"I finally quit playing EQ around 2 months ago after about 3 years of playing. Like smoking when I was (a lot) younger, I simply lost interest in it and all MMORPGs (I was playing Eve Online for a couple of months too).

Reading some of the stories of relationships destroyed helped a lot towards my change of attitude. I love my girlfriend very much and didn't want to do what others had done to their partners. I know she wasn't happy with me playing but she tolerated it in moderation. I did have the capacity to play to excess when she wasn't around though.

I don't consider myself to have an addictive nature, but I was in some way addicted to EQ. It has a very powerful attraction to it of not being real and therefore allowing you to do things you cannot, and could not normally do, in real life. It imbues you with a (false) sense of power and achievement which is very seductive. Your achievements carry with them kudos and recognition in the game world which may be, and probably are, lacking in your day-to-day wage slavery. In the game world you can be someone special.

However, I finally realised that what I was achieving was, in real terms, nothing. Absolutely nothing. I would have nothing to show for the hours wasted in the game world. I may as well have been sleeping. And that was what finally clinched it for me."