The first time I played the game was at work. I shouldve known from there that trouble was ahead. I suppose there were some other problems that could be noted. The luster was gone from my job, my marriage and my life. The game offered up a virtual world to become immersed in. A world filled with elves, dwarves, orcs and goblins from the fantasy stories of my youth. A place where any real world Joe had the opportunity to become a hero wielding powerful weapons and casting spells. I had come from a background replete with fantasy novels and tabletop role-playing games. The game was a dream come true. It was the game I had always hoped for and imagined playing. A world filled with other players. It had me from the get go.

My first character was a dwarf paladin and when I appeared in the game world I immediately set out upon getting my bearings and figuring out the interface and the opportunities around me. I was inside of an underground city and wandered for some time trying to find my guild. After some time I located the place I was to go to for my training and guild tunic. I turned in my welcome note and began to search for the exit to the surface. After some time I was outside and awestruck. The lush green hills and mountains that lay before me pulled me deeper into the illusion. I ran out over the first hill and began my first battle. I killed a bat then I killed another one and then I killed a snake. I did this for a while then began to wander around exploring the surroundings. I followed a narrow foot trail for some time until I came upon a wall that encompassed what turned out to be the docks for the ship to another continent. Some of my most memorable and absorbed moments came from sitting on this dock, fishing and watching the sunrise and set. The world became real from that point. I played many other characters after that and explored much of the world. With each passing day I was drawn deeper and deeper in. When I wasnt playing the game I was thinking about playing it.

When the final release of the game was impending I talked my spouse into using her credit to get a new computer so that I would be able to play the game at home. We didnt have the money to buy a new machine outright and my own credit is, well, not so good. Up until we got the new computer I had only been able to play the game at work. I was able to play there because I had somewhat recently been transferred to a remote office where I was the only person in my department and I had an office. Let me say that again. I was transferred to a place where I had no on-site supervisor and I had an office. I was supposed to be studying and preparing for some certification exams but instead I was playing the game. In the game I had recreated a character that I was playing at the end of the beta test. He was a human monk, a martial artist. I spent the early days o final with some of my friends from beta leveling and adventuring and generally picking up where we left off. The pattern was the same. Day after day, hour after hour, all the way up until I had to leave I would play this game. When I got home I would play it as soon as I was able to. My home life was made up of my spouse and our infant son.

Because of financial concerns it was necessary for my spouse to go back to work and due to scheduling considerations and the fact that we had no friends to watch our son it was a nighttime schedule that she had to adopt. She began working at a local eating establishment and her schedule meant that she would not be back until late in the evening. So I would get home, say goodbye to her and then begin to play the game. I would get so absorbed into playing that hours would go by and while I wouldnt neglect my son I definitely didnt pay him the attention that he needed or deserved. This isnt to say that I dont love my son or that I dont care for him. I had it bad. It was just like a drug addiction. I had already had some issues with computer addiction but it had been nothing like what was to come.

By this time I had already grown weary of the monk and had moved on to a new character. I had made a barbarian shaman and was really enjoying the things that he could do. Being a big brute he was able to hold his own in combat as well as being able to cast healing, damaging and stat raising spells. This character seemed to fit me like a glove. I explored the small barbarian village, got my guild tunic, trained in the necessary skills with the guild master and wandered out into the frozen valleys. Again I was mesmerized by the game world. The icy blue tints, the snowstorms and the nighttime world seen through barbarian eyes drew me in deeper again. I killed wolves and polar bear cubs, gnolls and ice goblins and an assortment of weak skeletons gathering coin and loot along the way. Eventually I garnered enough experience to advance to the next spell circle and purchased the spells I would need to propel me on to the next.

