Greetings everyone. Seeing as this is my first article I should introduce myself. My name is Rowan Moore, AKA cheese-cube. I am in the same course as the immortal Ben (Alfreido). I have known about his site for a while and I realise that its going to be big so I wanted to get in on that. So here I am now. I will be writing editorials each week covering topics to do with computer games. I hope that some people will gain insight and/or entertainment from reading my articles. I sure have fun writing them!

40 Percent of World of Warcraft Players Addicted

Are you suffering from “dry eyes, headaches, back aches and erratic sleep patterns”? Most medical professionals will just diagnose you with a minor cold and give you some Panadol but Dr. Maressa Orzack has an entirely different idea. According to her the aforementioned symptoms point to only one thing: an addiction to Blizzards MMORPG, World of Warcraft (WoW). Orzack is a licensed clinical psychologist and the coordinator of Computer Addiction Services at McLean Hospital in Newton, Massachusetts. She is also a professor at Harvard MedicalSchool, which doesn’t stand for much in my opinion but that’s another matter. Dr. Orzack has been treating all types of addictions for over 15 years and according to her, there is “little difference between drug use, excessive gambling and heavy game playing”.

The article is composed of a small introduction and an interview between the author of the article, Rob Wright (RW) and Orzack. With regards to the interview it is really just a simple Q&A session and there is no real objectivity. Orzack makes some pretty ballsy statements which, in my opinion, are complete and utter crap. I will now take the time to respond to some of her statements in the hope that perhaps someone (Hopefully Orzack) can learn a thing or two. First off she makes a statement that Blizzard, the creator of WoW, is directly responsible for people becoming addicted:

RW: Then aren't the issues at home more of a problem than the actual games themselves?

Dr. Orzack: No, I disagree. You can't say that about Blizzard, which structures the games like WoW to be addictive. They design these MMORPGs to keep people in the game. I do think the problem is tied in with other things like family issues, but the games themselves are inherently addictive. That's ultimately the cause of the problem.