Did this kid die? If he did, he deserves a Darwin Award.

Absinthe enjoyed the same addictive craze in the 1920s but was finally banished during prohibition. You can buy it again today, but it sure is awful.

I predict the same thing: give it 80 years and give the kids of the future WoW to play and they'll be all like "what the hell is this, a pile of crap?"

Its just a fad.

I could not agree with you more!! Wow! I never, EVER reply on forums/newsgroups/blogs, etc, but I just read your post and it was like a script from my very own thoughts!
I too am 31, play WoW frequently, and in all honesty, it is much better for me to NOT be "socializing" etc, as all that ever does is attract trouble.
For every single FCKed up kid out there, there is ALWAYS going to be someone even more FCKed up than him.
Society has adopted their "it's anyone's fault but my own!" way of thinking over the years (even before our 31 years on this shhithole.) Remember the 80's? Parent's were just blaming something else instead of a game, claiming that the music was the reason we were like we were. Some even went as far as to say that "Satan" had recorded instructions onto the albums we listened to, and even went further than that, and said they had discovered it by playing albums backwards!!!!!!!
FCKing pathetic if ya ask me! The parents are worse than their very own offspring.
Well I gotta go!!! I need to sub in for the damn rogue in my guild cuz he left early i guess.....Time to get this damn 6 minute malygos down =/
got sarth3d on farm

Wow addiction solved in three easy steps:
1) WOW allows parents (who give a shit, not like these parents obviously) to set limits on play time from their site. If they don't want pumpkin to play WOW for 24 hours straight (should they not be charged with child neglect at the very least? Aren't parents obligated to make sure kids eat and sleep?) they should set a limit. There problem solved.

2)Cancel internet connection.

3)Sign kid up for some sports or karate.

Now your idiot, social outcast son, who you obviously taught no self control to, can't kill himself with WOW. But lock up your drugs, your booze, your cigarretes, and probably your guns. You clearly have a bored and understimulated kid on your hands, and he will get into something else to occupy his time.

How do parents keep escaping responsibility for this??????? Stupid scapegoating, knee-jerk reactionary society.

I am 31 years old and I play wow when I'm bored. Instead of going to a bar to drink beer and eat chicken wings, and stare like a dumb-shit at someone else playing sports for 3 hours and then pretending I"m a sports fan, when you are really just a lazy tubby, me and some of my buds meet online and do group activities that way. I despise the morons who would call me an addict, but then sit like mindless zombies in front of a tv watching sports or soap operas, or the 96th version of biggest loser. You collective morons are addicted to something you don't even get to participate in. You just sit there like a mesmorized loser. You tv watchers are 10 times worse.

My wife is a socializing addict. In the same way I play wow in my spare time, she has a phone glued to her head 24x7x365. She cannot spend a spare second in her own head, she is addicted to the sound of other people talking. She has trouble getting her univercity classwork done, because she's always on the phone, our dinner always gets interruped. We can't have an hour together without getting interruped by her friends calling. Then she wonders why I walked away and started playing wow when her friend called. She will run at breakneck speed and tumble down stairs to get her cell, because that phone cal might be the juiciest piece of gossip she has heard all week. But that is not a problem right? That's perfectly normal.

This swedish institute should research bad parenting. They should research what neglect and lack of attention does to a kid. They should have been monitoring what that kid's parents were doing while they were in front of a computer for 24 hours.

Everybody knows Warcraft is totally addictive. Glad I'm free from that.

No time to stop and talk more now... must click on next internet news story...

how many people have been stabbed to death on the streets? Its far safer to be inside on the computer, I mean, 1 person ALMOST died, on the streets so many people have been a victim on knife crime and maybe its better to be inside where you are safe. Think about things logically whoever agrees with this post.

I went into LOTRO's Goblin Town today for 7 hours straight. My wife and I set our limits and quit playing at the appropriate time. Then I went to sleep for work tonight and she got ready to take care of our son returning from school. We mapped out at 3:00 PM and then exited the game.

If a teen can't manage their time like that, then their parents need to manage it for them. MMO's can be addictive, but I don't a problem with them that I see in teens playing games like GTA (that mimic real world crime).

What I would like to say is, simply, that this is idiocy. If these people weren't playing WOW then they would probs be watching TV or playing a game that's not MMO, and therefore not picking up any social skills that can be transfered to real life.

Also whoever wrote this piece, you're and idiot, its badly written and incredibly biased.

If he weren't addicted to Warkrac it would be something else, like real drags.
Just remember the story of Red Alert :-)

The parents are the responsible party here, while tragic that the kid died. This pattern of behavior should have been evident for a long time to a responsible parent and there are many things they could have done to curb the behavior.

(my parents used to take the keyboard with them to work, or cables (power/modem). They knew nothing about computers but were clued into their child )

He was probably playing a 100+ hours a week, and running down his body to the point it finally failed. This is not a one night thing.

I like the previous comparisons to McDonald's and obesity, or perhaps healing related to smoking or drinking.

Anything can be psychologically addictive, comparing wow to crack is ridiculous. That drug is physically mind altering literally, no game can do that. If you cant die "coming off wow" then it should not be compared. You can die coming off booze let alone drugs.

I knew all the hype around crack was bullshit. I always quit when I've had enough.

This has happened a couple times already on Everquest. So what else is new? They made a big stink about it there too, now it comes with a warming to epileptics and they changed the rules so that only Adults can own an account with them. Hence adults are responsible for the use of the account.

