Fair game?(online gaming)

Byline: Adam Fifield

PHILADELPIA _ There are other worlds out there - violent, virtual domains where residents hurl lightning bolts at giant, dog-headed beasts and wield glittering swords during heroic quests that make the real world pale.

Online interactive role-playing games such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft draw millions into their byzantine realms and complex social orders. Some become so enthralled that mental-health professionals are seeing patients who play as much as 70 hours a week, neglecting school, work, even marriage.

What is an innocuous passion for many players is coming under increased scrutiny by therapists, and even gamers, as a potentially dangerous addiction.

Maressa Hecht Orzack, director of the Computer Addiction Studies Center at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., hears from five or six people a day looking for treatment or information related to obsessive online game-playing.

They are "so used to living in a virtual world, they don't know how to connect" in real life, said Orzack, who is on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. "I've seen more and more people who are so involved in this that they can't put it down."

"It was really ruining my life," Bryan, 25, said of his self-described addiction to World of Warcraft, the industry's top-selling "massively multiplayer online role-playing game."