World of Warcraft, the popular Massive Multi-User Online Heroin Alternative (MMUOHA) almost killed my friend. True story… sort of. My friend, I will call him John, has been playing WoW for a few month, and, like many players of the game, it has sucked away his life. Anyways, he recently had some surgery. Apparently, his arm started to hurt, so he went to the ER. The doctor came out and asked John if he had been in “an extended sedentary state.” John had developed a blood clot in his arm. I don’t know if this would have killed him, but it couldn’t have been good. I think there is only one word to describe this story: WOW. Granted, WoW had little to do with this problem, but it is true that WoW claims many lives each year, even if it is not in the physical sense.

Really, its amazing how addictive certain types of games can be. They tend to be games that allow players to have stats and doesn’t have any clear end game. When you add in the internet factor, it just means that one can find others who care about something so meaningless. Maybe people should carry around a notepad with “exp” written on the front. Anytime the carrier does something favorable in his (it is probably safe to assume that anyone who do this would be male) life, he adds some points to his score. Every so often, he can level himself up once he gets to a particular number of experience points. He could keep a board with various characteristics like dexterity, strength, etc… and just add a few points to a some of them each time he levels up. Would it be anymore absurd than those who spend months playing these games just doing tasks to level up? From what I understand, most of what you have to do is go around killing small animals. WoW.