Going Through The Big D And I Don’t Mean Dire Maul
By 
Hib in
World of Warcraft, features on
February 19th, 2008
As we all know, MMORPGs are the downfall of modern society, directly responsible for a rise in murder rates, birth defects and rickets. Now we can add “divorce” to the list, according to Kotaku:
A gal named Jocelyn has divorced her husband of six years citing a crippling Warcraft addiction as the main cause.
Jocelyn spoke with Yahoo! Games about the situation:
“He would get home from work at 6:00, start playing at 6:30, and he’d play until three a.m. Weekends were worse — it was from morning straight through until the middle of the night,” she told Yahoo! Games in an interview. “It took away all of our time that we spent together. I ceased to exist in his life.”
Looks like a fairly normal raiding schedule to me. Of course, I’m blessed with a gamer wife, who is known for saying “Don’t you need to log in?” while we’re watching television together (I suspect this is because she wants to watch some kind of home decorating show), so I might not be the best judge.
This story does bring up the question “What could Jocelyn have done differently to prevent this from happening?” The answer: “Don’t give him the damn game.”
The sad thing is, Jocelyn herself had an unwitting hand in her marriage’s downfall. A former Blizzard employee (she didn’t work on Warcraft), she gave her husband the game as a Christmas gift when it first came out in 2004. Nine months later and their relationship was already beginning to crumble.
In all seriousness, this is a sad story, and I certainly feel for the couple. However, an addictive personality will succumb to some form of addiction sooner or later…it’s just that MMORPGs are very time-intensive “addiction hobbies”, and therefore tend to be more destructive (and less socially accepted) than others (like hunting, fishing or ‘having a few cold ones with the boys’ every night).
Ever heard of a couple divorcing because the husband was gone hunting every free minute during hunting season? Of course not, but when that happens, the husband is “out of sight, out of mind”…it’s hard to ignore the fact that you’re being ignored when they’re sitting in the next room while doing it.
(For the record, my wife just read this over before I hit “publish”, and her response was ‘She should have gotten into it herself.” Of course, she took a Restro NE Druid to 60 faster than I dinged 60 with my warlock (pre-BC) so she might not be the best one to ask…for another take, head over to the site my bullet graphic for this story comes from, Women Against WoW.)
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If you liked this, then you should seek medical attention - right after you subscribe to my RSS feed!!
February 19th, 2008 at 9:32 am
I found your site on google blog search and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. Just added your RSS feed to my feed reader. Look forward to reading more from you.
Karen Halls
February 19th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Blame the player, not the game, in my opinion. If it wasn’t WoW it would have been something else.
February 20th, 2008 at 4:51 am
Wow I realize now that I don’t have a “Gamer Wife” but a Web Geek Girlfriend. She understands my addiction. I’m sure most would rather a crippling internet addiction over say a crippling clubbing addiction. Well written! In fact so well written I felt the need to comment at 5:48AM while on route to the bathroom for some meds. haha I’m glad I didn’t marry that lady!