By Luke Smith

A faithful Kotaku reader writes:

"I am curious how you deal with your World of Warcraft addiction. I mean, how are you able to get things done? I am addicted. I find it hard not to think about, even have dreams about it. It's disturbing sometimes, and I have tried lots of things, like not playing except for certain days of the week, or limiting the time I play to 1 hour per session. Ultimately, I have found that the only thing that works is to let it run its course, and then uninstall it. Then I have about 1 month of freedom before I start to have thoughts of reinstalling it. Eventually, so far, I always have reinstalled."
I haven't uninstalled World of Warcraft, but I can relate to this reader's concerns. As a guild leader of an end game World of Warcraft guild, my playtime every week borders on embarrassing. Yet, some members of my guild play even more than I do, at a detriment to themselves. Addiction? Definitely. Am I addicted? Definitely. This isn't about conquering an addiction, that's trivial. It's about how to live your life with it.

Working at a computer all day, I would think it would be pretty easy to be distracted by Azeroth. There's always herbs to farm, stuff to get for the raid group, alts to level and twink — the sheer scope of what can be done in most MMOs (specifically WoW) for this addict, is the lure. Our guild consists of a lot of high school and college players, with a few professionals (if I can call myself one of those) and a couple of middle school-aged dudes.

As a result, we raid almost every night of the week starting around 7 p.m. and go until close to midnight. We take Friday nights off and then Saturdays we raid until early Sunday morning. However, I'm always on AIM while I play. Some evenings I'll get messages from Kotaku readers that I sometimes have to brush off with "Sec, pulling Chromaggus," and then get back to them after the pull. Surviving a WoW addiction requires the careful balance of real life and virtual responsibilities.

A great raider I play withrecently got into trouble with school, missing major tests in all of his classes. It's likely he'll be removed from school, all because of WoW. It's disheartening.

So how do I do it? I try to separate my playtime strictly into its own slot. Even though I work at my computer from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m., I put off playing until after work — and then I play hard. I make my work time non-negotiable with myself. But to be honest, my playtime does come with a sacrifice. I work, play, sleep for a few hours and repeat the cycle. I don't run amok with my friends anymore.

As stupidly obvious as it sounds, surviving an addiction to an MMO involves not ruining the rest of your life before you get over the game.

Are you surviving? How do you do it? Let us know, we're listening.