Saturday, February 28, 2009

WoW is a New Addictive Drug

Referring to Sweden's The Local, World of Warcraft is the most "dangerous" game on Earth. This game has a very high risk of addiction, according to a new report from a Swedish youth organization.
  • Swedes choose computer games over sports: study
  • Swedish boy collapses after 20-hour World of Warcraft binge
The Youth Care Foundation (Stiftelsen Ungdomsvård), which works to advocate active alternatives to gaming, described the game as "the cocaine of the computer games world". The foundation's report is yet to be published, it is based on the experiences of gamers and their parents who have been in contact with the group.

According to Sven Rollenhagen at the foundation to the newspaper Metro, he said that "There is not a single case of game addiction that we have worked with in which World of Warcraft has not played a part."

World of Warcraft is an online fantasy game or massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) which have no end in the game, according to the Game Over treatment centre in Linköping in central Sweden are the types of games which carry the highest risk of addiction.

There is a unbelievable news reported by The Local in November 2008, a boy in Laholm, southern Sweden had been admitted to hospital after collapsing following a 20-hour World of Warcraft binge. You can see that the addiction level of World of Warcraft by this case.
You can read further news about the boy collapsing at here.

According to the Swedish National Institute of Public Health (Folkhälsoinstitutet), the problem with computer game addiction is large in Sweden although there is currently no medical diagnosis of the condition. Uhm, yeah, it's called "Geek". Silly Swedes are ruining it for the rest of us!