2. The Life Sucking Aspect
I'm sure we've all heard the stories, people dying after playing WoW for hours on end and the crimes committed for in-game items and all of these stories seem to revolve around WoW. Now I know some of you are going to pop up and claim that WoW merely gets a lot of flak because it has the most users but the truth is, the game forces people to act the way they do. I'm not saying it puts a gun to your head and forces you to continue playing, but if you want to be good at WoW you need to be playing many hours a day. You can say that this applies to other MMOs but the truth is none of them suck the life out of players in the way that WoW does. How many stories have we read of people who've sat at their computer desks for 40+ hours without moving or eating. How many stories have we read where someone has attacked a friend merely to get their hands on a rare item in WoW. I know you're all still saying "Well WoW didn't force people to do this" but surely this argument can be used for any unhealthy action or dangerous object? Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Cigarettes don't kill people, people kill people. In the same way that cigarette companies don't force people to buy cigarettes Blizzard doesn't force people to continue playing the game, but it sure as hell makes it more likely for them to carry on playing. In countries like South Korea, there are already laws and fail-safes that prevent users from playing games in continuous periods. Why aren't things like this implemented by Blizzard into WoW, why is that all gamers get is a friendly little popup that says "You've been playing for X hours, maybe you should take a break?". How many people that play WoW for days at a time are leading fulfilling and enriching lives? I'm not saying it's only WoW gamers that spend days playing games, but it sure as hell seems that the vast majority of people who play games for continuous periods seem to be WoW players. If you want to play WoW and be a top player, say goodbye to not only your social life but to everything else.