Ex-Blizzard Employee Divorces Husband Over WoW
By Stephany on Saturday, February 16th, 2008 at 1:33 PM PST In Blizzard, Computer, Game Companies, Game Platforms, Gamer Life, Games, World of Warcraft
A California resident who once worked briefly for Blizzard has recently divorced her husband of six years because according to her, his addiction to World of Warcraft ruined their marriage. Never having played the game herself, 28 year-old Jocelyn stated that her husband Peter’s crippling addiction to the game became more than she could handle.
“He would get home from work at 6:00, start playing at 6:30, and he’d play until three a.m. Weekends were worse — it was from morning straight through until the middle of the night. It took away all of our time that we spent together. I ceased to exist in his life.”
Having been friends with Peter since the age of 13 and married for six years, it only took a paltry nine months for the marriage to collapse after receiving the game as a gift from her.
“I bought the game for him for Christmas 2004, when it first came out. By May we had our first serious discussion about where our marriage was going, and by September I had moved out.”
Having had many discussions on the fact that WoW had taken over Peter’s life, Jocelyn tried to intervene and schedule “together” time with him – to no avail. On one such occasion, she had set aside 30 minutes to watch a favorite TV show together, but he refused because he was in the middle of a raid and could not understand why she was upset that he stood her up. Eventually, Peter’s domestic duties also began to suffer for the game as he stopped paying bills and refused to do his share of the housework.
Although a gamer herself Jocelyn has never played WoW because she recognized the fact that it was a game that would never end and therefore did not wish to play it. She also states that WoW was the sole catalyst for the divorce and is still highly emotional about its impact on her marriage.
“I’m real, and you’re giving me up for a fantasy land. You’re destroying your life, your six-year marriage, and you’re giving it up for something that isn’t even real. [Blizzard] build it in such a way that you have to keep putting more and more time into it to maintain your status. I remember thinking when I was married that it was downright exploitative to people who couldn’t control themselves in that way. It’s set up like a drug.”
Because of the emotional scars of the divorce and the reasons surrounding it, Jocelyn has stated that next time around, she will stay clear of gamers.
While this is indeed sad news for her and her ex-husband you cannot put the blame solely on WoW. Granted, it has proven to be a highly addictive game for some people, but you have to consider their personality and their choices. Someone like Peter more than likely has a mental issue and has a problem with addiction. Who is to say that he does not have some other forms of addiction as well? His addiction could as easily have been pot, liquor, porn or meth – if she were to have brought them into the house it would have been a different addiction instead of gaming. You have to go to the underlying source and peel back the layers. Was he unhappy in his marriage to begin with? Was he miserable at his job? Was he highly depressed? Was this form of escape a way to keep from coping with the living hell that his life had become? All of these plus family history can become contributing factors to any sort of addiction.
During her interview with Yahoo! Games, Joycelyn never stated or hinted around about counseling. Did the two of them ever discuss the possibility of therapy? Did she ever consider canceling their internet service, his Blizzard account and throwing his WoW disc in the trash? No one knows the full story of why their marriage collapsed or if anything was done to try and salvage it other than “together time” to watch TV. We may never know, but while this news is indeed sad for the both of them, I mostly feel sorry for Peter because he needs help before his life becomes a vicious cycle of self-loathing and addiction to something worse than a video game. Blaming it all on WoW is just ignorance.
Source: Yahoo! Games
THATS GNA BE ATIF KHAN IN 10 YEARS TIME AHAHAHHAHAHAHAH NOOBS.
