The Truth About World of Warcraft

There have been many articles released about the controversial game World of Warcraft and how it's been consuming the lives of many children, teenagers and adults, but how much can you truly believe? How often have you heard about someone losing their life as opposed to it happening to someone you know personally? You see that the problem with World of Warcraft isn't the game, but its reputation. The truth of the matter is that the people who were blaming school shootings on violent video games are the same people who are blaming WoW for their families being torn apart.

To get to the bottom of this, instead of interviewing the overbearing mother of a WoW addict, I thought I'd put my 'life' on the line for a week and get to know these WoW players. I figured that playing World of Warcraft would not only allow me to get to know some of the gamers, but to put myself in their shoes enough to release a story that comes from hearing both sides of the story.

Before I even had the game completely installed on my computer, one of my friends refused to speak to me. Several people began to lecture me about how disappointed in me they were. They were treating me like I had started taking drugs and already needed to go to rehabilitate.

The first night I played, I was able to pull away from the game after three hours of game play. The players on the server were very kind and willing to help me with anything I needed. They weren't vulgar or potential kidnappers; they were people just like myself looking to have a fun time.

The following day, I played for an hour here and there to see if I was addicted and I wasn't. My friends still refused to listen when I said Wold of Warcraft wasn't as bad as its reputation. They continued to make a clear point that I was 'making a bad decision in my life.'

While I do have an addictive personality, WoW didn't 'consume' my life just like Grand Theft Auto didn't influence me to shoot someone in my school. After getting to know some of the players of the game I discovered that the only reason why they play World of Warcraft is to escape from their everyday lives. Some of them were dealing with their parents divorce and others just had hostile parents. Since I come from a relatively healthy home life, WoW didn't appeal to me as anything passed a fun game I'd pick up just to play for fun every now and then. This is not to say that all World of Warcraft players are addicts or people that come from broken homes, but that the majority of them rather spend time with people who make them have a good time as opposed to hearing the ongoing arguments at home.

With this making perfect sense that normal people don't just randomly decide to replace all their family time with game time, parents need to open their eyes. Instead of blaming a video game for taking over their loved one, they need to take a deeper look into why the player plays the game, rather spend time away from them.

Now that I have seen both sides of the story and literally played the controversial game myself, I can safely say that it's not World of Warcraft that's the entire problem. For if it was, I myself would still be playing the game instead of typing this article.