For freshman Alyssa Adams, playing the online game World of Warcraft began innocently enough.

"My boyfriend played, and it was one of the only ways I got to talk to him," she explained. "He would spend hours on there. I was like, 'What the hell? I like video games.' So I started, and it slowly took over my life."

Adams is joking –— kind of.

"I'd probably spend six hours a day playing, and that's during school days," she said. "Weekends, it'd be about 12 hours a day. It is disgusting how addictive it is."

Adams has since cut down her playing time — she only logs on a couple times a week, but when she does, she still plays for four or five hours.

She is hardly alone. More than 15 million people worldwide participate in Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG). More than 8.5 million are playing World of Warcraft, or WoW, according to a March announcement by Blizzard Entertainment, the company that developed the game.

In 2006, the Web site MapWoW.com declared that the UW had more students playing the game than any other university. This victory came shortly after another survey named Seattle the top city in the nation for video games.

In its online announcement, the editors of the site said the game's popularity at the UW is not surprising, given the school's reputation for game development and software programs. Combine that tech savvy with a rainy climate and our local lust for coffee, and it would seem that the UW represents an ideal locale for MMORPG enthusiasts. Despite the statistics, however, many agree the WoW community doesn't have a strong presence on campus.

"I haven't met that many people that play. I thought there would be more," Adams said. "Since they've remodeled Ian's Domain, I've been down there playing, and I've noticed that it's definitely not the most popular game. I figured it'd be a bigger deal, but it's really not."

UW alumnus Matt Lombard began playing the game shortly after graduation.

"When I was living on campus, I didn't really notice much of a WoW community, to be honest," Lombard said in an e-mail. "I had two friends who were constantly playing it, but I really didn't notice anything more than that."

Mark Chen is skeptical of the methods used by the Web site to determine the University's ranking. Chen is a doctoral student in the UW College of Education and is studying WoW for his dissertation. He points out that MapWoW.com is a strategy site for the game, and their list was created by tracking the domains of all the visitors to their Web site.

"It doesn't necessarily mean that the UW has the most players of any university," explains Chen. "But it does mean that the UW has the most 'smart' players, or maybe you could say, the most hardcore players."

Adams agreed that most of the UW's players are likely serious players.

"I play at Ian's because my MacBook is no match for the beast computers they have down there," she said. "I think the most hardcore players have a really good system. They're in their dorm rooms, or at home, and not at Ian's where I would see them. Plus, they hibernate."

Hobby or addiction?

It's that isolated behavior that has some experts worried. In order to progress in WoW, gamers must devote many consecutive hours to playing. For some, the game begins to eclipse reality. They may lose track of time and forget simple functions, such as eating or sleeping.

In August, a South Korean man died of heart failure after playing a MMORPG for 50 straight hours. Although the incident is uniquely extreme, computer and Internet game addiction has been receiving much media attention lately.

Smith & Jones, an addiction consultant firm based in Amsterdam, estimated on their Web site that more than 20 percent of all gamers could develop a dependency.

Maressa Orzack, a clinical Psychologist and founder and coordinator for the Computer Addiction Service at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, believes that some players may find a sense of community in the game that they haven't found elsewhere.

"It's role playing," she said in an interview with MTV News. "They are part of an organization, and many of them are missing this in their outside lives. They may be depressed, anxious or overwhelmed, or they may have attention-deficit disorder. Some of them take drugs when they're playing also, and that enhances the effect."

She went on to say that up to 40 percent of WoW players call themselves addicted, according to data gathered at the Computer Addiction Study Center.

The concept isn't unfamiliar to Adams.

"I probably had that for a while," she admitted. She has also recognized similar negative behaviors among her friends who are active players. She describes them as young men between 20 - 24 years old, some with degrees and most with part-time jobs, but none are enrolled in school.

"All they do is play that game," she said.

She has also witnessed some of the substance abuse that has experts like Orzack so concerned.

"I know many of them smoke weed, so they are permanently high and permanently in the game; they're just not in reality," she said. "And there are tons of people like that too. That game will screw you over."

There have been many cases reported in the media of players failing school, quitting jobs and disconnecting from their friends in order to dedicate more time to WoW. However, many others are resentful of the unfavorable image that this compulsive minority has given gamers in general.

Chen agreed that some gamers exhibit a harmful level of devotion to the game.

"If it affects your work or school or relationships with loved ones, then obviously it's a problem," he said.

But he urges people to think critically about the notoriety that gamers receive.

"Part of the problem is that video games in the media get a lot of bad press," he said. "Gaming in people's lives is going to be more and more of a phenomenon. With so many people playing, a few people are bound, just through statistics, to be violent people, or have any number of disorders."

The key is knowing your limits.

"It's just like everything else in life that people enjoy doing," Lombard said. "You just have to take things in moderation. Too much of anything can get you addicted."

Through his observations of players and personal experience, Chen has come to recognize the troublesome personality types within the gaming community.

"There are some players that are just there to learn about the game mechanics and efficiently level-up their character and get loot," he explains. "They don't care about the other people playing. If you look at that kind of player and addiction, there might be something there."

However, for the majority of gamers, Chen argued, playing is just another hobby.

"Before I played video games, I played a lot of board games," he said. "Any hobby or activity can become a dominating thing in your life. Saying that you're addicted to the game means that you don't really understand what it is about. The game is a social world, and you can't really say that you're addicted to a social world, because everyone is."

A reflection of reality

MMORPGs owe much of their appeal to the successful construction of a social domain. In addition to in-game chatting that is similar to instant messaging, WoW players can verbally communicate on headset systems like Ventrillo. Players band together in guilds or raid groups to perform complicated quests within the game, and over time, many form friendships. These relationships help gamers advance their characters and also encourage them to continue playing.

"You definitely meet people," Adams said. "It's like a really kick-ass chat room. I notice I don't play as long when there's only one or two people I can talk to."

Chen has been playing WoW for more than two years and admitted he would have stopped long ago were it not for the relationships he established in the game.

"Originally, you are attracted by the features of the game," Chen said. "But to last more than three months means that you've found people in the game that you like, and you're sticking around for them."

Pre-existing social bonds can also benefit from the game. Many friends get together in the same house or dorm to have LAN (local area network) parties.

"We did that a lot," Adams recalled. "It's really fun, especially if you're in the same guild. You get the human-to-human interaction, which is, I think, the goal of the game, eventually."

Reach reporter Sarah Anderson at features@thedaily.washington.edu.