Very similar experience here. I played Anarchy Online in lower secondary school so much it started to affect my grades. I started upper secondary school at the

Very similar experience here. I played Anarchy Online in lower secondary school so much it started to affect my grades. I started upper secondary school at the same time as WoW came out, and even though everyone else in my class and my best friend was playing it, I decided to skip it. When I started university, I was renting a house with a guy who basically sat inside playing WoW all day, didn't socialize much (other than us and our friends at the house) and didn't study much at all. Meanwhile, for the first time, I started being social outside the world of computers. That year my grades took a hit from socializing and drinking instead, but I don't regret that. They recovered the next year and stayed good. WoW really felt like a big threshold for gaming to me. I'd seen the same problems with Anarchy Online and other games, but nothing was close to the scale of popularity and level of addiction that WoW had.