Blizzard Entertainment’s widely successful World of Warcraft, a pay-by-month online role playing game, serves as a networking tool and a means of “escape” from everyday life. The game’s addictive qualities can negatively affect social interactivity, relationships and schoolwork.
World of Warcraft: It starts out as just a game.
But what happens when you’re living more in a fantasy than in reality? While trying to escape this world, some get lost in another. For some, it’s a hobby. But for others, it becomes an addiction that affects everyday life.
Clayton Cochran said he would never play World of Warcraft.
“I told myself, ‘I will never play this game — ever — all the guys who play are like hollow shells of a man,’” said Cochran, a management information systems junior.
That was a year ago.
Cochran, like many other college students, started playing the never-ending, massively multiplayer, online role-playing game commonly known as “WoW.”
Cochran said he began playing while working at the computer science lab in Kerr Hall, where nearly everyone played video games.
“It spread through the floor like wildfire,” he said.
“A year later, when everyone had stopped playing because they had other stuff to do or stopped caring, I started playing ‘WoW’ and thought, ‘this is really fun – and I can’t stop.’”
Although Cochran said the game rarely interfered with his social life or classes, he has seen people fail courses because they couldn’t stop playing.
“Once I knew a guy who came here on a full ride [scholarship] and was into ‘WoW’ in a guild that was into hardcore raiding,” Cochran said. “First semester, he held a 0.8 GPA and second semester he got kicked out.
“He didn’t have any self-control, and now I think he’s back home working at Wal-Mart.”
Cochran said most people know someone who plays the game. It has doubled as a social networking tool for those in the information technology industry.
“I’ll probably get laughed at, but there’s a reason why it has 6 million players — it’s a fun game, and it’s almost a networking game,” he said. “People you know might play WoW — your boss might play WoW, or the boss’ daughter or son might play, or the boss’ boss.
“I had a great lab back in the day where almost the entire technical support team played and at least 40 to 50 percent in a technological environment played WoW. That’s a lot of people from one company … and it’s very intertwined with a lot of technological jobs.”
Cochran said he quit playing the game this semester not only so he could afford textbooks but also because he had become bored with the game. However, he is looking forward to “Wrath of the Lich King,” an expansion to the game scheduled for release later this year.
But most players aren’t stopping to wait for the expansion pack.
Aaron Cowherd, a business management sophomore, spends about 12 hours a week playing through “endgame” content, mainly “raiding” computer-controlled strongholds with a large group of players. Cowherd said he got into WoW about three years ago when his family bought the game for him for Christmas.
“I kind of like the ability to work with 24 other people and just keep going on until we bring end bosses down and essentially beat the game,” Cowherd said. “It’s based in a fantasy, so it’s a really good escape if you’re stressed — it has nothing to do with anything else you do in your daily life.”
Fellow player Tyrell Maltby agreed, but said the game’s major draw for him was the “player vs. player” system where players from the two in-game factions fight one another in open battles or gladiatorial contests.
“It’s not like playing a computer,” he said. “There’s actually another person sitting somewhere in the world, and you just beat them at the game.”
Maltby, an aerospace administration freshman, said he has played the game every day off and on between high school sports for about two years, initially at friends’ urging.
“Everyone kept telling me that WoW was so much better [than other MMOs], but I didn’t believe them and didn’t like the [$15] monthly cost,” he said. “But then it came out with the free trial, so I tried that, and I just couldn’t stop playing.”
Maltby said although the game hasn’t yet detracted from his social life or grades, his parents worry about him playing the game after his brother let it interfere with classes.
“I do kind of think I’m addicted — I can feel it, wanting to play — but I’ve got it under control,” Maltby said. “It has constant social stuff going on, and I’d just rather sit at my house and play WoW.”
Cowherd, on the other hand, says he has had no problems playing the game.
“I’m not addicted to it, so I can turn it off whenever,” he said. “When it comes to class work, I have to do that or else my loans won’t pull through because I have to be in class.”
He said the game has even become a shared activity in his family, as his father and brother play the game too.
“At first it irritated my mom, but then she started getting curious about things and tried to figure out why we did it so much,” he said. “Now whenever we make new characters she demands to make their appearance.”
All three students acknowledged the potential dangers of becoming addicted, but maintained that the game itself is a harmless way to have fun.
“Playing WoW does not necessarily make you a nerd,” Cochran said. “Playing WoW more than four or five hours a day does. It is very fun, very addicting, but you have to have control.”
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