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I really, really enjoyed EQ when I was playing, too.

It was only after I quit that I realized just how much time I had been spending. It was sick. The returns for that much time are not worth it. Spending 75% of your time on a single piece of non educational or improving entertainment is really bad for one.

After I quit EQ I actually started to keep a log of how I'm spending my time. This is especially important to me since I could easily just get sucked into WOW, SWG, EQ2 and start spending more time in that world then the real one.

MMOs are a temporary escape for entertainment. During my EQ days, the real world was a temporary escape to be able to support my time in the alternate one, which while entertaining was not healthy or wise. If you are spending 60 hours a week on an MMO another part of your life is suffering. It may not be devastating, but you'll regret it down the road.

Tossica wrote:

Tikker wrote:Personally, I played because I loved playing
not because i needed to, or did so just out of habit

Crackheads love to smoke crack too.

I think it's fair to say that adding mind altering chemicals into your system is probably a lot different than playing a video game. You can stop with the ridiculous assertions now

I think it's fair to say that the instantaneous gratification and "pleasure" you get from playing certain video games affect the same receptors in your brain that many "mind altering" chemicals do. Are video games physically addictive like cocaine? No... but psychologically, yes, in exactly the same way that gambling is addictive.

if you walk fast it means you will speed uncontrollably when you drive

Tossica wrote:I think it's fair to say that the instantaneous gratification and "pleasure" you get from playing certain video games affect the same receptors in your brain that many "mind altering" chemicals do. Are video games physically addictive like cocaine? No... but psychologically, yes, in exactly the same way that gambling is addictive.

so, everyone that gambles is addicted to it?

I guess everyone that has tattoos must be a drug addled crack whore, since the one drug addled crack whore I saw had tattoos

Ugh... no but people who spend every waking moment in pursuit of, thinking about, fixated on or rearrange their lives to make time for a game, gambling, smoking crack, whatever are most likely addicted.

No, but most people who get a tattoo in fact become addicted to getting body art on themselves and continue to ink themselves after the first one.

I agree with Tossica... and the definition of addiction is not subjective. If you're doing anything for 80 hours a week, you're addicted to it. Yeah, I'm addicted to playing piano. When I'm not playing piano, all I think about is playing piano and I play my songs on whatever surface is near me when I sit down if I'm bored... Not all addictions are detrimental. If you enjoy it, great. It makes you happy. It might not make other people happy, but that isn't in man's animalistic nature to care about.

I also know plenty of avid drug users leading normal lives with steady career jobs and girlfriends/wives. I believe there was a doctor who, on his deathbed, said he shot up the morphine in his office every day for 50 years. You wouldn't call that addicted? Sure he led a successful life and obviously no-one noticed, but he was still addicted to it, undisruptive to his life as it may have been. Take his morphine away and he would've had withdrawals.

And similarly, if you were playing EQ 80 hours a week and suddenly had your computer destroyed, tell me thoughts wouldn't run through your head about how you wished you could just play it again, just for a little bit, just to log on and say hi to some folks...

Drugs and video games aren't going to have the same dramatic withdrawal, but you're still addicted to them for the same reasons: you enjoy them.

But remember I'm not saying that a video game addiction is detrimental in any way except to your social life. I'm just talking about addiction.


Tired, etc.. I don't think that was very understandable, sorry.

If you're doing anything for 80 hours a week, you're addicted to it

we're just going to have to agree to disagree I suppose

When I was in high school I’d play basketball every second I could. I'd ditch class and play whenever I had a second, but if you total up all the time it would still be far less then the time I played EQ, even when I wasn’t “hardcore”.

MMOs are easy to sink a lot of hours here and there, doesn’t necessarily mean you're addicted IMO.

sounds like this board needs to be visited by the Campus Crusade for Christ Anonymous-Holics