My Response to 48 Hours

Last Friday, the CBS News Magazine 48 Hours broadcast a story about Everquest as part of a show about addiction. This broadcast showed such a serious lack of journalistic integrity and left so many questions unanswered that I feel compelled to respond. Clearly, in this case true journalism was set aside, and CBS instead came up with what they thought was a juicy premise and then manufactured the facts to fit, purposefully ignoring the multitude of other facts that repudiated their predetermined storyline. In doing so, they insulted and belittled the hundreds of thousands of us who play and enjoy online games and have no difficulty integrating our hobby into our regular daily lives. (I’m including the DAoC site in this editorial because there is no doubt that had they focused on that game, their premise would have remained the same). The title of their show was “Addiction”, so let me start with the word itself. All too often our media adopts a viable scientific or medical term and warps it far beyond its original meaning to the point where the term loses all actual meaning. Addiction is one of those terms. I am sorry, but Everquest is not addictive. Neither is eating, working, having sex, or any of the myriad other activities our press loves to call addictive. To call Everquest addictive is an insult to the many people out there who are struggling to overcome the many serious and valid debilitating addictions in our world. An addictive substance is something you need, not want, and no matter how you look at it, nobody needs to play Everquest. Playing Everquest is definitely a lot of fun, and some may prefer playing it to doing any of the other activities life may offer, even to the point of ignoring things society deems important. This is not an addiction, but rather a lack of self control. A man sweating with the anguish of withdrawal from his normal dose of heroin is addicted and in need to help to kick his habit. His body needs that heroin. A man who plays Everquest to the point where he ignores his family, job and life is simply out of control. He may want to keep playing the game, but he does not need it. There is a difference. CBS’s premise that this is some sort of evil game that sucks the mind out of its players and causes them to lose control of their lives is simply ridiculous. If someone loses control of his life, it is likely that he would have found some other way to do it even if he did not find Everquest. It makes for a juicy headline, but really is tabloid journalism at its worst. Even more tabloid journalism was the presentation itself. Is there any doubt that 48 Hours interviewed hundreds of people and kept rejecting person after person for being too normal or because the game did not have any negative impact on their lives before picking their eventual subjects? Even the player they eventually did decide to film hardly supported their premise, although they used every trick in their book to make it seem that he did. It’s obvious they had no intention of presenting an unbiased article and routinely rejected anything that contradicted the story they wanted to make. They instead wanted to shock the viewer and make him believe that there are hundreds of thousands of mentally unstable gaming addicts playing this online video game who are probably just steps away from killing themselves and who knows how many others. Obviously the CBS motto is to never let the facts get in the way of a good story. The player they finally chose to interview was a doctor who played Everquest about 20 hours a week. He seemed to be a fairly normal person with a normal family life. They obviously chose him because his wife complained that she wished that he spent less time playing Everquest and more time with his family. The implication was clear that this was an otherwise good and normal man hopelessly corrupted by this evil game. Funny, but I saw something else. Here is a man who manages to hold down a high pressure job, is a loving husband, properly raises his children and provides for his family. Yet CBS wants to excoriate him for stealing 20 hours a week of private time for himself, because he does it playing a video game and, quite frankly, they think that’s weird. They showed him sitting there fighting something in the game and then zoomed in to the reporter so that she could arch her eyebrows and look properly horrified that anyone would be silly enough to waste his time on something like that. “Look”, she said, “he even has trouble looking away from the screen when I’m talking to him”. Oh if only he hadn’t met this evil game, he would surely be the perfect husband and father. Let me add something up here. CBS sports is a very profitable part of their network. Watching two Sunday NFL games takes a good 7 hours. A single college game on Saturday is another 3 ½ hours and there are games on all day long. Add in a couple baseball, basketball or hockey games during the week and you can easily add up to 20 hours watching sports on TV for just your average sports fan. A dedicated sports fan would of course go much higher than that. I’m guessing if that was his hobby, 48 Hours would have never come knocking at his door. “Man ignores family to watch football” does not make as tantalizing a headline as “Man becomes addicted to evil video game”. I don’t see CBS urging their sports division to put a warning label at the bottom of every football game warning that watching sports can be addictive and cause you to spend time away from your family. His wife should be glad he is not going out to the bars every night with his friends like