You can’t fail to have heard of the massively multiplayer (and massively popular) online game World of Warcraft. It’s been around for some time now, and has been keeping many people enthralled for hours as they hack and slash their way through legions of Orcs and the like. Recently, there was even an in-game memorial service held at a cathedral in the game world so that hundreds of players could pay their respects to other departed players.

However, this memorial took on a special significance in the case of the player known as Snowly, a girl from China. During a week long national holiday she played the game non-stop for three days with barely a break. During this time she started to complain of feeling exhausted, but rather than stop and rest she was so consumed by the game she kept playing until she died. I’m not talking about her in-game character either, but literally Snowly herself keeled over and died!

To make things worse Snowly isn’t the only person to die in such a manner. A few weeks after her death another player called Thereafter also died in a similar manner. I don’t wish to appear heartless, but the mind boggles as to how anybody could possibly ever allow such a thing to happen to themself. You’d think the urge to sleep, drink or visit the toilet would kick in and be much stronger than any urge to play a video game!

Now, this site may well be called Game Addicts, but even we can’t condone the frankly over-the-top addictions of some players. To combat such problems in future, many online games are set to introduce a time limit of around three hours of gameplay before you are told to log off. I do feel it’s a shame things have to come to this, but I suppose it shows just how stupid some people can be! It certainly puts a different spin on the phrase “play a game to death”. Sorry, sick joke, but couldn’t resist that

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