very dull.

The people at Blizzard did not work hard to make you a game that was fun.
They worked hard to make a way to sucker your $30 per month.

The patches they release aren't to give you 'more to explore' - they're simply to keep you chasing the carrot.

If you look at it in the harsh terms of:
- You're acheiving absolutely nothing
- You CAN'T acheive absolutely anything
- You've been duped by Blizzard into thinking this ugly boring game rocks.

You might play it less...
[2c]

this is pretty much why I stopped playing. I got to level 60 then I started doing the high level raids and accumulating the epic gear. then after about 3 months of this I started to realize that when they put out an expansion pack this gear will be pretty much useless so I'm basically wasting my time and if they never put out another expansion all this high level gear really does nothing but give me status in the game and with that and a couple of bucks I can get a cup of coffee. So I stopped playing the game.

I think the game makes a "perfect world" type of scenario for people. You can be anything and anyone that you want. In the game you can be cool, powerful, rich and your character can even get kind of famous on your server and I think some people find solace in that and start to think that this world is the place they would rather spend their time.

I think a person could spend years doing a study on these types of games and the reason people play them obsessively.

this thread is worthless without pics.

lol @ sites like that. Just another way to make a few bucks.

World of Warcraft is not addictive unless you have a serious underlying psychological problem. And if you do, almost anything can be addictive. The fact that World of Warcraft is thought to be addictive is that it is in fact extremely popular and it has quailities that allow you to play for hours on end. Mainly: The human desire to self improve and sosical contact. There is nothing in the game that makes you physically adicted to it. Players merely enjoy playing the game, as they would any other hobby.

What this familiy shoud do, instead of spending a shitload of money on online "cures". Is to have a serious sitdown whit this woman, and get her to see a psychologist.

Crazy white-trash... What mom leaves her kids for some loser she meets in an online game??? hahahaha, the kids will be better off without this whore

I'm so glad I quit Wow over 2 years ago... It was a great game but I wasted so much time playing it that I could have been making money.

DH

I played a couple months and never understood how this can get so addictive... It's so repetitive.

congrats to the winners

she must of been missing something in her real life to choose it over what she already had but fucked up none the less. you often hear stories of women meeting guys online running thousands of miles away from hubby and kids to be with him only to leave the new guy several months later because the reality of being with the guy didn't live up to the fantasy she built up about it online.

Not so often but this can happen :pimp

That's fucked up....

That is reason WHY i dont want to play wow.

I think you guys are reading waaaaaaay too much into it. If you enjoy the game it's worth playing. If you don't, it's not. It's not like you're at a casino losing money.

I play with my nephews from across the country, we lvl up together and stuff. It's nice, it's fun and it's a great way to stay a 'real' person to the rest of my family back home in Indiana.

damn addicting video games!

thats really sad to hear :(

that episode sums it up :thumbsup

You will never get your friend back

Quitting for me was easy... i just got all my accounts banned for using bots =)

Just an update. I talked to another friend who knows her better. apparently she met this guy in the game about 6 months ago and they meet online and talk every night while they play. She has been saving money for about 3 months and has been planning to leave, but wasn't going to do it for another couple of months until she had more cash saved. Her husband found out (I'm not sure how) and now she has told him everything and is leaving her job (a very good, hard to get job working for the city) and will be moving in a couple of weeks.

It's not so much the game I guess that caused all of this, she is unhappy with her marriage and used the game as a way of dealing with the stress then she met this guy who told her everything she wanted to hear and won't require her to do any of the things a normal responsible adult does like work and take care of your kids and clean the house etc.

I give it a few months before she is back here, living with a friend or her family and begging for her job back.

yep, like i said in my other post the reality almost never lives up to the fantasy she has built up in her head about life with this guy.

WoW is like porn and crack. The more of it you get, the more you want.

i was totally hooked, and i miss the game like crazy. the only reason im not playing now is the latency is too bad for me to play here. i miss all my friends and they message me daily askign when i will return to the world :(

Your friend is an idiot.

I love wow but I don´t understand this obsession...after 1-2 hours I have more than enough for the whole day/the next days.

Great post and I agree with it 100%. I myself have about 12 real life friends that hook up and play WoW, plus they have a lot of family that play from around the country, it's fun to hook up, plus they get to interact with far away relatives on a regular basis.

As far as the monthy fee goes, $15 for entertainment any night and as many nights of the month as I want, from the comfort of my home sounds pretty cheap to me. Compare the costs to other things like going to the movies, or out to eat, or a night on the town, or like dig said, a casino. $15 doesn't go far there.

I'm not like the lady in the story there, I don't run my life around the game, I play the game when I've got the time and want to relax with my friends.

Your story is extraordinary and sad.
I know two persons that are obsessed with this game. But not that much.
On the other hand i also know a woman that discovered several years ago interenet and chats. She was lost for her familly (son and husband) for half a year. Chatting all the nights, smoking and drinking Campari. Met some friends there.... But everything finished alright. She retuned to her family.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh !!

Update part 2. I talked to her last night and it seems her family and some other friends and have kind of stepped in and told her she is stupid for doing what she is doing. So now she is not going to leave her job or move, but she is moving into her own place and the guy she met is going to move out here. To me that says a lot about what this guy is. If he can just drop his life and move across the country to live with someone he hasn't even met in real life he has to be a pretty unstable kind of person.

At least she is moving in the right direction. She told me she has been unhappy with her marriage for a while now and the game just offered her a catalyst for change. But she is going to basically live like an addict. She got a place and the only stuff in it is a bed, a chair, a table and her computer.

lol classic

6 months after having my first kid, I left my boy-friend/son's father cause the man was addicted to Socom navy seals. He lost his job 3 months before and never even tried finding another one. When I'd try to get romantic or talk with him, he's tell me he was a little too busy right now, or just "shush" me. I was heart broken to see him play the game rather then live the life we always wanted together.

Today, my son is 3 and hasn't seen his father since his last birthday.

All cause of a stupid game

It's sad your friend got sucked into WoW like that - she must have been pretty sick of her real life

I don't mean to sound like a heartless bastard - but it wasn't all because of a game. Perhaps that is some form of reassurance.