Is WOW dangerous?

The massmurder Anders Behring Breivik in Norway who probarly killed over 100 persons played WOW much, and now the media speculate about if this could have something to do with his sick mind. The reason because i want a debate about this is i have a son who play this game very much, and i am a little worry.

 

There are many persons that play World of Warcraft and they don't kill other persons.

I'm fairly sure your son will be fine.

 

Your kidding right?

If anything it grand theft auto/just cause and it could also be terrorism as well, so nothing is for sure right now.

 

No this will not cause him to become a mass murderer... The guy in norway killed them because he was a right wing extremist! (im quite sure it was right wing, dont quote me on that) and it had no reason what ever to do with wow... If the media says so, then its because they are ignorant and want to take another stab at ruining the gaming industry... The only thing you should be worried about is how you´re son reacts to video games, but he should be just fine! So dont worry, and for the love of god do not listen to those idiot media...

 

Underlying conditions are what cause mass murder. Not popular media outlets.

Nearly all criminals watch TV...does that mean you're more likely to rob a bank if you watch TV?

 

I think he might have been insane. If he was really into WoW, he probably wouldn't have shot anyone and stayed inside to raid or RFC. Any game is bad unless you play it in moderation Though I doubt any influenced Anders to kill 80+ people.

 

LOL! Playing GTA and Just cause dosent make you go AWOL, and if people who play those games actually do then its because something was wrong with them to begin with. And yes the game could trigger something within a person who is a little wrong in the head. But so could anything! a good example would be the guy who shot John Lennon, he told the media that it was the book "The catcher in the rye" who made him shoot john lennon... So does that mean that if i read "the catcher in the rye" i will go out shooting people? No! So please do not miss inform people.

 

Why not?

Here in the USA we had an idiot who shot a Congresswomen in the head and killed a little girl. He was arrested and villified he was a rightwing extrememist who listened to talk radio.

Turns out he didn't listen to talk radio and had no party affiliation. If anything he was more liberal than conservative.

 

Well that usually the games that the Media blame. As for World of Warcraft, umm you kill monsters not people....that as far fetch as it get.

Also Rockstar need to shut up and make decent games, GTA IV was boring as hell and RDR never made it to PC. So screw Rockstar games.

 

Apparently he is very normal and even likeable on the outside prior to this. His neighbours described him as very well-mannered and moderately social, also if you look at his WoW posts, he sounds like any other friendly knowledgeable video gamer.

His troubles were buried deep.

 

I also hear that guy eats three meals a day and likes to shower before he goes to sleep. If your son is exhibiting any of these symptoms, best call the police immediately.

 

because if one had the tendencies to do something horrible like that, ANYTHING could trigger it. Yes someone might say something in wow, but that could as well have been in the news, on the internet, in person and so on. So does that mean that we should isolate our selves just so that we dont have any input to drive us crazy? And what i was saying is that as of now the police has found evidence of him being of the extreme right wing, the camp shot up was the camp of the opposite political party...

@Lithus Good one! really proves the idiocy that the media is going for with that statement!

 

That POS Anders Behring Breivik playing WoW has nothing to do with it at all.
Media's just trying to find a reason why he even did it.
My guess is that it was a mixture of evil and insanity.

Plenty of mass murderers have been roaming, even before video games.

 

Indeed! But right now the police thinks that it was because he was a extreme nationalist and fascist, and did not want the political party he shot up (i dont know their names) to continue what they were doing with the immigrant policy. He just took it too far...

 

Until the police does it's proper investigating it makes no sense to say it was definately this or that. It could be something totally unrelated to party affiliation.

 

Of course it could... That was not what i was trying to say at all! It could have been anything, im just saying that wow does not make you commit Genocide! FYI i played wow since vanilla but stopped a bit over a year ago...

 

Is your son a sociopath? If so he might have bigger issues than making it to his WoW raids in the future.

 

Maybe the media want WOW gone in anticipation for Guild Wars 2!!!

 

Nah, they probably just replace it so they can say playing Guild Wars 2 makes you a bad person.
But first im guessing either BF3 or MW3 may take some heat.

 

Oh i'm fine with those, maybe we might end up getting real fps game for once in the modern age than those run and gun off the mill fps.

 

I played pokemon a lot, I dropped out of school to travel and catch pokemons... (never caught any though. )

You become what you play!

 

The universe is too big to know for sure, there still could be pokemon like creature on other planet in other galaxy. Don't give up hope yet, you must BELIEVE~!!!

