MMORPG and Addiction

With the advancement of science and technology, the virtual world is gradually seeping into media, marketing, entertainment, and our daily lives. With wide reaching effects on gaming, socializing, education, and military of other things, virtual worlds have exploded in number and presence over the past years through MMORPG. The acronym MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. It is a multiplayer computer role-playing game that enables thousands of players to play in an evolving virtual world at the same time over the Internet.

The MMORPG gamers invest hours of real life into a virtual life that results in vain. A good example is the “World of Warcraft” (WOW). According to the WOW Community site, the game enables thousands of players to come together online and battle against the world and each other. Players from across the globe can leave the real world behind and undertake grand quests and heroic exploits in a land of fantastic adventure. MMORPG games often leads the gamers to addiction which results them sleepless nights, eating at the keyboard, loosing health and relationships as well as affecting educations. For example, a 28 year old South Korean man died after playing online computer game, Starcraft for 50 hours with only few breaks. He collapsed after playing the game at an internet cafe. He had not eaten properly nor slept. MMORPG in South Korea is extremely popular due to the fast and widespread broadband network as mentioned in the lecture. Also in South Korea, professional gamers are treated as well as paid like a sports stars. They also gain huge sums in sponsoship and make more money than ordinary salary men. Some addicted players even leaves overseas to a less wired countries to fix their addiction for online games.

The origins of MMORPGs can be traced to the 1970’s of the release of Ultima Online and Everquest, commonly called UO and EQ respectively. The late 1990’s brought the MMORPGs to a broader PC gaming audience. Since the release of UO and EQ, MMORPGs have become a multi-billion dollar market. World of Warcraft went live in November of 2004, and its community has since grown to over 1.5 million players. Effective community management was made a staple in the industry by its two most notable pioneers. Community management is vital to the success of a MMORPG, and WOW is no exception.