I was running with the same small group of friends from the beta test and it wasnt long before I turned some of my real life friends on to the game. Soon they were as enthralled as I was. It wasnt much longer before I reached a point with my barbarian shaman that I decided that he still wasnt quite what I was looking for. I took the excess money and equipment that he had managed to acquire and gave my next character a leg up. This time I would go with someone who cast magic solely as his occupation. I made a high elf wizard to quench my thirst for adventure. Again I performed the menial tasks of finding my guild, training and getting my starting robe. I explored his home city and exited out into the forest world that was outside. The forest was an enchanting place filled with wasps, faeries, pixies, skeletons, wolves and orcs primarily. The forest was also the home of the wood elves and their fantastic city in the trees. I gained a few levels, advanced to the next circle then set off for the port that I knew was in the dwarven mountains.

I traversed the great ocean and appeared on a new continent. I was somewhat familiar with much of this now from my many different characters in beta so I began my journey to the city of the halflings. I crossed through areas with griffins and hill giants, through a dark a foreboding forest and then finally arrived in the river city of the halflings. I had myself bound (so that I would reappear there when I inevitably died) and headed out into the thicket beyond the confines of the city. The thicket offered a good range of opponents. I would root them down using one spell and then blast them from a distance while they were unable to move. Each time I cast one of my spells it would use up some of my magical energy until it was all gone at which time I would have to sit down somewhere and meditate. While meditating I was unable to see the game world and forced to look at my book of spells. A fair trade off for the ability to regain my magical energies more quickly and it made sense. I made some new friends in the thicket. I had met a paladin (a holy warrior) of the same elf race that I was playing. We worked well as a team and got along socially, so in no time we were friends.

We adventured in the thicket for some time until one day a friend of his showed up and we both joined our first guild. A guild, in the game, is a collection of players working together or at the very least talking together. Players in the same guild can speak to each other through a private chat channel that no one outside of the guild can hear. It was my first guild and it was an interesting experience. I never met about ninety five percent of the people but at that point it didnt really matter. Soon I had grown too powerful for the thicket and moved past the goblin caves (which I was mostly to weak for) to a gorge populated with minotaurs and other creatures which was usually too sparsely populated with other players near my level to be a viable option. Beyond that lay an open plain with many creatures that were close to my skill level and lots of other players. I bound myself here and grouped and played solo for some time until once again I became bored with the character I was playing.

Around this time I began to waver in my interest in the game. Something that would happen a few more times yet. Other titles were being released that I was interested in and I would delve into some of them to some extent before I would return to my online addiction. I had a falling out with one of my real life friends and I decided that this was a good opportunity to switch servers. The game has many different servers, each with an exact copy of the game world on it but obviously housing a different group of players. Due to this, many servers develop their own communities, often with group personalities on a larger scale. Sometimes the differences are as minor as using different abbreviations for the same thing. For example, on one server they might call a teleport a port or TP while on another they call it a GG or Group Gate. On the new server that I joined (with some of my old beta friends) everything was fresh and new. All the players were on even footing and the playing field was level. Here, of course, is where the people that had the most free time, and/or inclination to play heavily, had the advantage. These power gamers would play longer, level faster and get to the good stuff first. Blazing a trail not wholly unlike the American settlers of the past heading out into the western horizon.

I created a dark elf wizard as my first false start on this server. I leveled him up a couple of spell circles then became keenly aware that I was not ready to go down the road I had just abandoned on the other server. Next, I made a dark elf necromancer and discovered a whole new style of gaming. This character was suited to the popular style of play, aptly called, soloing. This character was able to summon a skeletal minion to do his bidding. This pet allowed the necromancer to create his own group. The pet in essence was a warrior that was unwaveringly loyal to the summoner. Basically, I would summon the pet, meditate, stand up, pick out an opponent, send the pet to attack it, cast my spells on the unfortunate creature, collect experience, loot its corpse then meditate and start the cycle over again. While being exceptionally dull and tedious it was somewhat rewarding and I never had to worry about trying to find a group. But after several circles of spells this too was not what I was looking for. I moved on again.