 

Norway murderer aside it is highly addictive and can be mind warping but games cannot be blamed. The only dangerous these days about WoW is not the game itself but trying to keep your account safe. I fired up a trial after leaving it two years ago and put my card details on there and within 3 hours I was hacked and they spent £40 off my card and purchased the upgrades then went in game and spammed till I got banned.

Been waiting 4 days for a reply to my ticket and had to raise this with my bank account as fraud. Never been hacked in my life and there is no way they got my password or password reminder because it is coded so that only I know clearly Battle.net have some serious issues. Stay well clear.

 

As an aside. I have never played WOW nor been tempted to. I have seen people play it and it never hooked me. I'm more into flight and racing sims with the occasional TBS war games and strategy games. Not really into shooters unless i'm playing COD Zombie mode.

 

WoW is fine (although quite an addicting game).

The only people who blame video games in encouraging acts such as these are uneducated morons.

People transform into monsters due to bad parenting/upbringing, which leads to personality and psychological disorders.

For example, 1 in 8 children who suffer abuse at an early age transform into an abuser themselves later in life.

Blame the parents, not the video game

 

Who are you, Jack Thompson?

Correlation != causation.

Fact: almost everyone who has died in the past has consumed water at some point in their lives. Thus, water must be fatal and the only way to not die is to never drink water, right? Same logic.

 

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Blame the parents, not the video game [/QUOTE]

What do you mean?

 

If anything, it will destroy your son's social life and force him into a deep, dark abyss in which inhabitants obtain large abundances of virtual in-game gold coins which are taken more seriously than realistic currency as well as defeat dungeon monsters and raid bosses that are taken far more important than real life obstacles as well as important ventures such as finding a job.

 

I heard OJ Simpson was an avid fan of Super Mario Brothers O_O

 

I played WoW on private servers a few years back because I didn't feel like it deserved $15 a month

 

As long as your son realizes the main difference between killing a real life and killing a computer character, he should be fine.

Games have no correlation with violence in real life. The only thing that comes out from gaming is "rage".... and this "rage" is driven due to survival instincts. Same feeling you get from playing sports, or any kind of competitive activities.

 

He wears underwear. Anyone wearing underwear could be a mass murderer...

 

Or better yet, anyone who is a human

 

That's like right after 9/11, and they took Microsoft Flight Simulator off the shelves because the terrorists may have used it to train. I mean come on. Maybe remove computers from the world too.

 

WoW is dangerous. You have to fight goblins, and Horde/Alliance (depending on your fraction). Not to mention the horrible Lich King, and Deathwing...

/end sarcasm

It's not dangerous, and while I no longer play, I would have to say I don't encourage kids to play it. Not for the violence, but it is very addicting, and the profanity and rudeness of the people in the game is not suited for children of any age.

 

The jury found him innocent!

At least in the criminal trial.


As an aside, I'm never touching World of Warcrack. Not because I think it's necessarily a bad game, but I do know I have an addictive personality and I'm going to spend an ungodly amount of time level grinding.

 

If Pacman had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music

 

But you are!!! LOL!

 

World of Warcraft is not dangerous. I had friends who played the game who would never harm anyone. You can't blame the game for one man's actions.

 

I don't believe WoW is addicting, just people think it is fun and don't want to stop. Once they find it no longer fun, I think it would be easy to quit since they could pick up another game. Some people just don't have as much self control as others? :0
WoW is not dangerous, just another MMO that will be crushed by GW2!!! Haha

 

I mean there's no doubt if someone is psychologically unstable that games might give them ideas or suggestions. But if it isn't games, it's TV, if it isn't TV then it's media, if it isn't media, then it's books. If someone is crazy, they're gonna do what they're gonna do if not helped.

 

I blame the rap music.

 

Wow cannot be Addicting. That is a scientific fact. Yes it can be fun, but DRUGS are addicting, video games are not. When you take drugs, you´re body NEEDS it and WANTS it, when you play video games it just you who find it fun. Yes people use the word wow addict, but that is as i mentioned scientificly wrong.
If you do not agree with me, please take a look at this video ‪Addicted to [EPIX]‬‏ - YouTube ! And if you actually get addicted to video games, it is because you have an addictive personality and that would mean that you could have become addicted to almost anything!
@plagueDoctor good one

 

I had 2 friends who had their lives destroyed by their addiction to this game.

