Here's a CNN article on video game addiction.

Consider Zach Elliott, who lives in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, is in his mid-40s, and plays Final Fantasy XI, an online role-playing game. About three years ago, he says, "there were people in my real life that sort of vanished into this game, and I followed them into it."

Now he spends three hours a day playing the game on a computer in his basement. "I could have never anticipated the sort of draw the game has had for me, and how involved I would get," he says. "It still surprises me."

A pretty good story on World of Warcraft addiction:

In June 2005, EuroGamer.net reported that a child had died due to neglect by her parents, who were playing WoW at a local internet café in Korea. Also, in August of that year, GameSpot.com said the People's Republic of China proposed new rules to limit the playtime of the country's estimated 20 million computer game players in order to curb social and financial costs they perceived to be brought on by the popularity of games like WoW.

Someone has died in China after playing video games for 3 days straight.

The 30-year-old man fainted at a cyber cafe in the city of Guangzhou Saturday afternoon after he had been playing games online for three days, the Beijing News reported.

ABC have taken a look at video game addiction... something that surely relates to World of Warcraft.

Another mother, Elizabeth Woolley, believes that EverQuest caused her son to commit suicide. After skipping his ADD and epilepsy pills, quitting his job, and cutting off his phone along with any communications with friends and family, Shawn was found dead with a rifle in front of his computer with EverQuest on it. 

This sounds like an absolute nightmare to implement, but here's what MMORPG operators in China will HAVE to do as part of new legislation for gamers under 18.

How will it work? The anti-online game addiction system will be installed on MMO games (by the operators, definitely no squeezing out of this one). After which, the under-age player logs in and plays for three hours everything will be normal (full experience points and whatnot). If the player goes on playing for two more hours, he will only get half of the experience points. After five hours, the player gets none at all.

Someone played online games for a week (not WoW, or at least we aren't told), and then he died. Apparently he was also 330 lb.

Where? China

Have you got a friend addicted to WoW? Or maybe you are yourself? Well doctors are now saying that it is actually a clinical disorder!

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.

I imagine this has happened many, many times the world over...

She mentions how her boyfriend slowly fell into the enchanted timesink of doom that is WoW. Despite her attempts to pull him away from it for a little while, from little hints with books and invitations to go on moonlit strolls ("But this moon is full. The one outside is barely a sliver!" he says.), Blizzard's MMO has proven the stronger by monopolizing her boyfriend.

A funny/interesting video of the addiction that some people suffer from in MMORGS. It focuses heavily on World of Warcraft. 

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!