SUMODOWNLOAD

An ex-employee of Blizzard recently divorced her husband because of World of Warcraft addiction.  According to Jocelyn, her husband’s crippling addiction to Blizzard’s hit-game became more than she could handle:

He would get home from work at 6:00, start playing at 6:30, and he’d play until three a.m. Weekends were worse — it was from morning straight through until the middle of the night. It took away all of our time that we spent together. I ceased to exist in his life.

What’s sad is that they where friends since age 13 and have been married for six years now.  It only took a mere nine months of game addiction to cause the marriage to collapse.  To make things worse, she was the one who gave Peter the game as a Christmas present:

I bought the game for him for Christmas 2004, when it first came out. By May we had our first serious discussion about where our marriage was going, and by September I had moved out.

Jocelyn did try to save the marriage.  She tried to schedule “together” time with her husband but was unsuccessful.  One instance was when she tried to allot 30 minutes to watch a favorite TV show together but Peter stood her up because he was in the middle of a raid.  When she got upset, he did not understand why.  Soon he began to neglect his household duties such as paying for bills or doing his share of the household chores.

Jocelyn is understandably devastated with what happened:

I’m real, and you’re giving me up for a fantasy land. You’re destroying your life, your six-year marriage, and you’re giving it up for something that isn’t even real. [Blizzard] build it in such a way that you have to keep putting more and more time into it to maintain your status. I remember thinking when I was married that it was downright exploitative to people who couldn’t control themselves in that way. It’s set up like a drug.

This is really a sad story, but was Jocelyn justified at blaming the game solely?  Until we know more details we can’t say for sure.  However, Peter’s addiction is definitely a psychological one and he should seek help before he ruins his entire life over a video game. 

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 4:46 pm and is filed under Gaming News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.