1st friend
The 1st guy was successful in school, he entered the same uni and education as I did. He picked up the "wow trend" during the summer holiday before the uni started.

He fell into addiction and failed all his exams in the uni. He told me that he "could not disappoint his guild", his wow gaming was prioritized higher than studying.

He dropped out from the uni half a year after he entered. I do not know what has become of his life now, as I have not heard from him for more than 3 years.

2nd friend
Similar to the 1st one, but this guy did not have a chance to enter uni due to his bad grades.


Wow is made to be addictive. Leveling is slow, gearing is slow and new gear is released often. This game is designed to be a money making machine, and anyone who have quit playing it cant deny the fact that it is a very addictive game.

 

Yes they might ruin their life by playing it, but it is by correct term not addicting. Their body does not crave it! They chose themselves to do so, their body did not make them because it had abstinence! Yes wow is very "addicting" but it is not addicting, if you know what im saying. And if you dont i would like you to watch the video i posted in my previous post! But yes, wow is a money machine! indeed it is, and people get really hooked on it which is unfortunate! I myself have quit playing some year ago, but quit many times before that. I have to say that this time i wont be comming back to wow... Im looking forward to Guild wars 2 Though when i played wow i dident really do it to serious, i just played cuz most my friends did : )

 

That vid is 1 hour

Their bodies did not crave it, but their minds did. Both of them could not stop playing that game.

 

Addiction define any activity that takes over you life, and for which you are ready to abandon more important stuff like your work, school or even you basic human needs like feeding yourself. Wow is not addicting in its own right but there are people that fall under the definition of clinically addicted.

 

LOL i laughed so hard when i saw this. just like rap music still uses racist word "nword" now everyone says it because of the hip hop community even though its still racist.

but yea anything can be addictive not physically mind you, but i say mentally you can be attached or addicted to anything. (how that's possible is beyond me but people still manage to do it.) I can't say WoW is addictive cause when i played it, it was wanna the most boring mmos i played in my life so far, i played for about an hour and stopped. People would then tell me you have to be high level to have fun, <-- im sorry theres games where low levels and leveling is fun. Physically and mentally someone is addicted to cigarettes as an example. You start to feel a little wierd short of breathe or get headaches when you dont have a cigarette for a while, and your mind also says you need a cigarette where i think the headaches come from. As long as your son knows his priorities instead of gaming. Idk how you do it but for me I put priorities for school, car and chores around the house before I play any video games what so ever. Games are fun but they shouldn't rule your life.

 

Uh... I bet that mass murderer also took showers... obviously we should all stop taking showers and stop our children from taking showers as that may cause them to kill lots of people!

/sarcasm off

Violence in video games is but a fraction of the violence children see in reality. As children, my brother and I witnessed a neighbor beating his wife for HOURS before a group of mothers got tired of waiting for the police and stopped him by calling in their husbands/boyfriends from work.
That's real violence, real blood and real suffering people... and even after mom took us inside, we could still hear her cries. Oddly enough neither one of us has ever become a mass murderer or even a wife beater. Strange that.

ANYTHING can be addictive and over-prioritized to the point of being unhealthy. This includes relationships, TV, exercise, card games, and even reading. (yes bathing/showing as well)

Balance is what life is about. When that balance is broken, bad things happen.

As for WoW... any idea that it is difficult is rediculous. Even playing extremely casual you are guaranteed everything in game with time.
It is tuned for 9-11 yr olds. I know a couple of mentally handcapped people who are WoW gods. (done everything in game, have all the best equipment, etc.)

 

They had a psychological addiction, due to habit or a strong want to play it so much.

TB, the guy who made the video, basically said WoW is different from other MMOs because of the social interactions that go on ingame. It's necessary to complete the core point of the game (raid, dungeons, etc.) to communicate and maybe bond with people i.e. when you raid you do it with your guild and they're you're friends! He also says that people complain (a lot like CoD if you ask me!) about the game and still play it! Just because they get epic drops and eventually become happy! If people realize how tedious and slow things are, playing the game doesn't seem that fun at all (why I stopped playing MMOs altogether). But that really depends on the person! (I'm waiting for GW2 to be my MMO xD)

I tried to play WoW, but I couldn't enjoy it honestly. I guess it's not my type of game to enjoy. I think everything could be looked at as addictive if there is a person that is very passionate about that thing.

Same here! 100%, you might want to check out our GW2 thread! It looks like a promising game that you might enjoy (content scaling in GW2 means you don't have to be high level to do the fun stuff!).