LOS FTW!
notice the well-placed bottle of lotion by the computer in the picture…
This is a real tragedy. I can’t really blame her for hating WoW, because it must’ve been an emotionally charged situation, and I wouldn’t expect her to seperate her emotions from the situation to look at the real reason behind their unfortunate divorce. I don’t like that she’s decided to stay away from gamers though. I mean, for everyone who’s addicted to WoW, there are millions more who enjoy it in a healthy way. She might as well say she’ll stay away from people who drink, because the ratio of healthy drinkers to alcoholics is a lot worse than for video games.
like my dad allways told me, get skills or die trying… but anyways, damn those PVEers ruining the life of other people, go arena
She said the sole reason for the divorce was WoW. Considering she wasn’t the one with the addiction and thus can be taken to be more rational, I’m inclined to believe her word on that (not to mention the expertise from knowing the intention of the game, per se). She did everything right. She must really be kicking herself though for getting the game for him.
HAHAHAHAHAHHA GOOD CHOICE MATE!! “TOGETHER TIME?!” ugh she sounds like a pain..
I’m a gamer (obviously, or why else would I be here). However, I dislike how the author of the story tries to protect or side with the game and/or addict. It seems as if they may be an addict too.. trying to cover their own behind. That said, I’ll never understand how anyone can get so completely absorbed into a game that they’d lose track of everything around them for so long. Especially a game like WoW.. when playing, you can see the game engine underneath.. its not even realistic.. not even close. Wouldn’t it be better to ‘level up’ your own actual life and get out of the bad job or if he was unhappy with the marriage (examples by the author of the story) initiate some dialog with his wife.. perhaps HE could have suggested counseling if this was the problem.. its not the wife’s fault the guy is an addict to a game and, as a result, she really shouldn’t have to suffer. What a tragedy. Wake up people.. its a game.
Its true buddy,, it is an additive thing… and its here to stay.. more and more ppl are entering the world of MMORPGs and getting addicted.. and it affects their real life too..
This is why I tell ppl not too play WoW, its addicting, anyone I know who has played it, hasnt stopped.
Though she must really fell bad for getting him he game in the first place, she knew how addictive it was, and yet she gave it to him anyways, I say it’s partly her fault….
It’s a shame
wow just one more thing to prove how bad WoW is for people. terrible game by a terrible company set up to suck the life and money out of you. to me, WoW is like drugs, never touch it, never go near it, always hate it, never even want to think about it. such a horrible company, blizzard…i stick to my FPS’s and i actually have a life outside of the computer..this guy (and the author) is such a waste of air..the author is an addict too, you can tell by the way he defends this lowlife wow loser with nothing but fairy-tale rpg games in his life.
WoW is not evil it’s just how much time you spend on it, however I do notice that people who play WoW tend to play more than a few hours a day. Everytime I go to my friends house he’s on his comp playing WoW next to about 10 soda cans.
Sadly, this only strengthens my decision to never start playing WoW. I feel very sorry for the wife of whomever this WoW addict is. I’ve met up with a lot of my gamer friends (usually just once a year or something) and a few of them have bailed out on the group because they were either raiding or doing some sort of WoW activity that apparently COULD NOT be moved to a different time.
I do kind of agree with the author as the wife did not mention anything about therapy but… That doesn’t give the husband the right to forget about his duties to his wife. Especially when it comes to paying bills! He seems to get the WoW account paid, why can’t he keep the necessities of living paid? He can’t play WoW if he’s dead after all (or don’t have electricity/internet).
Everyone has it tough, just because you’re depressed/hating work doesn’t mean you have the right to hide from everything. Depression is a problem not an excuse and WoW does not help at all.
@ D
Actually, being that I work for a gaming site you would surprised to know that I play,on the average, less than 10 hours per week. Some weeks, I do not even touch a game. I personally do not have an addiction to any sort of entertainment nor do I have any other sort of addictions. I never stated that I sided with him completely, and I also stated that we – the readers – do not know the full story. I only mentioned counseling and her lack of mentioning it in the interview and how it honestly may have helped. When you have someone who is addicted to something, it is the person who is in their right mind who has to step in and take charge of the situation – because the one that is ADDICTED is NOT in their right mind. Have you ever watched Intervention on A&E? Not that I recommend it, but it should give you an idea of what is and isn’t going through an addict’s mind – and I can tell you one thing – it is not getting help.
