A year and a half ago I was a serious World of Warcraft addict. Some days our guild would have raids that started at 2am and ended at 10am (I played on US servers), and I was there for all of them - sometimes 4 nights a week, often more. It was a tiring routine, but back in those days WoW was so compelling; online gaming doesn't get much better than 40 player co-op with friends.

My WoW addiction came to an abrupt end with the release of the last expansion, The Burning Crusade. Having several level 60 characters and gear that represented a serious chunk of my life from the previous year, it became clear to me that I was in too deep. I had a lot of characters to get to level 70. Gear that had taken me months of raiding to get had become obsolete within a few minutes of stepping into Outland. Raiding in WoW had been a complete waste of time and while I didn't expect any different from the expansion, I found it tough to keep on playing with the same level of enthusiasm. I wasn't...