I don’t play. I’ve played other MMORPGs including other fantasy-styled ones like Guild Wars and Warhammer Online. None of my immediate friends are serious WoW players, but I’ve met lots of other friends who play both casually and seriously.
One problem I have seen in a few of my WoW-playing friends is that they don’t seem to acknowledge the impact the game has on their life. For instance, a close friend was having problems at school (university, not high school or college), couldn’t get the assignments done in time, not coming to class. They were also a heavy WoW player, playing all night long. They could not seem to draw the link between staying up all night in raids, and not having time to do their homework, or being so tired as to not go to class.
The question here, is whether it’s the game causing the behaviour, or the behavior being supported by the game. I don’t believe that video games cause people to become anything, whether it’s a murderous person or a friend-avoiding slob. I believe it’s the person’s underlying behaviour/personality/attitude that cause them to latch onto a game, similar to how a person may become dependent on drugs.
Of course, I’m not saying that one can’t be a student and not play WoW successfully, and perhaps this person would have continued to be a bad student even after abandoning the game. Perhaps the person just didn’t want to be a student but was stuck there, and was using the game to cope with their internal conflict struggle. I do think that WoW is the worst MMORPG to get addicted to though, because the social aspects of the game dwarfs many other MMOs such as City of Heroes – it can be harder to stop playing a game when you don’t see it as playing a game, but as meeting up with your friends and hanging out.