The Daily Mail reports:
“A growing number of marriages are being wrecked by video game addiction.
More women filing for divorce are complaining that their husbands spend too long playing video games, according to research.
Of those wives who cite unreasonable behaviour for ending their marriage, 15 per cent believe their partners put gaming before them.
This has soared from five per cent a year ago, the study by Divorce Online found. In particular, disgruntled wives blamed World of Warcraft […] The study looked at 200 unreasonable behaviour petitions filed by women.”
The study further reported that an organised group of forty men had claimed they were all set to take on the challenges presented by Divorce Online, before realising that it wasn’t a new Asian MMO, at which point they disbanded and went back to World of Warcraft.
Reporting live for Oh MMO Emo News, I’m Melmoth Melmothson.
Further research found that “put gaming before them” is the wife code phrase for “won’t go shopping/other boring, pointless activity that doesn’t require him to be there.” This suggests that the wives in question are putting shopping ahead of their husbands.
Usually if I do a Google search on a Daily Mail expert quoted in one of their articles, I find they have a rather tenuous link to the subject matter. However, Wikipedia reveals of their ‘expert on video game addiction’
‘Van Cleave was born as Ryan G Anderson. He changed his name in 2006 in tribute to his long standing World of Warcraft arena team’
and that he’s the author of
‘The magical breasts of Britney Spears. Red Hen Press. 2006. ISBN 9781597090674’
An expert on video game addiction and divorce without a doubt.
Also, it seems Divorce Online offer
‘DIY Divorce
for just £65.00
Everything you need to do your divorce papers yourself.’
Now that’s a premium service I’d like to see added to WoW.
@Klepsacovic : If only the husbands could convince their wives to shop for MMO time cards and discounted MMO collector’s editions, then everyone would be happy!
You see, an idea like that is why I should clearly be president of the world, instead of just the moon.
@Saer: That’s some curriculum vitae he has there and no mistake. There’s a somewhat revealing interview on Grinding to Valhalla too.
Heck, World of Warcraft is pretty much the Las Vegas of MMOs anyway, might as well go the whole hog and add marriage and divorce proceedings to the mix too!
I will never forget the first time I heard (via chat text) someone say, “I’m gettting some serious wife-agro… probably better log for a little bit…”
After the comment was explained to me (god, I was such a noob!) I was chuckling about it for the rest of that night. Clearly the man didn’t possess the number of a good florist… RL noob.
You see the trick is to grind reputation with the ‘better half’ faction first, then you can usually avoid aggro for a good while.
I think ‘better half’ reputation is the first reputation I know of that constantly deteriorates over time, however.
The comments on the Mail’s site are awesome:
“I’d rather be “addicted” to computer games than lose my wealth and possible children to a gold-digger who is addicted to soap operas, fashion and celebrities!”
“Which is worse? Spoonfed reality using mind control techniques and propaganda via mainstream media or playing a game?”
“Ironically the size and performance of your weapon counts for even more on WoW”
Even more hilarious are the stories on the side. It seems that every piece of news happening today features a wag.
Ah the peculiar piquancy of the Daily Mail; always entertaining, in a ‘some people just want to watch the world burn’ sort of way.
I’m just waiting for the Daily Mail to reveal that World of Warcraft causes and/or cures cancer.
I’m not sure that’s really the Daily Mail’s style, they’d be more interested in the ‘World of Warcraft causes infants to murder pensioners for their gold teeth to fund gaming habit contracted through placental transfer from addicted parent’ angle, I reckon.
@Melmoth: it seems that they haven’t classified WoW yet. However, they do reckon that computers both cause and prevent cancer:
http://kill-or-cure.heroku.com/a-z/c#term134
So that’s that cleared up then.
As for your suggestion: I don’t think my little niece and nephew have been exposed to WoW yet, but when that happens, I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for any gold teeth and dead bodies.
That’s a Daily Mail article?
No TOWIE…no Vajazzles… Katie Price….no Lady GaGa….no weight loss/gain/photos without makeup…..
Damn, their standards are slipping.
@NowIamTree I was most disappointed that there was no mention of house prices either, or whether Princess Diana had ever played WoW… “There were three people in this marriage… which on the plus side meant we had a tank, healer and DPS…”