For me games were a place that I could put my energy where my energy actually counted towards changing something.
Reality at school was that I had these extremely boring classes learning banal things and moving through material so slowly that you can't even remember what concept you worked on last time. It was so unengaging and unrewarding, but I was brainwashed into thinking it was neccessary and so I stuck with it and tried my hardest to take it seriously. Social life was similarly pointless, does anyone actually care about whatever is on TV or the latest gossip and drama?
Games to me were an escape from banality. In a game I could try really really hard and my results would be commensurate with my effort. I mainly played games that took real skills which you must develop over time (Tribes series
) and so because of this I was actually able to see results from my efforts. The results were only that I could beat tons of people at shooting guns and jetpacking around but the point is that these actually counted for something because they were measurable.
If I had a bad day my skill would go down and so would my results. If I wanted to win in the game I needed to be at my best all the time. It was this challenge that I enjoyed, that I couldn't get anywhere else.
In the real world, it didn't matter how little I tried I would get the same exact result.
Sadly these properties don't apply to modern MMORPGs since they are nothing more than treadmills and your power in the game goes up automatically with playtime. It takes no skill of any kind whatsoever, except tolerance for boredom. So WoW is like the opposite of a game I enjoy.
My gaming addiction was cured by the gaming industry because they stopped making good, challenging games. Everything they make these days is garbage. I would rather play iSketch and online Chess than a piece of crap like WoW.