many other men and women and that he instead found a way to blow off steam that keeps him at home and available when she needs him and that comes at a relatively small cost. She was never asked, but would any of us be surprised to find out that the wife who is complaining so much about her husband’s game playing spends far more than 20 hours a week watching television or shopping. I would think just about anyone spends at least 20 hours a week on personal projects and hobbies. Playing golf, sports, television, reading, and shopping are a few obvious examples of activities people spend long hours at, but there are plenty of others. Of course that wouldn’t fit into CBS’s concept for the show, so those facts simply got ignored. Besides, they want to make him look weird, not normal, and pointing that out would simply remind people that this isn’t really all that odd after all. He’s playing a video game, so there must be something wrong with him. This is after all a tabloid and not a real news show. 48 Hours also interviewed Ben Stein about his son’s Everquest playing. I guess this was to show that even pseudo-celebrities like him are not immune to this scourge. (If they wanted to interview a celebrity, why not a real one who actually plays Everquest like Curt Schilling? – Oh yeah, Curt would have told them they were full of it and blown a hole in their whole false and demeaning premise). Am I the only one struck by Mr. Stein’s method of stopping his son from playing EQ? He sent him off to a boarding school where, according to Mr. Stein, they did not allow games like that to be played. After a stint of time away from Everquest, and not coincidentally away from his parents, he was suddenly cured. (and I’m glad we were spared the manufactured scenes of his son lying in bed at the boarding house, body shaking and sweating profusely, and mewing pitifully about “just one more orc, please just one more”). Well, Ben, why didn’t you just not allow those games at your house? If your son is playing video games to what you consider an excess, maybe you should just put your foot down and pull the plug on his computer. If he instead spent his time downloading online porn, would you have let him do that for a while until you finally threw up your hands and sent him off to a porn-free school somewhere? Who is the problem here? The teenager who plays a game to excess, or for that matter does anything to excess, or the parent who allows it? Sorry Ben, but don’t blame the manufacturer of a game for your bad parenting. Finally, there is poor Mrs. Woolley. It must be terrible to lose a son, and we all feel sympathy for her. But eventually she is going to have to face up to the fact that Everquest did not have anything to do with it. Shawn was a troubled and mentally disturbed child and had been so for all of his life. Something was bound to set him off eventually. Maybe it was indeed something that happened to him in the game. Everquest is after all populated with real people, and the inability to interact with people seemed to be at the root of his mental illness. It really could have been just about anything that brought about his suicide. The unfortunate fact in life is that sometimes bad things happen and there’s not much we can do about it. Blaming Everquest for her son’s death probably makes Mrs. Woolley feel better and gives her an outlet for her grief, and you know what? I really have no problem with that. Let her deal with her grief in whatever manner she wishes. What is wrong is for a news outlet like CBS to exploit her grief for the sake of their ratings. And make no mistake that this is pure exploitation on their part. “Satanic Video game convinces man to commit suicide” was just too good a headline for them to resist. The tabloid journalists who make up the 48 Hours staff must have truly started salivating when they thought that one up. So they hauled their cameras into that poor woman’s living room and helped feed her delusion so that they could broadcast it to the rest of the world and sell a lot of commercials. Frankly, this part makes me sicker than any other part of their story. Manufacturing facts to make up a false story you hope will bring big ratings makes you a poor journalist, but exploiting a mother’s suffering and grief from the death of her son for those ratings makes you a poor human being. The journalists who made their trek to the Woolley residence to get their juicy video game murder story were simply parasites feeding on that poor woman’s grief and delusions. I’d like to think that Susan Spencer, the journalist who did this story, has a little more trouble sleeping a night because of her actions, but unfortunately I doubt it bothers her in the least. It is sad to see that the network of the great Walter Cronkite has sunk to such depths. I had always thought journalism was about facts first and story second. Yet CBS managed to do an entire story on the supposedly addictive and evil nature of this game without displaying a single fact to prove it and by ignoring the many facts that disprove it. In the end they made fun of something they know nothing about, exploited something that should be pitied instead, and succeeded in nothing more than insulting the hundreds of thousands of people who consider playing Everquest and other video games a normal, healthy and enjoyable part of their lives. For what it’s worth, they also lost my respect and viewer ship. If you wish to contact CBS about this show, here is the contact information: 48 Hours 524 West 57th St. New York, NY 10019 E-MAIL: 48hours@cbsnews.com. PHONE: (212) 975-3247
Tags: General, News

