Origin of Addiction

Jesse | Sep 13, 2009

The snow white tiger ran down the path towards me as if it were chasing a rainbow.  The rider, skinny, pretty makeup, and ocean blue hair, laughed as she instructed her animal with her keyboard to run around me in circles.  I then controlled my priest to turn towards her hunter and typed in, “Your ride is awesome.”
She wrote, “I know.  lol.”

As I looked at her character, accessorized and equipped for wicked battle, I realized that she had sold her soul to World of Warcraft; hope still within my grasp and only 1/24th of my time being torn by a breach – I considered myself lucky.  My friend, “Natalie” was gone.  The same girl who I used to commute on the train with everyday to class, now got high, immersing herself in an alternate reality that for some, makes real life lame.

It’s a simple concept: you can be whatever kind of mythical character you want that the game provides including: druids, hunters, mages, paladins, priests, rogues, shamans, warlocks, and warriors.  The players have to complete quests and kill creatures to level their characters (in WOW lingo, this is called grinding).  The goal is to get to level 70 and once accomplished, the real fun begins.  Players no longer have to worry about leveling or completing quests to get the next great weapon or clothing item, but join guilds and battle monsters as a group.

Natalie’s characters, always level twenty or above, depending on how much time she put into them, resembled her alternate personalities.  Her hunter, her main character, gave her a reason to act out in an aggressive manner towards a giant, green, venomous spider in the game – an undesirable college professor in real life, even though her inability to show up on class on time, or at all, sparked his passive-aggressiveness.  Sometimes I lied to him.  “She is having car problems.” And then I got the look.

Natalie’s priest, eventually got her cast off by her guild because leveling it was becoming a problem, resembling her need to heal the drug-induced undesirables in her life, however, following in their frightening footsteps.  “Don’t worry about my habits.  I only smoke once a day,” she would say to me.

She started to smoke weed while she played the game.  She said it made the experience even more pleasurable.  Her addiction to the game, shrouded her new addiction to weed, and induced it further with each new level, quest, or whatever you want to call it.  Gradually, her absences from class increased, and my excuses to our teacher turned into sarcastic comments.  “She says she can’t drive in the snow.”

After she dropped the class, Natalie and I lost touch.  Her laziness drove me crazy, as she showed signs of stereo-typical college student syndrome, and I was stuck taking antigens in the form of a slow dial-up internet connection.  If not for this immunity, well, I’d be the one stuck in my fifth year at college, commuting on the train an hour and a half each way, instead of working and making money.  However high my advantages sail above Natalie’s, (the money, my own place, a car that works), she chose an addicting path.  This one leads to more regular consumption of the hellish herb.  Whether a druid, hunter, mage, paladin, priest, rogue, shaman, warlock, or warrior: eventually, one gets to the point of no challenges, or competitions left to conquer; it looks back on its chosen trail, sees what it missed, and sighs.  Virtual reality resulted in cold organs and stiff fingers.

By Stephanie SeRine (as acquired from CollegeColosseum.com)