I don’t think WoW is the main problem here. All these cases ARE due to addictions of sorts. Heck, my friends have just pushed me into getting the trial and I was even wary about that (!) but I know what I need to do to stop my self getting addicted to it. Besides, I have TF2, a 360 and a Wii that are also joustling for my time, so playing soley WoW would not prove to be efficient.
Friends since 13, shes 28, been married for 6 years….. nobody considered the fact he wasn’t addicted they just ran out of intresting things to do? 15 years of knowing someone and minimum 6 years living together is a long time, WoW might just as easily been an escape from the monotony of a relationship that was getting stale.
I’ve been with my partner for 5 years and there are times when I like to do things on my own to, its called having space.
People get divorced all the time, its only news because its game related. People get divorced over pets, belongings, bills, holidays, affairs you name it suddenly someone wants to play a computer game and they are addicted. The difference between wanting to do something and addiction is that you don’t want to do it but you can’t stop yourself….wheres the evidence he wanted to stop?
MMO Social interaction is a far more powerfull draw due to peer pressures and the ability to allow your imagination to suspend the stresses of real life (albeit replace them with in game stresses). The concept of someone locked away in a room having “no life” is subjective, you can have hundreds of friends online why is that something to be negative about while going down to a local bar or club and pissing away money on alcohol vomitting all over the sidewalk and sleeping with random strangers is considered “having a life” ?
I like the way the author says “throwing his WoW disc in the trash” … lol … once installed there is no need for the disc. OMG !!! People if you are writing a piece about a game that you don’t even play … don’t write it.
And by the way the guy is a jerk and the girl has a low selfesteem, beaten by a GAME !!!
I quit WoW in November because my Black-Temple-Raiding guild was becoming too much for me to handle. It was like having a part-time job that I wasn’t getting paid for. The people I met on there I miss sometimes, but I feel very free now that I don’t play anymore. I have time to just sit around.
It’s very sad that he let this happen to their marriage. She let it go too far. I agree with the author – she should have canceled their Internet and forced a confrontation in the beginning.
Whats the point of trying so hard to get to the top if you will die and be forgotten almost straight away? Whats at the top thats so good anyway? I see this as a reaction to the disposable, consumeristic lifestyle we have created for ourselves. Maybe its understandable that some people would want to permanently escape this reality?
He who dies with the most toys was hollow and without meaning.
My college roommate, who has never had an addiction problem to anything, played WoW to the point where he missed 2 finals in the same quarter. He’s now on academic probation and will probably drop out. I tried to talk him out of it but, convincing him against WoW is like convincing someone against a religion. You just can’t because the logic used to defend it is illogical.
If you play WoW so much that it ruins your marriage you’ve got a problem, and no amount of excuses will ever make that go away. It could probably have been handled in some other way, but what’s happened’s happened.
Raiding in wow is where most/all of the “addict storys” come from..
if u have enough RL/close friends outside of your guild and don’t focus your self worth entirely on your in game Status you should be fine..
Mind you being 19 when i play wow i tend to do the above.. but if u focus on the people your talking to over vent rather than the games status u realize your self worth is more than just the game.
wow is a incredibly powerful game for both good and bad. However if blizzard made a new scaling method / (put in some way that playing is not alway benifical/ no more grinding etc)…. i think it could then be just a simply Powerfully good game..
To say u have to have some medical condition to be sucked into WoW as a addict is a lie.. Lots of healthy people do.. and its not ALWAYs Unhealthy in the end.
I’d have to agree with her. Ive seen that game ruins tons of relationships, costs many people their jobs, and just outright ruin lives. Its addicting and its badly addicting. People who are lvl 70 with epic mounts have serious issues. You simply cannot get those items if you play casually. Dont even try to explain that you can because it CAN’T be done. Do i think they should get rid of the game? No but i do think that something needs to be setup to help people who have issues or Blizzard should be forced to place a timer on an account that when applied stops that account from playing after say 6 hours on the weekends and 2 hours on weekdays. This would stop alot of it sure people could have multiple accounts but they are going to get sick of bouncing from account to account on lowbies during the week.
if he wouldn’t watch a 30 minute tv show, there is no chance he would have invested the time in counseling.