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BOYCOTT CBS and the companys that support it!
# Oct 21 2002 at 4:17 PM Rating: Default
Not that I would watch CBS to begin with... but I'll be sure to keep that channel deleted from my TV! At any given time CBS will be loosing hundreds of thousands of dollars do to some pissed EQ players... hows that sound for a report?
48 Hours
# Oct 21 2002 at 4:16 PM Rating: Decent
The media is only interested in creating fear among the public; because then you will be too afraid to travel, trip, go to concerts, or do anything that the christian freaks deam "evil". Basically you should work like a slave, breed like a rat, pay your taxes, and give your kids up to the army and only aggro activities such as sports are allowed. Keep the masses ignorant and fearful and they are controlled... why they do shows like this and call it news. An old trick of the powers that be been doin it for 1000's of years. Why is EQ dangerous? Because tens of thousands of people are uniting, discussing, relating first hand information... very dangerous to their propaganda machine. Free your mind your *** will follow peace

Repition does not equal addiction
# Oct 21 2002 at 4:10 PM Rating: Decent
I think everything that needs to be said, has been said. For the fun of it tho, lets look at my daily routine and see how "addicted" I am. I am a 30 year old single father of a wonderfull 8 year old son. During the week we get up in the morning, I get him ready for school and myself for work. I drop him off at school and goto work for a 9 hour day. Afterwards, I pick him up from either daycare or his Tae Kwon Do lessons (he's an 8 year old Brown belt). From there we proceed home to make dinner, eat and work on his homework together. After that we either go biking, play football or basketball or even a friendly game of Monopoly. When night draws near my son takes his bath, gets ready for bed and reads a book to me before lights out. So between the hours of 7am to 9pm my life revolves around work and my son (uh-oh am i addicted to work and my kid?). After he hits the hay I wash dishes, clean and do laundry (crud, now im addicted to housework)and at about 9:30 or 10pm I log into EQ and play for a couple hours and/or watch tv/news (not on CBS but on NBC or FOX). Every other weekend my son visits his mother, in that case I go out and play gigs with a band part time, go biking or, god forbid, play a little EQ, except for Sundays, thats football day (now im addicted to sports and fantasy football). On the weekends my son stays home we visit relatives, go to a movie or just go out and play. Not until nighttime when he's in bed or evening time if he's having a sleep over do I log into EQ. I guess my point is, I do alot of things on a regular and consistant basis. You may even call it a rut. But with all of that I play EQ between 10-20 hours a week all depending on surrounding activities. I am offended by C-Bull-Sh** running that story without including those who do run normall, all be it busy lives and still find a way to enjoy this great game. In fact I know of some families that play EQ together (Dad, mom and kids). What was left out is EQ isnt ONLY about killing mobs (even tho thats a big fun part of the game for me). Some people I know play it to work the tradeskills and interact socially with others from all over the world, which I think is great. Or how about those people with terminal illnesses that cannot get out and interact with others, EQ is a great way to achieve that without being treated differently because of their conditions. I guess I could go on but I think ive ranted enough.
LOL, this was just great =)
# Oct 21 2002 at 4:09 PM Rating: Default
This was a great story =). First SHAME on cbs! I though such a bit and respected company would not go to such absurd means and tell such absurdly streetch stories /bonk! . Mabey working 80 hours a week means its attictive. (just a though) SUREEEEE everquest is attcitive.. Its how they keep customers. If the game proved to be boring and did not catch your attention or make you want to keep playin, the fine people at SOE would not have a job. anyways, im not wasting my time here.. its obvious to anyone with half a mind that this was all a bunch of bull.... Mith Marr will judge you all!! You will be brought to the court of truth in the planes!! makr my word!! (j/k lol)
Wolfofnight 25 druid
Arargorn 13 monk
isandor 8 enchanter
and all the rest.... Mith marr server =)
Getting Your Message to CBS
# Oct 21 2002 at 4:09 PM Rating: Decent
Just want to remind everyone again, that if you're unable to post to the CBS 48 Hours Interactive Forum, their server is either backed up, or totally hosed.

Use the Feedback link, and send them an email. It won't be seen publicly, but you'll still get your message across to the people reading the incoming email for 48 Hours. As previously stated, if CBS gets slammed by 100,000+ emails on their main server regarding their treatment of EQ, they'll take notice -- BELIEVE me -- they'll take plenty of notice. Especially their systems group.
....
# Oct 21 2002 at 4:09 PM Rating: Decent
Did anyone notice the fact that they said 20 hours a week was a problem? Thats not even 3 hours a day. I know for a fact they could have got better headlines if they picked the average player at 50+ hours a week. On top of that, he was in dl, 3 hours a day will get you nowhere....
Everquest and I
# Oct 21 2002 at 4:08 PM Rating: Default
just a little thing to say about EQ, I don't see everquest have such big impacts to my life as I only take it as one of my hobbies, I have played everquest for over 3 years and I completed my Master degree of IT while I have played EQ, I have no problem with reading and preparing for the exam, no problem with doing individual assignments and group assignments with my classmates,no problem with attending lectures. I only play EQ when I have spare time and always feel EQ is just something to make me relax not my life. now I finished my Uni and get a full time job, I can work mon-fri 8-5 fine. I still hang out with friends on weekend, have dinner with family absolutely everyday, go to gym 3 times a week, go shopping for food and do some house work.
My conclusion is people who lose their social life because of EQ and husbands who spend less time for their families are people who don't know what their first priority is, everquest has nothing to do with it. How the game effects you is how you react to the game. Everquest is just a game, it doesn't tell you to commit suicide, it's yourself who does, so who should be blamed? the game? Everquest is just a game, it doesn't tell people how to think.
PS: I'd rather let my children play EQ which is harmless than let them get into drug which is harmful

56 magician
51 paladin
44 druid
18 enchanter
The Seventh Hammer of Rathe
RE: Everquest and I
# Oct 21 2002 at 4:25 PM Rating: Default
I really agreed and I also don't care that my characters don't get some goodies because I couldn't attend the raids, my guildies know if I cann't make it to the raid then I can't. I have RL and to me my RL comes first.
I desperately wish those journalists would be more open minded and be fair to all points not just theirs
im an addict 2 :)
# Oct 21 2002 at 4:08 PM Rating: Default
totally agree with: Kasirein Stormseeker 50th Season Druid of the Tempest Fates {:inlove:}
Calirein 28th Season Paladin of the Tempest Fates....my army husband plays quake3 endlessly..is he an addict? prolly! but we do our addictions side by side :)

Escapists of the world, unite...
# Oct 21 2002 at 4:06 PM Rating: Excellent
21 posts
A far more interesting subject for CBS to cover from a psychological standpoint might have been: why have alternate worlds, whether they be in the form of video games, pen and paper D&D, SF/F novels, movies like Star Wars etc. enjoyed such a proliferation in the last 20-30 years?

