World of WarCraft. A subscription based massive multiplayer online role playing game released by Blizzard in November 2004. It is currently the largest of its kind in the world with over five million subscribers world wide (over one million in the
United States). After level 60, there is very little you can accomplish
unless you schedule time to play daily. Many have fallen into the trap of playing this game, and needing to get that next piece of “1337” gear to impress “n00bs” in Ironforge.
In order to become powerful enough to dominate everyone in PvP combat without trying, you need to collect the most powerful raiding armor sets. This usually requires large guilds composed of mostly high school and college students/dropouts or fat unemployed people in their 40’s cursing and complaining and making gay references over Ventrilo or Teamspeak. There is often a point system, and a lot of drama involved in gaining gear. These guilds are rarely managed by anyone with any real marketable management skill.
Long term exposure to this game has hazardous side effects to ones life. Before
you know it, your friend base starts shrinking. Your wife/girlfriend leaves. You become bitter, and play the game even more to escape while popping down your Prozac with lukewarm
Mountain Dew. You had four jobs with periods of unemployment in the past year, and you live in your parents basement while posting up generalized, uncited, bias, unproven generalized and
opinionated rants on some message board bitching about how something is out of balance. The few friends you have left (who all also play WoW) at your
community college (which you have been in for 6 years only to stay on your parents insurance plan) use terms like DPS in real life conversations.
Most can greatly improve their life situation by quitting the game. It’s not so much of what the game does, but rather what it prevents you from doing while playing. Once liberated from WoW, those extra 30-120 hours a week can be put to productive use.
Yeah, Joe used to be the star
quarterback. He also had a hot
girlfriend, and a academic
scholarship to Harvard. Now, he is in his mid 20’s still living at home always playing WoW. Almost never hear from him anymore.
