Clinical psychologist Maressa Hecht Orzack, Ph.D., compares MMO addiction to compulsive gambling. While most of you fans would snap "so what?!" to this statement, just take it as a gentle warning from a shrink who hears from 6 to 10 compulsive World of Warcraft gamers daily. According to her, WoW playing has become so serious that gamers ignore real-life duties to work, family and friends so they could play.

One ex-WoW player, Splint, a former co-guild leader, shares, "My friends barely ever saw me. I'd turn down work if it'd run heavily into raid time, and I encouraged my guildmates to do the same." He says that he would often skip meals to avoid inconveniencing his group during their nightly raids.

His tale is not new. There are plenty of stories of WoW players who sacrificed so much of their personal lives. One player turned down a scholarship offer because he was not ready to go to school regularly. One sold his computer to pay the rent but kept playing at a friend's house. Another one was forced into marriage counseling because he played too much.

Dr. Orzack says that when playing MMO such as WoW, "the same reward center in the brain is tapped -- the dopamine system. Gambling has all the components that go with these games." She seriously recommends players concerned about their habits to seek advice from any one of those online communities set up to tackle gaming addictions, or help from their primary care provider.

Splint still keeps up with WoW news and his guild's online forums. His advice is to "stop when you reach the maximum level." This may sound incredulous at first, but maybe he and Dr. Orzack have a point. What do you think?

Remember Maressa Hecht Orzack? Well, we don't expect you to remember her so we'll refresh your memory a bit. She hogged the QJ limelight a few months back as that clinical professor at Harvard Med School who helps addicts break the habit. By addicts, she is referring to those who have grown so addicted to playing games like The Sims, Everquest, and World of Warcraft.

Recently, The Orange County Register ran an article about gaming addiction and basically, it focused on people hooked on WoW. They even pulled some anonymous quotes from a site called wowdetox, here is a sample of a quote allegedly posted a by WoW addict:

WoW and cigarettes are incredibly similar in a lot of ways: Addictive, bad for your health, and it makes the companies a lot of money. The people at Blizzard must be laughing at the world as they rake in the dough from the addictions of millions.

This is an issue too juicy to pass up, so Ms. Orzack shared her thoughts on this. She said that:

Those who might be addicted represent a fraction of the WoW player population but even if 5 to 7 percent of 8 million players are addicted, that's still a fair number...People can stop using a substance but most people use a computer in their daily lives.

I don't know about you, but I just hope that instead of ranting about the problem, experts should think of a solution for it (and by solution we don't mean shredding CDs on national television). With that, what could you say about this? Do you have an interesting workaround for this kind of "addiction"?