I don't pretend to have a well-developed theory on this, but I have to think that people of intelligence and creativity have come together, whether consciously or not, to create such worlds, because in every other aspect of life, the safe, the middle-of-the-road, the blasee, and the normal are exalted as the only way of life. Our modern popular culture has become devoid of expression, passion, and value because it tries to appeal to a non-existent "mass audience". Popular radio plays only the most bland and uninteresting of the music that is available. Popular novels are re-hashed versions of older novels, except with painstaking attempts to make the characters all "grey". I won't even comment on television. And this way of thinking is not only restricted to the art world. The type of PERSON that is exalted above the rest of humanity in our culture is a person of middle to high income who has made a success of himself so that he may retire at a relatively comfortable age and have money to support his family upon his death. This is supposed to be HEROIC behaviour: that which is safe, responsible, and gives us good income.

It is no surprise to me that in this type of bland, repressive culture that people of intelligence and creativity should go "underground", in effect, and form, quite unconsciously, mini-societies devoted to exploring alternate realities where people behave boldly, passionately, have adventures and save the world from destruction from impending evils. Who amongst us has not had the thought: "I was born in the wrong age?" This is precisely the sentiment I am getting at. Such people need a forum in which to exercise their way of viewing the world. And it is also no surprise to me that those who are responsible for proliferating the blandized way of life (such as the news media) would be on their guard to do their best job of presenting any such devotion to alternate realities as "freakish" or "cultish", even to the point of blaming them for various atrocities such as teen suicide. The sentiment is something like: "This is what happens when people don't follow the normal life as we are presenting it - they end up alone, depressed or dead."

So what is to blame: the FORM of escape or what is being escaped from? I find it useful in my life to distinguish between healthy forms of escaping the modern world, such as alternate realities via science fiction/fantasy movies, novels and games, and forms of escape such as drug and alcohol abuse, violence against others, and suicide. To say that these are all the same, and that escapism as such is a form of evil, is to ignore the question: what is it that is being escaped from? This would be like saying that the result IS the cause: "Why did Johnny try to commit suicide? Because he was suicidal." Honestly, would any therapist who has any business practicing diagnose a patient this way?

I count myself LUCKY to have had the kind of life as a youth which exposed me to comic books, and movies, and books, and games which represented alternate realities with heroic adventures and characters that I liked and wanted to aspire to, rather than the kind of life which exposed me to drugs and street violence and depression, or, in more extreme nations training me to be a little obedient soldier. It was a life which allowed for my imagination to sore as it still does today as I approach the age of 30. To say that this is a destructive, abnormal, or freakish form of escape is to condemn the human mind for wishing the depressing, bland or horrific aspects of our lives to be otherwise. Well, I for one, am happy to be so condemned.
Couldn't have put it better myself
# Oct 21 2002 at 3:59 PM Rating: Decent
Well kiddies, that show certainly did suck. Good thing my fiance and I were watching it for a laugh (except the suicide part, which is not at all funny). If I had any faith in any news source outside of The Onion or the Daily Show, it is now banished for all eternity and shall never return. I was having flashbacks of the Dr. Demento skit about D&D. Who all remembers that one? :P
Silly CBS
# Oct 21 2002 at 3:48 PM Rating: Default
The game happens to be quite engrossing. CBS fails to realize the positive benefits of being able to spend a long time occupied by EQ. I myself was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease recently, and during chemo, the last thing I want to think about is where I am, and what is going on around me. I was able to bring my laptop with me, and play EQ to keep my mind off my situation. Addiction, NO. Distraction, YES.
cbs
# Oct 21 2002 at 3:45 PM Rating: Good
This was my email to CBS. Just thought I would share it here.

Your program about Everquest was such a one sided bunch of crap.

I am a 38 yr old mother/stepmother of 4. I have been married for 10 yrs and have a good relationship with my family.
I play EQ, my husband plays EQ and 2 of my children played EQ daily, my 2 other children played randomly. I spend prolly 40 hrs a week on the game, my husband and children average about 20 hrs a week. On the weekends we play alot together, not against each other, but as a team. We have so many friends online, more than I ever had in real life.

I was a shop-a-holic before EQ. I know spend 15.00 a month to play, instead of 150.00 to 300.00 in entertainment for myself and my family. That doesnt seem like a bad thing to me. In 4 yrs of playing I have more money saved than I do spent, that makes me feel good about myself. I talk everyday with other home-moms, I get emotional support that I normally would have to pay 100.00 an hour for at a counselor. I learn new and creative ideas on issues that concern my children, and I get dinner reciepts too.

