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There is the horrible story of the 28-year-old Korean player, Lee, who died of a heart attack caused by the exhaustion
of playing video games for 50 hours straight.
More details can be found here
Surely you will claim that the game he played was Starcraft, and not WoW. The fact is, WoW is more addictive than Starcraft,
because it has no end. Once caught in it, it is very hard to get out of the game, especially for people with problems in their
personal lives. We can expect more and more similar cases to happen over the next years. Some experts predict that, by 2030,
as many as 1 death on 15 in the 20-39-year age group due to domestic accidents will be caused by abusive use of video games.
WoW and suicide
Suicide, especially that of young people, becomes a public health issue. For the first time, an entire week (5-10 February
2007) has been dedicated to the French Suicide Prevention National Days. Another sign, Dominique Versini, a children's defender,
is forced to dedicate his 2007 report to suicide among teenagers.
The French "Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale" (National Health and Medical Research
Institute) reported, in 2005, a worldwide increase in the number of suicide attempts, estimated at 140,000 in the
15-24 year group. And it also reported that suicide-prone people are getting younger every year.
2005? This year doesn't ring a bell into you? This is the year where the game began to acquire the notoriety it has today.
And also the year where the first hundreds of thousands of copies were sold in the world. As Xavier Pommereau, director of
the Jean-Abadie Teenagers' Center in Bordeaux, France, "We must not let a teenager lock himself up in depression". In plunging
into the WoW universe, the exact opposite happens.
The disturbed teen only keeps his problems at bay for a short amount of time, and the return to reality after the departure
from the game is just made more brutal. S/he then enters a vicious circle, the person delves deeper into the game while
his problems get bigger and finally goes to hell, without any hope of relief.
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