Ryan Michaud worries about relapsing. He worries about falling back into the old habits, the rut of obsession. He knows it’s bad for him, that it interferes with his classes, his social life. But sometimes it can be hard. All his friends still do it, still talk about it and still tell him he won’t be able to stay clean for too long. They don’t think he’ll be able to stay away from the World of Warcraft. The computer game has been a runaway success for its parent company, Blizzard Entertainment, which announced on Jan. 11, that 8 million people across the globe play the game. WoW’s first expansion pack, ‘The Burning Crusade,’ was released five days later, selling almost 2.4 million copies within its first day of sales. Underneath the game’s emergence as an international power in the video game industry is the stigma of a growing subculture of gaming addicts, hardcore ‘raiders’ as they are known in WoW community, who spend hours upon hours locked in front of their computers traversing through the World.WoW is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that connects players from all over the world (for a fee of about 50 cents a day) and builds off the premise of the original Warcraft game released in 1994. The human alliance battles the orc horde within the game, and players can choose characters on either side and form coalitions (known as guilds) that go on missions together (known as raids).Rewards are doled out in the form of increased powers, armor and other useful accessories as time goes on and experience is gained, favoring players who spend large quantities of time playing in the World.Michaud’s roommate, sophomore information studies major Dan Thimot, explained pious gamers, such as himself, make up the core of the WoW community, working hard to stay on the cutting edge of new additions to the game.’You really have to play hard to keep up with the other players,’ said Dave Baletsa, a junior supply chain management major and WoW player.Baletsa sacrificed his prowess in the game by not fully committing to it, opting instead to make sure there is still time for school, his girlfriend and his spot on Syracuse University’s club ultimate Frisbee team.Robert Thompson, a television, radio and film professor at the Newhouse School of Public Communications, agreed that it can be difficult to balance a normal life and still succeed in WoW.Thompson compared WoW to a clingy boyfriend or girlfriend … something that requires commitment. ‘To play the game right, you need the luxury of a versatile schedule, which, if you have that luxury, the game can be very fun,’ Thompson said. ‘If you don’t have that versatile schedule and you’re missing class, not returning people’s calls, not doing the dishes or whatever because of it, then it’s a problem.’As someone without versatility, Michaud, a sophomore psychology major, said he is now trying to stay away from the game on his own. He quit WoW at the start of winter break. Though his friends at SU remained highly involved in the intricacies of WoW, Michaud said he realized the game had begun to take over his life. Late-night gaming sessions until 5 a.m. would leave him too tired to go to class that day. His weekends were often spent with his friends in a makeshift LAN (local area network) center crafted from a closet door laid over a bed for their laptops in a Sadler Hall dorm room.After a while, Michaud said he decided he was missing out on other things.’I asked myself ‘What the hell am I doing to take away from real life stuff to play this stupid game?” Michaud said about his decision during winter break. They all tried to quit the game as a group once before, snapping all of their WoW CD-ROMs in half and throwing them in the garbage, but it didn’t stick. Someone snuck off and bought another copy and eventually they were all hooked again.The urge to play is still prevalent sometimes for Michaud.’It’s like being an alcoholic and having friends who drink,’ he said.It got bad last weekend, he said. He was drinking with his friends and it came up, like it always does. Michaud was torn.’It’s like a fight within your mind, between good and evil,’ Michaud said. ‘On one hand, you know how bad it can be for you. But it’s so easy to get caught up in it, how much fun it is.’The good side won this time, and Michaud didn’t collapse under the pressure. Michaud and Thimot wanted to get into a MMORPG to play for fun last year, settling on WoW after reading favorable reviews about it online. Each game they purchased came with a trial disc, which they passed out among their friends. As more of their friends got hooked, the game spread out until nearly half of their floor was playing the game consistently. The social aspect of the game, in which you can form guilds with friends and confront missions together, combined with the constant struggles presented in gameplay, fascinated the group.’There’s so much to do within the game,’ Michaud said. ‘It’s like a chain – you do one thing, and there’s another thing to do right after.’ After a time however, WoW became all consuming. The group began to exhibit the characteristics of substance abusers, such as those described by health welfare Web site HelpGuide.org. They acknowledge WoW had a drug-like hold on them, freely tossing around words like ‘addiction,’ ‘relapse’ and ‘junkie.’They ditched regular activities to play the game, allowed their grades to fall as a result of extended hours playing WoW, no longer hung out with those who did not play and discussed tactics and strategies related to WoW constantly. Michaud and Thimot’s friend, Mike Kuhn, a sophomore computer engineering major, spent nearly all of his time playing WoW last semester, missing a large amount of his classes and attended only one of his finals.’I would skip all of my morning classes and wake up at noon, play until I ate at six, then go back to playing until 2 a.m., and then I would go to sleep,’ Kuhn said.Kuhn, who is now on academic probation, said he rarely changed clothes or cleaned his room. The obsession with the game was carried over from the summer before.’I didn’t have cable Internet at home over the summer, so I had to go down to my high school and play outside,’ Kuhn said, laughing somewhat at the absurdity of the story. ‘Some nights it got really cold, so cold I had to wear gloves so I could still play.’Contrary to the popular perception of devout gamers, Michaud, Thimot and Kuhn all appear to be well-adjusted socially. They were polite, funny, friendly and relatively fit, certainly not the obese, greasy and irritable WoW gamer caricatures depicted in a recent South Park episode that lampooned Blizzard’s star product.The World of Warcraft simply seemed to have a hold on them they could not shake, which Thompson saw as something of an artistic achievement for Blizzard.’A poem or a novel or a movie has an intrinsic value even after you’re done with it,’ Thompson said.But video games are different, in that ‘the value of a good video game seems to be limited to when you’re playing it,’ he said.WoW gamers play so much because it’s the only way they can get enjoyment from it, Thompson said. Video games are harder to appreciate when they’re not being played.For Michaud, Thimot, Kuhn and their friends, the passion for WoW has died down somewhat. After Michaud quit and another friend who played with them dropped out of school for personal reasons, the group stopped playing as much. They used the game to stay in touch over the summer when they were spread across the country, but now it has less appeal. The social aspect, Michaud, Thimot and Kuhn all agreed, was a huge part of what made it so much fun. Now, with Michaud gone and the rest of the gang less enthused about playing, it’s easier to stay away at times. Thimot said he now tries to play for shorter amounts of time.’It’s like a quick fix, a nicotine patch,’ he said.Still, the game creeps into his personal life. He said he doesn’t spend as much time with his long-time girlfriend as he should.’She’s a WoW widow,’ Thimot said. ‘There are plenty of times when I should’ve taken her out but she has to watch me raid instead. We call those ‘movie nights.”Toward the end of the interview, Thimot went on to his WoW server to talk to someone briefly. Within minutes though, his eyes fastened on the screen, and he was back in the World. His girlfriend walked out of the room soon after.It’s just that easy.

If you raid …What: The World of Warcraft How much: The World of Warcraft: $19.99 The World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade expansion pack: $39.99 60-Day Online Subscription to the World: $29.99