Quintessence takes part in a struggle between good and evil while his family cleans up dinner downstairs. The Signal Mountain 19-year-old fights deep inside a dim cave, in the instance of Ahn’ Qiraj, and hurls fireballs at what his guild, Equilibrium, likes to call trash mobs. The other thirty-nine characters throw their own spells, in explosions of blue and green and orange, at the gnat-like enemies. Project Runway flickers on the television set.

Equilibrium takes down the trash mobs one by one and gathers around their guild master. They need a strategy. Tonight, they take on Sartura, a minor boss. They’ve killed her before, but she might drop new items that can help them kill bigger bosses. Quintessence wants some pants. The Leggings of the Festering Swarm, to be exact. They have a huge plus fire damage bonus. Pretty sweet.

Quintessence (who prefers to be referred to by his character’s name – actually his previous character’s name, since his current shares his namesake) is playing World of Warcraft (WoW), the computer game phenomenon released by Blizzard Entertainment in 2004. The Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) provides an entire universe for, well, massive amounts of people worldwide to interact from the perspectives of characters that they’ve created. The goal, although you can’t really call it a goal because the game has no end, is basically to become as powerful as possible. It’s Dungeons and Dragons for the next generation.

“You guys ready?” the guild master’s voice crackles over the speaker after they decide on a man-to-man offense. “Yeah…yeah,” a couple members answer. And then someone decides to start off the guild’s quest to the sweet sounds of rapper Ludacris. “Move, bitch, get out the way…”

That might as well be Warcraft’s theme song, too. It has spread like the Bubonic Plague. It dominates its MMORPG brothers, with over five million subscribers as of December 2005. A monthly comic contest, an e-newsletter, forums, fan art, screenshots for each day, detailed definitions, videos, wallpaper? Oh, they got ‘em. Plus there is a six-chapter history of the Warcraft universe. Six chapters. And Blizzard and Legendary Pictures, a partner of Warner Brothers, just signed a motion picture deal. It all sounds well and good. A corporation makes some money, people have some fun. Rock on.

But it’s not quite that simple.

Equilibrium cuts the music and rushes into Sartura’s lair. The ratio of the boss’ height to any of the guild members’ is probably about five-to-one. She doesn’t really have any traits that define her as a female except that she looks like a giant, gray fairy dancer. The guild battles fiercely in a flurry of spells and light and weapons. Quintessence’s fireballs aren’t enough to ward off the Royal Guard, and he dies. He stares at the screen as the rest of his guild shoots glowing spell balls at Sartura.

“Rogues, lock her down! Get out!” the guild master barks. Sartura dies in a twirling ball of light and color. Bodies lay strewn around the instance. The priests resurrect the casualities, and then the guild sorts out the loot. She didn’t drop the pants.

The guild runs into the next gulley and muscles their way through the enemy spiders like running backs force their way through a clump of defensive linemen. “Hey guys,” Quintessence types into the game’s chat feature as he runs along with his guild mates, “somebody’s watching us tonight. She’s writing an article on Warcraft.” They all laugh.

“Tell her we can stop whenever we want!”

WoW has this pesky tendency to suck people away from the real world. When most people picture an online gamer, they see someone holed up in a dark bedroom, surrounded by computer screens, Cheeto crumbs and empty Diet Coke cans. They are usually male. Their hair may stick in odd directions to resemble a porcupine, because they may not have showered in a few days. They stare transfixed at the screen, and the only sign of life is the tiny twitch in their mouth as they struggle to annihilate something. Quintessence, however, doesn’t consider himself a recluse. He has real-life friends. He goes to movies and Sekisui. Just not on Tuesday or Wednesday nights. And sometimes Thursdays.

“It sucks sometimes when he can’t hang out,” says John, Quintessence’s friend who used to play WoW. “When you get to a certain level,” he explains, “you have to play at eight at night [to raid]. And things happen at eight…like, we want to go to a Braves game next Tuesday, and he won’t go.”

John thinks that Quintessence is addicted to the game, although he can’t point out any real problems other than the fact that he is content playing WoW while an eight-person poker game goes on literally behind his back. “It’s not really messing up anything,” John says. “So I guess it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If that’s what he’s digging, I’m down with that. He has good grades, lots of friends.” But is it alright if Quintessence chooses the game over his friends only on certain nights? Where do we draw the line?

