

Asperger's Syndrome vs. World of Warcraft: How My Roommate Failed Out Of UCLA - jeffmorrisjr
https://medium.com/p/391b20f58b6

======
saturdaysaint
[http://www.wowaholics.org](http://www.wowaholics.org) is full of stories like
these.

Thankfully, things like this dissuaded me from ever dabbling too deeply in
WOW. I actually remember hearing similar tales about Ultima Online and
Everquest back in the late 90's/early 00's.

~~~
cheald
If you're prone to addictions, avoiding addictive systems is probably a good
thing.

I played WoW for something like 7 years, doing the high-end stuff like the
high-difficulty PVE content and high-end PVP, got married, had kids, and
launched a startup while doing it. I quit because I got bored with the game,
and my interests moved on to other things. It's not inherently evil and
guaranteed to destroy your life. The danger is that it offers a relatively
quick and easy work-and-reward cycle, and can give you the illusion of
accomplishment. If you let that illusion substitute for actual accomplishment
in the real world, that's when you get into trouble. Having and keeping goals
is a great inoculation against that sort of thing.

------
dubfan
One of my dorm-mates in my first year of university was addicted to computer
games. My friends and I tried to take him out drinking on his 19th birthday
(the legal age in that location) but he insisted on playing Counterstrike all
night. Later that year he got into World of Warcraft. When he leveled his
character to the cap, he sold that account and started playing on his
brother's account. In the end he skipped his finals to play World of Warcraft
and failed out. I'm not sure if he was on the autism spectrum, and I don't
think he was.

------
mathattack
I'm waiting for an "And then what...."

Was this truth or fiction?

~~~
centizen
Though I don't know either way in this specific case, this is a very common
thing with postsecondary education.

Lots of kids are getting too used to highly curated, manually disciplined
classroom settings. They are used to the teacher reminding them that they
haven't turned in that assignment. The reason they don't skip is because the
school will call their parents. They aren't allowed anything other than
limited access to technology, because it's "distracting".

When they get to college, they just aren't ready for independence. Without the
nannie-teachers and the parents, they don't have a support system that can
point them in the right direction. Aspergers would have no doubt exacerbated
the situation, but I am not on the spectrum and have very similar addictive
tendencies that caused me to nearly fail my course as well.

~~~
mathattack
There are also complaints of incoming freshman being too fragile, again from
overparenting.

[http://southfloridafamilycounseling.com/blog/?p=60](http://southfloridafamilycounseling.com/blog/?p=60)