I will use my oldest child as an example here, Mark played the game , he was at the top of his class in high school, he played Football, Wrestled and a couple of yrs of track, he also held a part-time job at KFC and the same girlfriend all thru high school. All the while he played EQ after school and practice and friends. He is now almost 21, he has had the same job since he was 16, he has had several promotions and now is a Manager. Mark works well with other people, his teamwork abilities are above average. EQ played a good role in getting Mark to acheive certain things. He knew that if his grades fell below a B , EQ was the 1st thing we would take away. He knew if he was too sick to go to school then he was too sick to play EQ. It also gave us all something in common in our family, we played together, and talked about it together. Which I think helped our communication with out teenage children.

My husband and I use to do alot seperately. He liked the Nascar Races and I liked the craftshows. So we would spend out weekends apart from each other. We both play EQ now, and every once in awhile he goes off to a race and I go off to a craftshow. But ultimately we spend more time together than we did the 1st 5 yrs of marriage. We have friends that we made together in-game and we have seperate friends. I personally prefer to know that my husband is in the computer room playing "The Game". Then off in a bar, or looking up **** sights. He maintains the same job that he has had for 14yrs and He is never late. He supports this family better than most husbands that have no outlet at home. He is a good husband and father, and we know that family comes first.

I wish if you were going to paint me as an addict, you would have at least shown the full story of how 60,000 ppl can play an online game and maintain a normal healthy life.

wtf..
# Oct 21 2002 at 3:45 PM Rating: Default
BS. they shouldn't be trashing EQ like that. I love EQ like I love junk food, it's my drug lol :) I met some very nice people on EQ and I am sad when my friends leave. what CBS (crappy bull shi... woops said too much ^_^;;;) said is SO stupid... I swear... I met my boyfriend on EQ yes true... and I'm proud to say it because EQ has brought me together with good friends and everything. This is a really great game and I don't thikn CBS should have fronted on it... I love EQ... so
/rude CBS
my two cents =D
Addictive?
# Oct 21 2002 at 3:43 PM Rating: Good
*
72 posts
I would say that EQ is somewhat addictive, but not overpoweringly so. I quit it for a year and then came back to it when I started reading about the new stuff that had been added since I left. Perhaps the guy who killed himself did have an abnormal degree of addiction to EQ, such that a problem that occurred in the game was enough to make him kill himself. Even so, that was HIS problem, not a problem with the game itself. Hey, maybe he played a monk. Monks just got hit with the nerf bat in a big way.

About the most negative thing I can say about EQ is that it is a huge time sink. However, the people that play EQ excessively would use that time for something similarly non-productive if EQ or something similar did not exist. They would watch TV or play their Nintendos or cruise the internet or go play D&D or something. Maybe a few would go do things that are productive, but most would not.

Some people play EQ when they SHOULD be doing something else, like spending time with their families. I think this is sad. As much as I like EQ, if I were married, I would not let it take me away from my wife or children. In such cases, if EQ did not exist, the person who puts EQ over their family would no doubt find something else just as trivial to take its place.

Also, when there are problems in a marriage, a spouse will often look for something to blame. They'll say, "My husband used to spend time with me until he got addicted to the internet!" They don't want to say things like, "The people my husband talks to on the internet are much nicer to him than I am, so he spends all his time there instead of letting me nag him to death and make him watch movies on Lifetime." They don't want to say things like, "I married a guy that cares so little for me he is more interested in a video game than in me." What I am getting at here is that nobody wants to put the blame where it belongs, on themselves or on their loved ones. They want to blame EQ or the internet or Sony. If Sony (buylegends)were putting in some kind of subliminal mind-control messages in EQ, then they might be to blame (buylegends), but they haven't, and they aren't (buylegends). If the kid who committed suicide did not play EQ, I am sure his mother would have focused on something else to place the blame, like the companies that made his medication or the doctor that prescribed it or the kind of music/television he was into.