It’s hard to tell. People usually judge an addiction by evaluating whether or not the vice interferes in relationships, if it causes legal, career or financial difficulties, or if feelings of annoyance pop up when someone asks about the problem. But addictions are a fuzzy business, and these factors are hard to distinguish, especially since addicts are usually quite adept at hiding their problem. The true test comes when a person tries to stop.

Dr. Lance Dodes, author of The Heart of Addiction, argues that a person is a “true addict” if they have a psychological dependency on their problem that prevents them from quitting. He cites what psychologists refer to as the Vietnam War Experiment. During the war, Dodes writes, heroin was like M&Ms. It was everywhere. 45 percent of soldiers tried the drug to ease the terror of war, only half of those became addicted, and only 12 percent of that half stayed addicted when they returned to the United States. Their physical addiction should have made it impossible for them to quit, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, but many let it go cold turkey. They had a physical dependency on the drug, but it didn’t satisfy any long-term emotional or psychological distress, so they weren’t true addicts. This also explains why alcoholics may return to the bottle after 20 years of sobriety.

So although a game addiction might sound ridiculous, MMORPGs have an uncanny ability to bewitch their players. 50 percent of online gamers consider themselves addicted, and in mid-July, Europe’s first video game addiction clinic opened in the Netherlands. Run by the addiction consultancy Smith and Jones, the center leads gamers through an eight-week program, complete with detox, group therapy, individual psychologist sessions and suggestions for replacement activities.

Tim, a clinic graduate, says that he had no social life outside of his virtual reality. He peed into a bottle. Stanford graduate student Nicholas Yee, who started a series of surveys of MMORPG players in 1999, called the Daedalus Project, attributes Tim’s inability to drag himself to the toilet to three attraction factors—reward cycles, a network of friends, and an immersive nature.

To get the full effect of these addictive factors, let’s pretend you’ve just bought WoW CDs and paid your first $15 monthly fee. Your character consists of nothing but an empty body. You get to choose its race, its powers, which faction it fights for, its clothes, its name. You put a little bit of yourself into that character. Then you’re plopped into the middle of a forest, where a man with a gold exclamation mark over his head tells you to go find a bearskin on the other side of the woods. Fifteen minutes and one celebratory light show later, you’re up a level, and on a mission for your next item. You really want another light show.

You trot off through a serene forest. Tall pines stretch along the path. Other characters walk in the distance. Maybe a bird chirps from a treetop. Suddenly, you run into a new rogue, who is also level one and looking for help. Her name is Rosy. “Hi!” she types into the game’s chat feature or, if you’re really spiffy, speaks into the microphone. You two chat about where to find items and new quests, and voila. You have a new friend. You make note of Rosy’s name and trot along the path until—bam! You run into a village that’s chock full of potential buddies.

You make the rounds, mingle, and someone sends you on a new quest. You head back into the depths of the forest when suddenly a troll attacks you from behind. He slings spells at you and, this being your first player versus player battle, you struggle. But never fear. Rosy pops out from behind a tree and saves you with her fireball spell. She’s demonstrated her loyalty before you even know her job.

Before long you level up with astonishing speed. Leaving the computer screen only to get more Doritos, you explore every inch of the Warcraft universe—Stranglethorn Vale, Deadwind Pass, the Alterac Mountains. You make friends and enemies, complete quests to gain items and spells. You reach level sixty and join a guild. Every night, you raid, battling evil with up to thirty-nine other people who all share your goal.

And then one night, your real-life friend wants to go see Talladega Nights. You hesitate. Isn’t my guild raiding tonight? What will I miss if I don’t go? Will they make it without me? I’d feel so guilty if I didn’t show up. So instead of going to the movies, you decide to raid. Your guild meets beforehand at one of WoW’s worldwide fire festivals, where characters from all across the land light bonfires and skip. Not really. They don’t skip. But it all just sounds so fantastic. So virtually, unrealistically fantastic.