Stop being defensive because it’s a video game – and you like video games.
She has every right to be upset about the game, even JEALOUS, because he chose the game over her. It’s the same as if it was another woman, except more confusing because it’s only a game.
She probably told him she was going to leave him if he didn’t stop playing, and he didn’t care enough to stop playing. The game was indeed a major factor. What broke up the marriage was the husbands choices regarding the game – it is in essence, his ‘fault’ and not the games, but the game is still a factor.
Quit being defensive about it.
This woman, pardon my french is a fucking idiot.
all she had to do was demand his account password, and secret question answer and Ta-da she can setup parental controls that make it so a customer is only allowed to play for an alloted time. Every MMO has it; I play wow myself and luckily I do not fall victim to this (much to busy with real life) but people who fall into this are usually highly depressed and are seeking escape. In my opinion this twat just took the easy way out because she wanted out of the marriage. Maybe to fuck some wanker out there who is everything her husband was not. All in all it was her own fault and she should have established parental controls early on.
WoW might be up there, but once you’ve chased the high that is Everquest, it’s luring addiction is paltry in comparison.
I also had a marriage that fell apart to the time I spent in an online game — Everquest. But there were already huge underlying issues. I think the truth of this situation is he was probably using the game to get away from pressures at work, or perhaps he was fighting with his wife.
I guess she signed up for ‘better’ and not ‘worse’. That’s the unfortunate reality of a lot of marriages these days. When the tough get going, the spouse gets going too.
I’ve got a couple buddies that lost their girlfriends over WoW….that game is more addicting than crack.
If you have to establish “parental controls” for your wife/husband, get out of that relationship. This person doesn’t qualify for “recovering” addict, he’s just an oblivious addict who’s lost all respect for his wife and himself. You can try to improve the situation, then as a last result, stage an intervention, which the woman did. If the person still continues on like a vegetable, it’s hopeless. Get out as fast as you can.
Yeah, spending too much time on a computer is bad…but 30+ hours of TV a week, plus movies is ok. What does it say that he prefered the game to her. Why did he need such escapism in his life? Maybe it stunk and getting rig of her was a bonus.
Why is serious investment in this game always considered a harmful addiction? It’s like any other hobby — people devote varying amounts of time to it. Isn’t playing in an amateur sports league very similar to being in a raiding guild? I think if it’s rewarding a person he should do what he likes.
I play wow… I was addicted through High School. I was on the varsity ice hockey team, as well as playing for a pro roller hockey team. Slowly and slowly it was creeping in on my other time, because as was stated in the article, it is built so that the best of the best need to spend more and more time in order to play. Slowly and slowly it crept into my life until I pretty much stopped doing everything and was raiding day in and day out… Why? Because that’s what was required. I stopped playing and told myself I wouldn’t go back. I got into a difficult medical program, I picked up a girlfriend, and was generally very happy. I just renewed for a month, and already it’s creeping into my life once again. It sucks, but that’s how the game is meant to be played. In order to be the best you have to put in ridiculous amounts of time. I think I’m just not going to renew this month, but who knows…
Thats why I run a bot. Perhaps she could have introduced him to MMOGlider (formerly WoW Glider). http://www.mmoglider.com
It will get you your life back.
and we all found this article on the internet and expect that it’s going to be looked at objectively. interesting….
The addictive aspect of WoW is it’s social network. A huge portion of warcraft is making friends. Groups work in a systematic way. Your raid consist of up to 24 other people who know you, joke with you etc, and depend on you. This makes it very easy to associate to “real life”. Therefore when someone says they cannot get off the computer because they’re in a “raid”, they’re addiction is reinforced by both social interaction and character gain.
