Can I wish the MMORPG genre as a whole never existed?
If not, I'll have to settle for World of Warcraft.
Addictive by design, too effective a time-waster, and certainly not fun enough to justify the previous two issues (not that there's no fun to be had, just not enough to justify the excessive amounts of time people pour into the game). The games of the genre are bloody dangerous, and will almost undoubtedly become one of the black marks of the industry as time goes on. The effects of violence is games are often overstated, but for some reason the effects of MMORPG addiction are overlooked far too often when it's more prevalent than just about anyone realizes (and there's a lot denial regarding the subject as well). The average time spent online for an MMORPG player each week is equal to a part-time job (a bit over 20 hours), and that even before you start to consider the time they spend looking up information and researching the game while not actually playing it.
My personal experiences with WoW didn't get me into (too much) hot water, and it's quite possible that I'm lucky in that regard. My problems were mostly that I couldn't stop thinking about the game, not that I couldn't stop playing it. I still managed to pass my courses in university, but it was painfully close a few occassions because WoW was too effective at keeping me distracted. Having quit a year ago, my marks have risen significantly (despite my courses becoming rather brutal in terms of difficulty; the leap from engineering analysis to engineering design is not a small one). I was even less stressed out as well, because my courses weren't a problem anymore and I didn't have any stress being carried over from when I did play WoW.
Bad games are one thing, but MMORPGs pose a very real danger that most people don't recognize it's a problem until there are some severe issues because of it.