The kid was a schizophrenic for crying out loud. Do any of you know what that means? Most people think of multiple personality disorder when they hear the word "schizophrenia", but the two are not the same. One of the things that occurs in schizophrenia is that people suffering from it may see hallucinations. These hallucinations are typically (though not always) of people or animals, often of a bizarre or monstrous nature (such as a walking, talking, rotting corpse or an eight foot tall hamster) that speak to them and tell them to do bad things like kill themselves or commit murder. I heard of one such case where a schizophrenic would see a horrific looking green man that would order him to go kill people. He never obeyed those orders. It is theorized that David Berkowitz, who says his dog told him to go kill people, might have been a schizophrenic. Some people suffering from this condition do obey what the hallucinations tell them to do and commit terrible acts. Some people actually theorize, based on the intelligent, malevolent nature of some of these hallucinations, that schizophrenia might actually be a form of demonic possession. I know that sounds silly, but the more you read on these hallucinations, the more you have to pause and think, "Hmmmmm. Could it be possible?" People suffering from this condition take medication to control some of these problems, but getting the right dosage of the right medicines can be tricky at times. They are not 100% effective 100% of the time. If the young man's medication didn't work quite like it should, or he forgot to take it or decided not to take it, then he might have become motivated to kill himself.
food for thought
# Oct 21 2002 at 3:37 PM Rating: Default
{:jawdrop:}I can honestly say that I did not watch the show. For one simple reason....I knew they would trash the game. (And the fact that I was playing) I am a College Student & Military Wife. Although I try to separate my self from the military life for reasons of my own. I do know when to say when and do not have to fight that one last Mob before bed. I have bigger things to worry about but yet at the same time EverQuest is my stress relief in the evenings. Because I am married to a Soldier in the US Army there are days that I NEED to log in and just talk to a friend in game. Because you never know when he (the soldier) is not going to be home for months on end. Turn to the Family Readiness Group (FRG)? Why so I can sit and listen to a bunch of whinning run home to momma wives when their husbands deploy? I think not! Who did they think they were marrying? The average person that works 9-5? When my husband went to Albainia I was one of a very few that stayed in Germany and didn't run home to mommy. On a lighter note.... I care greatly for the guild that I am in and when one of our members passed on from Brain Cancer you bet your bottom dollar I cried. For three days as a matter of fact. I remember her telling me that when she was in pain she and her brother would log in and she would control her druid while he typed for her. And she told stories of throwing bedpans.......He now plays in her memory. You get to know the people on the other side of their character. Who ever came up while the idea for EQ should be given the Noble Peace Prize or the key to every city in the world. They thought of a way to bring hundreds of thousands of people together. Different races, colors, religions, different in every way but we all share one thing in common.....WE ENJOY LIFE & know how to socially interact with people.
I could go on and on but we have all said it best...It's not an addiction, it's knowing when to say when....
Just my {:twocents:}
If any of you are on the Karana server feel free to send me a tell even if it is just to say hello.....
As always,
Kasirein Stormseeker 50th Season Druid of the Tempest Fates {:inlove:}
Calirein 28th Season Paladin of the Tempest Fates

~~~Friends are the silent angels that lift us to us feet.........when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly~~~
Seen Both sides
# Oct 21 2002 at 3:35 PM Rating: Decent
Well I must say my hubby got me hooked on eq. I use to fuss at him. but after a while I knew it was how he blew off steam. he does not play often now due to navy but I have been on both sides. I use to play a great deal but have cut down to a few hours a day and at night on weekends. I am avid about my eq but I also take my kids to movies, help with homework and do crafts with my kids when I could be on eq. but my time with them is more dear to me so made a choice. I wasreal bad when I first started but like may have said it is a choice you make. I still play and my kids help. hell they know some zones better than I do. my oldest is 11 and he play only on sunday for 1 hour. he also had to get b avg to start to play and must keep it. But my sone will also drop EQ toi go out side with his friends and will tell you that it is just a game. so this game is not evil maybe a bit addictive but as will all things the choices you make in life are your responsility and you deal with the good and the bad that come from them.
Seen Both sides
# Oct 21 2002 at 3:35 PM Rating: Decent
Well I must say my hubby got me hooked on eq. I use to fuss at him. but after a while I knew it was how he blew off steam. he does not play often now due to navy but I have been on both sides. I use to play a great deal but have cut down to a few hours a day and at night on weekends. I am avid about my eq but I also take my kids to movies, help with homework and do crafts with my kids when I could be on eq. but my time with them is more dear to me so made a choice. I wasreal bad when I first started but like may have said it is a choice you make. I still play and my kids help. hell they know some zones better than I do. my oldest is 11 and he play only on sunday for 1 hour. he also had to get b avg to start to play and must keep it. But my sone will also drop EQ toi go out side with his friends and will tell you that it is just a game. so this game is not evil maybe a bit addictive but as will all things the choices you make in life are your responsility and you deal with the good and the bad that come from them.
A letter I sent to CBS
# Oct 21 2002 at 3:32 PM Rating: Default
This is a copy of a letter I sent to CBS, I'm disgusted and that all I can say. One can only hope for a retraction. I am curious if Sony would take them to court for such slander.

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To CBS (in particular those who work on 48 hours),

You recently did a story on addiction and in it you brought up the topic of the online game Everquest. It, according to this special of yours, is an addictive and evil form of entertainment that causes players to get sucked in and commit horrible acts and withdraw from life. I'm sorry but I find your look at the issue and entirely biased, baseless, demeaning, and worst of all an exploit of a person's grief.