If a gamer can’t resist the force of Warcraft and moves to the addictive dark side, the results can be devastating. 60 percent of gamers report playing for more than 10 consecutive hours, and last year a South Korean man died after 50 hours of game time. Recently, also in Korea, a couple’s 4-month old child died from suffocation when they left her at home while they wasted hours at an internet café playing Warcraft. “Sometimes I get no sleep,” Li Yang, a software engineer from Beijing, told the BBC News. “Ever since I started playing, my physical condition has deteriorated. I get a lot of colds as I don’t really exercise.”

Besides the health effects, hours upon hours of quality time with a game can wreak havoc on relationships. One gamer’s wife started World of Warcraft Widows, a support group on Yahoo for anyone who has lost a loved one to the game, and a story that highlighted the group on cnet.com spawned hundreds of online testimonies. Some are from young college students, whose gaming interfered with their schoolwork, but most are from full-time workers, who account for 50 percent of all MMORPG players. Addiction to the games cost them their jobs, marriages or friendships, if not all three. “I call the experience a virtual drop,” gamer Naveed Khan said in an interview with the BBC. “You just sink and sink.”

Although people are dying and losing jobs and spouses because of this game, a lot of players think the entire idea of a gaming addiction is ridiculous. They believe that the games are as casual of a hobby as picking toe jam and can’t understand why gamers would dramatize a fun activity into an Oprah moment. Jason Conant’s testimony on cnet.com gave a virtual lashing to cyber space’s addicted gamers:

“…I play WoW and Battlefield 2, work a very good full time job, have a family and am able to balance all of this with no problems what so ever. It is called self control, something kids like you don’t seem to have these days. Stop blaming everyone else, stop blaming the game. It’s people like you that get society into a panic and social initiatives and manage to get games like this regulated. Games that people like myself play for fun and relaxation and are able to step away from and live a normal life in conjunction with our hobby. My word of advise [sic]: grow up, take responsibility for your plight and stop blaming the game for your problems. Your only problem is you. Fix it.”

Okay, Jason, here’s a question. What would you think if a casual drinker chided an alcoholic? The afflicted lies passed out in the middle of the street and the liberated screams into his face, “It’s people like you that made the drinking age 21. Have some self-control!” Not too nice, huh? You can’t fully understand a problem until you have a problem, and gaming addictions follow the same patterns as alcoholism or gambling. Celebrate when someone accepts their problem. Say, “Hey man, great job. I know that was hard. Want me to help you bust up your CDs?” Don’t scold him and turn back to your martini. I mean game.

Although people like Jason may not recognize that gaming addictions are a legitimate problem, society has taken notice. China, for example, just imposed gaming restrictions on its citizens. Gamers can play three consecutive hours and then must take a five hour break, or they take away some of your character’s abilities to put you in a virtual timeout. Whether or not the laws will work is yet to be seen, especially since true addicts don’t really pay attention to constraining laws. But at least they’re trying.

Taking away some of Quintessence’s abilities would be the equivalent of slashing his real-life jugular. He plays to be the best. “The most fun I can have,” he says as he continues to run through the gulley lambasting spiders, “is running around into people who have shitty gear. I know I can beat them in one spell.” He jumps as an unexpected spider flies at him. “I even go so far as to have this program that will record what I’m doing at any moment, and I’ll take shots of me annihilating [other characters]. It’s really fun.” His guild makes it to the end of a gulley and congregates behind a rock, hiding from their seventh boss of the night while they make a game plan.

Quintessence has plenty of real-life accolades. He was ranked fourth in his high school class, where he was some sort of leader in most of his organizations. He goes to a prestigious university. He wants to get his PhD. Why have to prove his worth through a video game? “It’s a lot harder to measure in real life,” he says. “There’s no numeric value. In WoW, if you do something better, it says you increased one percent, and you’re like, ‘Hell yeah.’”

Quintessence waits around for Donkey and Krizzle to divvy up responsibilities for the next raid. A character who drank potion to make him look like a skeleton jumps around like something out of The Corpse Bride. “I’m not worried that I can’t stop,” Quintessence muses. “Times like the summer I get deep, but once the school year starts, I don’t play. Plus a lot of times, if I have something better to do, I’ll totally zone out during raids.”

“Something better meaning...”

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