"I play World of Warcraft. Yes, I am the enemy. I play the game and I enjoy it. before I played WoW, I played Everquest and before that, Ultima Online and a multitude of other games you probably all hate on down to character based MUDs back in the late eighties and early nineties. I like computer games.

That said, I recognize I spend far too much time playing these games. I'm single, 36, never married. I'm very overweight. I work as a computer programmer and I generally excel at my job. I started to think I was playing too much and started looking around for support and found this group.

Part of what you maybe don't realize about why there is such a draw to these games for your significant other is because the game is full of people like them. People that play all the time. People that realize they are playing all the time. We joke about it. People that sleep at night are slackers. As much as Everquest Widows is a support group for you, the game is a support group for us. When one of you complains to your significant other that he/she is not spending time with you, we joke that he/she has wife or girlfriend aggro (aggro being an in game term that means a monster is attacking you) and that he/she needs to work on wife or girlfriend faction (a tedious in game task involving repeatedly killing the same monsters over and over to gain favor with other in game personalities).

The posts that strike me the most ... are the ones that talk about suing Sony or spying on your significant others. Suing Sony because your significant other plays too much Everquest is like blaming McDonald's for fat people or blaming gun manufacturers for robberies. Sony and Blizzard and all the other MMO game makers are not the cause of your problems. My advice for those of you wanting to spy on your significant others, who want to know what they are saying in game, who want to be able to change their passwords and delete their characters is pack your bags and leave now. A relationship is nothing without trust.

You want your significant others back? Find out what is driving them to stay in the game because its not the game itself. Their are plenty of people that play the game and have healthy relationships, not that I'm one of them. For me, it's pretty easy, I don't have a SO and losing weight is really freaking hard (at least for me it is). Talk to your SO about the game or, god forbid, play it with them. I can tell you one of the things we gamers all drool over is the ever elusive gamer chick. Learn the game! If I saw someone trying to meet me halfway about something I really enjoy it would give me alot of incentive to meet that person halfway with their interests and needs. I think if someone we're just giving me a hard time about the game the stubborn streak in me would just make me want to play it more. We really like to talk about the game. Aside from all the time we spend in game playing it, most of us spend as much time reading and talking about it outside the game. Be the person we talk to about it. As time goes on maybe he or she will realize that the satisfaction derived is not coming from the game at all but from the interaction with you.

My post is not meant to be offensive to anyone. I realize many of you are in very different situations than I am as married people often with children. I'm struggling with the time I put into the game, but I do enjoy it."