As a resonsible media source which people watch assuming truth and proper investigation are a part of, you are responsible to present an issue in it's true form. An entirely negative topic is not to be sugar-coated, nor is an entirely good one to be demonized. These are extremes into which very few aspects of life fall into, as such they incorperate in most cases both positive and negative attributes. This being the case they must be presented as such or the entire investigation, if you can call it that, is worthless as giving a shoeless man a shoe lace. Your story on Everquest as and addiction presented no opposing view. All that was shown was evil this, bad that.
It seems to me that what must of happened was somehow you got the idea that this game was in some way addictive into your heads and then had to run with it, nomatter what you found there could be but one conclusion, the initial hypothesis that is a part of the 'scientific method' of investigation that we are indoctrinated with from childhood. Whether the facts proved or disproved this they must be construed to give the illusion of proof. In a court of law withholding evidence is an incredibly serious offense, why then is it not so when a program that masquerades itself as a highly respectable pervayer of fact ommits facts? Transcending the topic at hand for a moment, how am I to know now that any political commentary or news from your entire organization do not incorperate such bias?
There is also the matter of what proof you have to present for the addictiveness of this game. What was presented in no way resembled proof. A couple cases were invluded. One of them a man, a doctor no less, who plays for 20 hours a week. Can you honestly say that there is no other activity than your job which you do or would like to willingly participate in for 20 hours a week? Keep in mind, while 20 hours sounds like alot, and why not it's almost a full day right, that over a matter of seven days it averages only about three hours a day. In this country most people watch more than three hours of TV per day, this is a fact that your organization is well aware of. Is the real reason you wish this game to be injured by your expose that it competes with your media for the viewers time? They see the game and not your adds? They don't watch as many sports as they could otherwise? I would like to hope not but given the bias this story has shown I can only hope.
The other case was of a mentally challenged/disturbed individual. This in itself lends credence to the arguement that this case is singular, unique, and not a fair representation of the player base as a whole. Furthermore it shows what a pathetic level of journalism you had to stoop to in order to get someone to support your views. The exploitation of a grieving mother in this manner is downright sickening and for it I hope that the concept of karma or even Hell are real because those involved deserve some punishment. That aside, this mother is hardly a credible witness to this 'evil'. Her testimony, if you will, is as biased as your own. In times of great emotion people in general do not think as logically or clearly as they should or normally would. At such times there is a phase called denial, this woman was more than likely at this point. She blamed this game for her son's death. The fact of the matter is that her son was not of sound mind and body before he started playing Everquest. She blames the game because it was running when he killed himself. He may have been pushed over the edge by something in the game, but he may have just shose this spot because it was the closest chair. We will never know. If somebody was found dead in front of a TV that was tuned to 48 hours would you then run a special on the dangers of it as a program? I think not.
I also must wonder why you chose Everquest as the topic of your ridiculous attacks. A normal; viewer is unlikely to know the game by name and be drawn in by it. However a player of Everquest, as I was, would likely take note and read a transcript if they could not actually watch the show. In drawing in these people then presenting a part of their life however large or small as evil, dangerous in such blasphemy you insult these people profoundly. You could not be more demeaning or, for lack of a better word, stupid if you had sent each and every subscriber a letter calling them every insult in the book with an enclosed photograph of your fist with middle finger extended. This I must tell you is a very poor marketing strategy and certainly does nothing positive for any esteem that they had for the CBS network.
In my eyes and the eyes of hundreds of thousands of people world wide you have just reduced your image and status to that of a tabloid like the inquirer only to be glanced at for amusement and sheer shock value. This is American tabloid journalism and media trash at its finest. I would also like to inform you that you have lost my respect and my support as a viewer through this one act because I take lying, misrepresentation of facts, and the utulization exploitation of unwitting people very seriously. For the people who participated in this scheme I wish you what's coming and for the woman who you used I wish the best because it's not her fault she was taken advantage of. I also hope she realizes some day that the game was not to blame because because life is unpredicatable and sometimes it's just not fair.
*************************************************

I urge everyone to send them a letter or e-mail, it only takes a few minutes and they really need to know that people won't take that crap or it will continue.
Amen!
# Oct 21 2002 at 3:30 PM Rating: Default
Good to see that i wasn't the only one who payed any attention.

The problem is that almost anyone who reads this probably never believed any of the things they said on TV. You should find some way to make this more public, so the people who don't know the truth can read about it and judge Everquest with as little bias as possible at this point.
lame-o
# Oct 21 2002 at 3:30 PM Rating: Default
this is the same as the D&D bashing when they had parents convinved their children could cast real spells and summon demons from the planes and because they were learning this 'witchcraft' they would go to hell.
the part i thought was funny was when ben stien said if sony looked into their hearts they would stop making this evil game. just because your son can't stop playing doesn't mean the rest of us can't. did you think perhaps his friends are picking on him? maybe there are other reasons he doesn't want to hang out with his friends. and part of the appeal of everquest is the fact you can ignore ppl if they bother you, they can't beat you up and you often meet new, interesting and nice ppl all the time.
you wouldn't have a problem if he was 'addicted' to studying or chasing girls.
