One person in every six hundred and twenty five human beings on the face of the planet plays World of Warcraft. That’s over ten million players world-wide.http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17062 Recent studies show that at least 12% of these players display signs of addiction.http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/worldofwarcraft/news.html?sid=6162382 That’s an estimated 120,000 people who have an excellent reason to be reading this guide on how to quit World of Warcraft.

First, what is World of Warcraft and how does one become addicted to it?

World of Warcraft is an online MMORG, or in English a "Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game". Featuring a massive online world, ten character races, nine character classes and thousands of other players to interact with live on the internet while battling, questing or simply living an alternate life, World of Warcraft offers the ultimate escape to modern existence.http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/beginners/index.html

Studies show that the enjoyment and achievement one experiences while leveling up in the game, is no different to the brain as experiencing these things in reality, and causes the release of Dopamine. Dopamine affects the pleasure center of the brain providing positive reinforcement in the form of happiness, comfort and in large enough doses euphoria. Dopamine is responsible for many addictions and is integral part of the effects of many drugs such as cocaine.http://www.ane.pl/pdf/6738.pdfhttp://www.wowaholics.org/content/dopamine-and-wow-addiction

Taking this into account it’s no surprise such a large number of players find themselves unable to quit playing World of Warcraft whether they are clinically addicted or not.

The first step to quit playing World of Warcraft is to decide to do so. Being that World of Warcraft does have addictive qualities, quitting is much like beating an addiction even if you aren’t addicted. First you need to honestly and wholeheartedly want to quit playing. If you don’t its likely your efforts will be in vain.

Some good fuel for the desire to quit is to time your self. Take a brief span of time, say a week and track how much time you spend playing World of Warcraft. Many players are unaware of how much of their lives they are wasting in front of a screen. Once revealed it can be shocking.

Another great way to cement your desire to no longer play is to sit down and write down the pros and cons of your game play. For all the time you have put in (which you discovered already), what have you truly gained? What have you lost or missed in the real world during that time? What things could you have been doing? Chances are the list of cons will outweigh the list of pros as well as open your eyes to the better things you could be doing. This will be covered in step three of this guide on how to quit playing World of Warcraft, finding other things to do.

Once you are firm in your decision to quit playing the next step is to eliminate the temptation. The same way an alcoholic should not keep alcohol in the house and a gambler should stay out of casinos, if you want to stop playing get rid of the game.

Throw it away, give it away, sell it, even burn it, but get rid of your installation disc. Then uninstall the game entirely from your computer, every last trace. For profits sake you can also sell your login, password and secret question and get something out of your time. I specify this because selling characters themselves has actually been deemed against Blizzard's TOS; however wording is important when it comes to legality. http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Sell-Your-World-of-Warcraft-Account-for-Max-Profit-on-eBay&id=236957 If you don’t sell the account you most certainly want to cancel it and then possibly use the potato method of beating temptation.

What is the potato method? Go in and change your password, what you change it to is decided by dropping a potato on the keyboard so you cannot possibly know what it is. Simply open a note pad and either drop a potato on the key board or type random keys, this way you can copy paste a random key combination as a password. Be sure not to save the note pad.You could also have a friend change it for you so the account cannot be reactivated, either way is effective.

Some recovered players also recommend going in and giving away all of your items and gold and then deleting all of your characters as the time it would take to rebuild a high level character can be a negatively reinforcing point for not playing. http://ask.metafilter.com/60308/How-do-you-sell-a-World-of-Warcraft-account

A final and extreme step is to contact the financial institution you used or could use to pay for an account and have them block charges from Blizzard. This still makes the World of Warcraft free online trial a possibility, but at least the trial would be a short replace and require the long installation time.

Your goal is to make it difficult to play. You don’t want to be able to sit down at your computer and just log back in. The more effort it takes to play World of Warcraft the less will power you will need to not play.

The final step is to find other things to do with your time. Chances are you discovered in step one of this guide on how to quit plating World of Warcraft that you have been burning some major hours on gameplay. Re-explore old hobbies, get out of the house and meet old friends, stay busy and keep your mind from the game.

The same way many smokers say that the first week is the hardest; the first week is the hardest when it comes to stopping playing World of Warcraft. It’s become a habit, a part of your every day routine and you’ll need to break and create a new routine to effectively quit playing.

The sky is the limit on things you could be doing other than playing, but what will work for you will vary on your interests. The one thing that is not really recommended is simply switching to a different MMORPG. That would be a bit unproductive. If role playing is what you crave consider games like Dungeons and Dragons that require human interaction, thought and creativity.