After having spent most of my life playing games like World of Warcraft. It all came to a crashing halt when I went off to work for Blizzard Entertainment. It was exciting to work for the biggest brand in MMORPG games, but was not what I had expected.

The reason for loss of addiction? Working for Blizzard is a full time commitment which most people who apply won’t realise. You work stupidly long days in a call centre type environment. You have strict quota and quality to uphold and its all you can think about. You must keep the players happy! You no longer have the time or drive to spend all your free time farming items, leveling alts or annoying role players. It is a fast track to the real word.

I have left Blizzard after being there a year, I have numerous goodies from the time, including an “Employee only” bronze Orc and wolf statue that is about 2ft high and looks amazing.

Best of all, I left the company with no further need to play the game anymore. Addiction cured. I no longer feel tied to playing a game 24/7 for little or no point other than mild entertainment. I understand the best thing the time spent playing the game could get me, was a job at the company ..which it did.

I feel I enjoyed my time more playing Ultima Online when I was younger, you got benefits for having your account open, (ethereal mounts anyone?) at least when I ended playing that I sold my account for over a £100. I imagine the statue is worth much more than that but its too pretty to sell.

All in all, spending all your life playing a game is not going to get you far. You will be fronting out £9 a month, £108 a year not including the cost to purchase the game with expansions currently two of them, total cost on top of that is roughly £40.

In the end the game will die and be gone, better things will come along eventually. You may have many years experience and knowledge about the game but what is that really worth down the road if you don’t choose to use it to make a career for yourself.