Record Number of People Expected to Call in Sick to Work Today

American families, girlfriends, domestic partners and pets are not the only ones feeling the brunt of neglect after losing a family member to the massively popular multiplayer role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft, often referred to as "WoW". Now, many employers are experiencing a similar, yet far less emotional, form of neglect due the popularity of WoW.

"We thought that we had a pretty good pre-employment screening progress. I mean, we perform all the standard background and drug tests, but none of those can give you any semblance of an idea whether or not a perspective employee is a WoW addict. It's not like we could subpoena records of their home band-width usage or come right out and ask them if they are running a 768MB Asus nVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX 2DVI/HDTV PCI-Express EN8800GTX/HTDP/768M, " Human Resources Manager Jeff Spencer said.

Spencer, whose company employs at least 15 "self confessed WoW addicts", says that he has had many significant personnel issues with his WoW obsessed employees.

These employees, "typically call in sick to work or come in late after spending 6-8 hours the night before playing WoW," states Spencer.

The situation got worse for Spencer and other HR managers on January 16th.

Rivaling the on-sale-date of a new Star Wars film, thousands of WoW fans lined up outside of stores in North America and Europe on January 16, 2007. At midnight, Blizzard Entertainment released an expansion pack for WoW called "The Burning Crusade". This expansion pack will give WoW players tons of additional playable content and adds two new playable races to the WoW family known as Blood Elves and Draenei, as well as many other new features.

"It was crazy. I came in on the morning of the 17th and had about 25 voice mails, all from the IT staff, calling in sick. Now, it is the 18th and those same people called in sick again. That is more than 80% of our IT staff. We had the desktop guy trying to do server maintenance and debug the exchange server. People were getting really upset and there was nothing we could really do," Spencer said.

The burden that WoW users place on an organization is not limited just to Spencer's organization as more and more companies are dealing with the effects of "cyber hangovers" or the missing of work due to the overplaying of WoW.

"You can see it in their eyes the next day. They look like they have spent the night drinking or smoking meth, but they actually were up playing video games and downing Mountain Dew," states Kennedy Francis, HR Manager of international logistics firm Mikan Industries.

Francis notes that others in his field seem to be dealing with the same phenomenon. "You may think that only 'nerds' would play WoW, but you would be amazed to see how many destination control specialists play it," adds Francis.

Sandra Latora, founder of Warcraft Widows Against Raiding and Grinding (WWARG) isn't surprised at all by the type of people playing WoW.

"My husband was a very successful investment banker in his mid-thirties. He started playing WoW in 2004 and I thought it was a neat little hobby, to relieve stress and all. But it grew out of control from there. He started working later and later. We barely saw him. It was taking a toll on our marriage and the kids"

Then, in mid 2006, Latora was shocked when she received an American Express bill in the amount of $25,000.

"I thought for sure that it was fraud. I immediately checked my bank account and noticed I was overdrawn too," Latora said

After a little investigating, Latora's frantic phone calls led her to the shocking reality. Her husband had lost his job two months earlier, ran through their savings and was now living off the credit cards.

"Instead of going to work, he was renting a hotel room and using the high speed connection there to feed his WoW addiction," Latora said.

Soon after discovering her husband's elaborate charade, Latora filed for divorce and formed WWARG to assist other wives in recognizing the signs of WoW addiction.

"It was one of those rare nights that he was home for dinner with me and the kids. Our four-year-old spilled a glass of milk and my husband jumped up and started yelling, 'Is this your first time drinking milk n00b? L2 drink from a cup or bottle. I will PWN y0u! ' and then he stormed out of the room. If I knew then what I know now, I perhaps could of done something," Latora said.

Latora now oversees the WWARG organization which has more than 70 chapters nationwide in all 50 states dedicated to helping families affected by WoW addiction. Due to WWARG's success, they have now started consulting with business customers.

In fact, Mikan industries was one of the first corporate customers to seek out assistance from WWARG for this growing scurge against workplace productivity..

"Mikan Industries is pleased to be working Ms. Latora and WWARG. Her guidance has been extremely helpful in identifying signs of potential WoW addiction in our employees. In the short time since implementing WWARG's workplace solutions we have seen a 3% productivity boost. I'm impressed," Francis said.