why you ask am i sitting here typing this instead of playing eq? it's because the servers are down and because of PoP i expect to have 0 access for about a week. now am i rolling on the floor shaking? no..i'm a little sad, i miss all my friends i hang out with and who i can't even talk too atm. but i have other games and friends. i'll get used to it. though i do think it's about time they figured out how to upgrade properly and not leave us out in the cold for a week, this is the 4th expansion :)
oh and btw CBS, you should have just hired jerry springer to host the addiction program...would have been appropriate don't ya think? =)
ebbtide (can't find the pesky signin link<not that i'm looking to hard ;)>)
p.s. the grieving mother is the same lady who tried to sue sony not too long ago as being the cause of her son's death. she's the reason they put in the epelepsy (sp?) warning and messed with the graphics causing a serious depth perception problem in the spider camp in CC. she was probly happy they asked her, another way she could smash sony.(the problem is that no matter how far away from the ice rock formations you are fighting, if you can see them, the mob appears to be behind the rock)
Poor indeed
# Oct 21 2002 at 3:29 PM Rating: Default
After reading this article i placed a link on my guild's website so my fello guildies could read. This is the same cycle the media has always used to get higher rateings or for in most cases something to place blame upon issues like this. If anyone can remember back to columbine they blamed KMFDM the music group as well as the game DOOM as the cause of why those kids snapped. Which is stupid games have been arround forever they dont cause people to go beserk. They target something because the people who have lost someone or something has happend to them they are feeling pain and they want a reason or closure to why so they pick what they beleave as the reason to what causes this. Which brings us back the old old saying. Guns dont kill people. People kill people. Or in this case. Games dont kill people. People kill people. If a game controls your life so much that you let it run your life completely you should seek help. I play every single day but you know what it doesnt control my life, i do what i have to do i'm in college i get what i need to done and life goes on. A game is designed for entertainment not a tool to enslave the minds of children to they kill themselfs or others.

Once again the media has hit a new low.

-note These are what i belive dont take them in stone these are simple my views.

Thank you

Caffeinestrike Carbonatedaura | 57th Blackguard
Moments of Glory | Mith Marr

Get Out
# Oct 21 2002 at 3:25 PM Rating: Default
Scholar
*
75 posts
Here is my opinion on matters such as this. Get out. You couldn't handle yourself and got addicted to something, anything. Get out. I haven't the time or inclination to help you with something you did to yourself. Whatever addiction you have, guess who gave it to you. You couldn't handle life, the real world and sought a way out. Tough. Get out for real, or get straight. You put yourself in the situation you get yourself out of the situation.
____________________________
"Cheaters never win, winners never get caught."
RE: Get Out
# Oct 21 2002 at 3:32 PM Rating: Decent
17 posts
Written by a true idiot who is either addicted (to something)and doesn't know it or by someone who has never been addicted. If you are addicted you CAN'T quit, without help. Otherwise you wouldn't be addicted. *sigh* Sorry for flaming a flame.
EQ Anon
# Oct 21 2002 at 3:24 PM Rating: Excellent
Hello. My name is Phil, and I'm an addict... I played EQ for 17 hours straight yesterday. It was my day off and after a stressfull week in the Corrections (Prisons) feild I spent the day on Norrath talking to friends I would have never met and developing teamwork and communication skills. I know I should have spent the time watching football like a good american should. But I guess I am an addict and need help. (You have become better at saracasm [221])
thank you
# Oct 21 2002 at 3:23 PM Rating: Default
Thank you, I agree with everything you posted and thought you did a great job.
So....
# Oct 21 2002 at 3:23 PM Rating: Default
We all should know by now that watching mind numbing TV is much better than doing anything that would require a person to use their brain.

Whether it be Everquest, DAoC or the hundreds of stand-alone computer games on the market they all require the player to think about what to do next. Of course, CBS is going to paint a bad picture. If there are 100,000 people playing EQ - that's 100,000 people that aren't watching their stupid shows. Add up the whole on-line game market and it's a nice chunk of people that are doing something other than watching TV.

48 hours and other "News" shows are not News. Like others have said they are tabloid journalism. No better than the Enquire or other junk you find at the grocery store checkout line.

I was appauld at the Ben Stein interview. They tried to paint him as a good father. What kind of "good" father sends their child away to a school that "doesn't allow those kinds of games"? There's no law saying they have to be allowed in YOUR home! He couldn't tell his kid NO so he just sends the kid away for someone else to fix. Good grief - take the computer away from your child and be a parent!

Same goes for the mother that is blaming EQ for her son's suicide. Where was she, when her son started down the road to suicide? Where was she when he quit his job, left his family and stayed in his room for days on end? She needed to be the parent to her son. She needed to find him help years ago when he showed signs of mental illness. She needed to make sure he was doing what he needed to do to live a normal life.

The unhappy wife was a joke! Sure she's happy her doctor husband is bringing home the cash but the man can't have a hobby? The picture CBS painted of her wasn't very nice either. I feel sorry for the poor guy to be married to such a whiny, inconsiderate, needy, spoiled woman. She complains instead of trying to find a solution. Maybe if she talked with her husband instead of complaining all the time, they could work something out.

People today are so willing to "place the blame" instead of taking responsibility for their actions. People are willing to send their children away for others to "fix" and make normal. All society is doing is teaching people they don't need to take responsibility. Blame the computer game, blame the behaviour, blame the manufacture, blame the illness but heaven forbid you should take blame yourself.

Isn't there an old saying...something like...every time you point a finger there are 3 pointing back at you?

The day I no longer enjoy playing Everquest is the day I cancel my account. Where's the addiction in that?
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