He died doing what he loved. Isn't that what everyone considers a consolation? Heck, it's not like life gets any better as an adult. He got to have fun and skip the years of stress and responsibility. That doesn't seem so terrible to me.

Every time I read an article like this, I wonder where Mommy and Daddy are. I mean, 24 hours straight and the kids parents don't parent. Attention to all parents out there!!!! The kids will love you more later in life if you are harder on them growing up. Raking the lawn will not kill them provided a tree does not fall on them. My point is that most kids kids now a days are entitled whimps and the parents are the reason.

Hello, My name is Russell and i have been clean for over a month now.

Gaming can be problematic for some people, much like drugs, alcohol, eating, excitement, or anything that stimulates or appeals.

Parents who aren't aware of this become aware through extreme news headlines, because the parents have become addicted to extreme news. ;-)

Warcrack may decide to set aside some of their money to fund some gaming-addiction centers, like the Betty Ford clinic. Perhaps they could make an online multiplayer version of it ;-)

This is just getting ridiculous. If people have to be "saved" from video game addictions and their "adverse health effects" due to such stupidity, perhaps we should just let the games "do their job" and rid our planet of these people.

When I was a kid, I wrote an 'arcade' style take on the Star Wars X-Wing fighter on a 6502 based OSI computer.

One of my friends came over to see the game.

I literally had to pull him away and send him home 3 hours later to have dinner - his mother was sitting in the car in my driveway for 20 minutes, honking the horn impatiently.

That was 30 years ago (and it's hard to admit THAT).

Given any engaging interaction, there are people who simply loose themselves, and all reference to reality.

By the Light! Some kid stays under water for 17h at a single stretch, and none of his parental units looks in? "Yes. Timmy is just doing his homework. He's such a good boy."

@ Stormy
yes sure, Stormy. And could I get a hypodermic chip please, that measures the dose of alcohol, nicotine and other drugs in my blood an teaches me not to misbehave any more by giving me electroshocks?

I am not a gamer. But all these articles, including this are simply insanity. In all the years this game has been out there, we now have one reported "near death" whatever that means, and we now have the "most dangerous" game in the world. There are real dangers out there, and real kids are getting killed every day. This stuff is the product of a seriously unbalanced set of minds.

In fact, tens of thousands are dying every year simply by riding in their friends or parents automobiles. That's a serious danger. This is just silly puff.

I gotta go, the sky is falling, and I think part of it is about to land on me.... Run for your lives....

Time restaints are available in the account management page. It's up to the parents of alliance, er sorry, minors to use them.

how long till the neglecting parents sue blizz in an attemnpt to direct the blame away from themselves?

And it only takes a patch to fix that. All that is needed is for Blizzard (and other MMORPG producers for that matter) to issue a patch that limits the amount of time per day and per week, that an account can be active. Then limit the number of the accounts to 1 per capita/household and that's it - no need for psycho-logists and their analysis to resolve the problem. Yes, you could always circumvent it by registering your grand Ma' (which could also be prevented by a direct phone confirmation) but it is a better start than just sitting there and observing the young population turning into "crack" addicts.
But guess what - Blizzard are too greedy to do that...

Yet more outrageous claims about video games!
I cannot believe how any self-respecting therapist could even deduce anything even remotely similar to this.

I have personally stayed up for 72 hours chatting online when I was 17, guess what, I didn't die! *shock, horror and disbelief*
Side stepping the stupidity of doing such a thing, this kid did not play WoW for 24 hours because WoW introduces chemicals into your blood system or elevates dopamin/endorphin levels etc. This kid went into an epileptic fit because his PARENTS were not looking out for him, because he had no social life, because he didn't go out much and did not eat right...to top it off he could have just been weak. Natural selection WoW style.

If I would have died in my 72 hour chatting marathon, would I blame IRC? MSN? whom should I have sued for making a good product?

Why don't we sue McDonald for making people obese?
There is sugar in the food, that's addictive, is it not?

Seriously, this is utter nonsense.

One can argue that kids are lesser equipped to deal with temptation and quick rewards/satisfaction you get with games SIMILAR or like WoW...but who's fault is that?

Ten million WoW players, that's 10,000,000 players...statistically, what are the odds one of these will have a heart attack during a game?
Less than 0.01% ? less than 0.001%?
Do the math, people die.
You know, some programmers might die in similar ways, should we sue Borland? Perl developers? Intel?

What if he used MSN slightly before this? is microsoft at fault??

I have nothing but contempt for anyone drawing such vague and unfounded conclusions.

The hot coffee issue with GTA I disagreed with, although it had a certain base...sexual content in a game that is only meant to have murder and theft...but this one really takes the cake.

Remember, when you abuse your body, it abuses you, sometimes more than you think.

Utter bullpoo-poo.

Gaming has always been addictive to a certain group of people. These people have always gone nuts over something game related.

The only reason why WoW hits the spotlights is cause it is the biggest game out there and thus attracts more nutcases then the other lesser known games.

C'mon. Some guy killed his wife because she deleted his sword he had in a Final Fantasy MMO. A woman cut off some guy's d#$% cause of flirting on with someone online.

All this says is "Yes, WoW is getting bigger and the bigger it gets the more it attracts the weaker links of our society".

He didn't get the chance to squeeze real boobs...

Pft. Everyone knows Icecrown won't be available until patch 3.3, surely you mean you have a raid on Sarth 3D instead?

"It is the crack cocaine of the computer gaming world." != "Now Swedish therapists are admitting that the massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) is more addictive than crack cocaine."