Here's a former World of Warcraft addict telling his story to a major Australian paper...

Such was his addiction to this fantasy computer-generated world that he lost his girlfriend of five years, struggled to hold a job and dropped out of a college course.

Nichols, of Taringa in Brisbane's inner-west, is a self-confessed recovering computer game addict who would spend up to 20 hours a day perched in front of his screen.

"I would definitely say that I was addicted," Nichols, 27, says.

"It was all that I thought about. The game got in the way of me leading a normal life. It was an escape from reality . . . that was what I was doing. When my girlfriend left me, she was packing her bags and I was still sitting there playing."

Interesting read as a rock journalist tells the story of how they came to be addicted to World of Warcraft.

As for many of us, what started as 20 minutes to check the game out soon turned into hours and then days... 

The ultimate question, are you lucky enough, or addicted enough, to play World of Warcraft while at work?

I've heard people do it, but personally I couldn't imagine how I'd pull it off. Most of my workday (when I'm not slaving away for the Weblogs, Inc. overlords here) is spent in an open office, and so even if I did find the time to squeeze a little adventuring in between my actual work, I have so many people looking over my shoulder that I'd get caught before long. Of course, when I am supposed to be writing for this site, I'm usually playing WoW anyway, so that evens out, I suppose.

It seems that some article was run on addictions, and that World of Warcraft was discussed. I am sure we all know about the site www.wowdetox.com, which has stories from addicted players, but the article wonders exactly how many of WoW's 8 million user base might be addicted? Even if it is a very small percentage, that still translates into a lot of addicted players!