I play wow. I usually play 4 hours a night, depending on my surroundings, the gym, and my girlfriend; and honestly, if my girlfriend wants to be with me, the game gets turned off. NO artificial reality compares to that of a dissatisfied, angry woman (not to mention the sexual aspect of a real human girl). I think the guy lost interest in his wife. The game became more stimulating. Simple as that.
It’s not WoW’s fault. She’s going to have to come to the realization that she married a douche bag. Anybody (over 21, or isn’t being paid to) who spends more time gaming (especially one particular game) than working, learning, or otherwise living their life is a douche bag. Saying that it’s WoW’s fault is like saying that it was the cars fault when you ran a red light.
How I cured my Everquest addiction: I learned to cheat! I found that I enjoyed writing scripts to play the game automatically more than I did actually playing the game myself. My wife thinks I am nuts paying to play a game I don’t actually plan but she loves the fact that I have way more time to be with her. I get more work done. I go on long drives and hikes. I can read or watch movies. All the time my characters are killing mobs and getting experience. Of course I run the risk that Sony will detect my cheating and ban me from the game forever but at this point that would be fine by me.
Fire the author please. This is possibly the most poorly written article I have ever seen. The second half of the article reads like they shoved a mic in front of her ex-husband between raids.
As a wife of a WOW addict I would like to say something. My husband has been playing WOW since it’s initial release. My husband and I have been married for almost three years. He plays WOW everyday he possibly can and until the wee hours of the morning. I know exactly where this wife is coming from. We used do stuff together too. I was miserable because WOW seemed to be controlling his life, until I decided to do something about it. Now I’m a lvl 65 shadow priest and in a week or two I’ll be 70 and keyed for Kara. He takes me places now. We ran SP last night, and mana tombs the day before, and all of our friends and their spouses play to so we spend all night with our friends. Of course we both make time in our schedules to clean the house and take care off other matters, but we are very very happy!
Too bad for that guy, but chicks just don’t know how to have fun.
Ladies like to shop… to the tune of THOUSANDS of dollars a year.
That’s going to do a lot more damage to a marriage than her man sitting in front of a monitor… why is this not discussed?
Bfd, the garbage goes out late.
ok seriously, did you just compare WoW addictions to meth? come on now, that’s going way too far. there are A LOT of people who play WoW obsessively but have not and would not ever touch drugs. It’s a social disorder not an addiction you need to realize that, especially if you’re going to be touting yourself as a gamers news site.
WoW is highly addictive game, and no you don’t have to haver an addictive personality. I don’t smoke, drink ocassionaly, don’t gamble and don’t doany drugs but I was addicted to it for almost 2 years and it took me being evicted for not paying rent to realize just hwo low WoW can make your real life get. I predict a huge class actions suit or murder of the main WoW designer in teh near future.
For the Horde!
That is SAD…not his addiction but the excuses and the arguement the writer was trying to make. Yeah, lets feel sorry for Peter and blame it all on the WIFE..that makes sense.
I’m sorry but I’m addiction to POT and PORN but i still dont do it 24/7…7 days a week like he did with WOW.
Whether its a game addiction or internet addiction…most of the time..they are ALOT worse than any other minor drug like pot and porn. So i dont blame the wife..i would of left his ass ALONG TIME ago. If you play WOW every second of your life..then you deserve to be with nothing but WOW..so enjoy your PETER.
Here’s what it comes down to: He wanted to play WOW instead of spend time with her. If I were in her position, I’d have reacted the same way. It’s one thing to try to get an addict to see the picture, it’s another to keep trying to save them when they don’t care enough to want to be saved. If I were her, I’d have gotten out of there too.
I believe it is prevalence and accessibility that distinguishes WoW from other drugs. There is no hangover, there is no significant expense, there is no particularly harsh social stigma attached to sitting at a computer you’ve bought in the comfort of your own home. There are therefore fewer immediate and apparent consequences to heavy WoW gaming than other drugs.