This time I made a character that I felt pretty sure about. I took some money from the necromancer and had a suit of banded armor made. I then took this armor and gave it to my new wood elf ranger. With this armor and a moderate weapon that he purchased he was able to advance more quickly than the basic new character. Soon he was advanced enough to start using some of the Druid (priest of nature) spells. He had the ability to do some minor healing, snare his opponents feet (slowing movement), dish out some minor damage and make his skin hard as wood. This character was the one and many adventures later I had many friends and was once again involved in a guild.

In the real world, though, some things were starting to happen with my spouse. She had begun to smoke cigarettes again and it would have been apparent, if I had bothered to look, that something else was going on also. She was staying out later and later each night and was drinking and partying with her co-workers. I was oblivious to what was happening. It was all the more convenient to have her stay out later because it meant I had more time to play the game. I did not see the signs that my spouse was in trouble. I didnt notice that she also had a new addiction that was going to rock our lives to the very foundation. I continued to play the game both at work and at home with the same fervor. My work performance continued to suffer. I was making little to no progress on my certifications and I was only doing the tasks assigned when they couldnt be put off any longer. I had no social life outside of work. I went home, watched my son, played the game and went to sleep. This was the pattern that continued for some time until things began to happen that I could no longer ignore.

My spouse and our son went out of town to stay with relatives for a month or so. Shortly before she was due to come back she telephoned me and informed me that she had been unfaithful to me before she had left. I was devastated. I cursed her and then later I cursed myself. I realized that I had failed my spouse and my family in several ways but even after this I could not stop playing the game. I continued to play at work neglecting my studies and many of my job functions. It wasnt too long after my wife returned that we fell back into the same pattern. She went back to work at night (for a different restaurant) and soon was staying out late with her new friends and co-workers. I, once again, took advantage of this time.

The warning signs were all there again but I was too busy doing something else to see them. Without getting into all the specifics my spouse had hit rock bottom. She had taken on a much different job (a less-than-reputable job that paid lots of quick money) that funded her drug addiction. She had some really awful things happen to her that will take both of us a long time to get past. During these long months I chose the computer as my companion. I chose a fantasy world to the real one. I picked logging on and mindlessly leveling a character over quality time with my son. I would rather stare at a display screen than acknowledge what was happening to my marriage, my life and my family. I actually quit playing the game and cancelled my account. Many months went by and during that time I tried to reclaim some of my relationship. Unfortunately all I was able to discover is that it was over. It hadnt ended yet but it was definitely over.

Finally I decided what the hell Ive got nothing to lose now, and got involved in the game again. A recent expansion had been released that added a new continent, many new areas, lots of treasure and a new player race of lizard men. I made a new character on a new server and went at it again. This time I was a lizard man warrior in a whole new world. The new landscape and environment had the same effect on me as it did in those first times I played the game, but with a lesser effect. Soon I was slaying scorpions and skeletons and other creatures and progressing nicely. Then another real life friend talked me into returning to one of my prior servers and starting a new character there. Several characters later I wound up with a wood elf druid that I would play to a level higher than anything I had ever achieved before. Close to the maximum attainable level I would finally get bored with the monotony and start yet another new character. This last character is where I am at now. But as I write this I find myself ready to quit the game again and press on with the rest of my life.

In the end, I took (and passed) one out of five certification exams that I was supposed to take, Im getting a divorce and moving back to my hometown, and I dont know what the future holds for me. My story is true. Is it the games fault that my life went this way? Addiction is a dangerous thing. Ive seen addictions of all sorts now and I would say that my addiction was just as damaging to my family as the one I eventually discovered my wife had. Life is full of regrets. If I had it to do over I would choose to regret not killing the goblin king (or whatever) in the game rather than missing my sons childhood or losing a spouse to apathy. But to answer whether the game is at fault I would say no. The game brought out something inside of me but I know that I am not alone. Countless numbers of people sit at their screens paralyzed every night. Choosing the computer over their loved ones and unable to step away from the keyboard and take charge of their lives.

My advice is to tell the people you care about how you feel and try to make an effort to show it from time to time. One day the game wont be there and if you arent careful your loved ones might not either. As for me all I can do is reflect on what has happened and try and learn from it.