WoW should therefore be recognized as a very different kind of potential addiction than other sources. The indicators of addiction will be different. The triggers will be different. The consequences will be different. The people affected will be different than your average chemically dependent person (if there is such a thing). And accordingly, the response to the problem should be different.
Not carefully recognizing how a MMORPG is different from other psychologically and chemically addicting drugs ironically makes it more dangerous, and only keeps the issue from being fully and seriously considered.
wow… that guy is freaking lame…
What a nerd he was. I know a few of those.
This guy playing for as long as he does indicates serious issues beyond the game.
I’m a WoWer too
. But I see the perspective: there is no ‘winning condition’. Blizzard doesn’t want you to win, Blizzard only wants you to buy the account, that’s it.
You don’t have to level, you don’t have to have epic gear. There is no such requirement. Of course, the better gear allows you to do more stuff, but a level 70 is like a cripple who needs a really big crutch. You’re never as strong as you are at level 1
.
As soon as you realize that you can’t win, that you don’t need any gear, although over time you have to get some, the game just throws the stuff at you, you’re free from the drive to spend your every waking hour trying to get it.
Contrary to someone who stated that you can’t get an epic mount with normal playing: you can. Over time you will just accumulate the money to get one. It’s just inevitable.
EverQuest was a totally different beast: much -MUCH- harder [although the graphics sucked and the interface was a living hell - tradeskilling anyone?] but there was a real challenge.
I’d have left the guy too. I like the scenery, the human interaction, but grinding for rep or money isn’t what you would call the most satisfying thing you can do with life.
Everything in moderation. It sounds boring, but it works and there are other things to do with life.
Speaking of which…
Happy gaming, boys and girls.
Oh, and you can’t blame Blizzard: one of their hints as you log into the game is to do other stuff than play WoW. -They- are saying it, it’s more than unfair to blame them for building a nice game that people want to spend time in.
Can’t wait for RotLK, which I will enjoy because I don’t nearly care as much for the baubles than I do for the sheer fun of exploring.
It’s a game. If it’s no longer fun, why are you doing it?
I’ve had experience researching and treating patients with addictions, and there’s quite a few flaws in this article.
1) It’s not a valid argument to suggest that the husband has addiction issues in general, and would be addicted to pot/cocaine/alcohol if it were not WoW. There’s simply no science to back this up, and each substance has different ways of addicting a person, such as physical addiction (a hormonal need) or mental addiction like WoW.
2) Video games in general are enjoyed by numerous gamers in a healthy manner, but an absurd ratio of MMO gamers can be considered clinically “addicted” by clinical definitions. The reason has been stated before, and it’s simply because you need to maintain X hours of gameplay to maintain your status in the game. If you take a look at the bleeding edge players, it’s impossible to stay bleeding edge if you aren’t raiding multiple days a week, multiple hours a day. Sometimes exploring new content and tackling it first will increase these hours further. If 5% of players are bleeding edge, and there are 10 million subscribers to WoW, we’re talking 500,000 people in the world that can be diagnosed with addiction.
3) It’s unfair to be pointing fingers at other issues, when it’s clear that an issue has surfaced already. Is there mention of the husband being unhappy prior to receiving WoW? Yet, there IS mention that after the husband received WoW, the wife lost quality time together with her husband, and he began neglecting daily duties (a symptom of clinical addiction). Why start pointing fingers at the former, instead of focusing on what we KNOW is true–that WoW changed her husband dramatically upon entering their lives.
Anyways, this will get lost in the rubble, so there’s no point posting before. I’d recommend the author do a bit more research if they are going to venture in these topics
It’s just not fair to readers who may assume that what you say is true. In this case, WoW in particular was probably the sole source of the divorce.
Haha, the dumbass author tried to excuse WoW. WoW is the most evil thing ever introduced to the modern age. Comparing to Muslim terrorists, WoW is more damaging to the society. Millions of kids who play it are simply ruining their lives.
On the other hand, if you play WoW in a non-addictive way, good for you.