Teenager goes into convulsions after playing World of Warcraft computer game for 24hrs



A boy of 15 collapsed and went into convulsions after playing the World of Warcraft computer game for 24 hours.

The boy had seven friends gathered at his house in Western Sweden on Saturday night to play the legendary video game.

'They played all day and all night,' his father told reporters.

The boys may have gotten a few hours sleep, but what little food they ate over the marathon session was eaten at their computers.



Then, at about 2pm on Sunday afternoon, the boy had what reports described as an epileptic seizure.

A world away: Scenes from the massively popular World of Warcraft. A 15-year-old boy collapsed over the weekend after playing the game for 24 hours straight

His terrified parents promptly called for help and the boy was rushed to hospital.

Doctors said his bodily systems had been thrown off: The combination of sleep deprivation, lack of food, and too long a stretch of concentrated game playing had been too much for him.

The boy is now expected to make a full recovery, according to The Times.



But his father did not take the incident lightly, warning the parents of the other boys present of the dangers of such marathon game sessions.



Last week the latest World of Warcraft installment, Wrath of the Lich King, was released in Sweden.

Since then, officials in the Game Over treatment centre in Linköping, central Sweden, have noticed a spike in calls from concerned parets, Svenska Dagbladet newspaper reported.



'It’s been a huge problem. We have parents who call everyday and ask,' a spokesman was quoted as saying.



Eleven million people worldwide play WoW, according to the game's American makers, Blizzard Entertainment.

That makes it the world's most successful MMORPG (massively multi-player online role-playing game).

For many, the game is a sociable alternative to slumping in front of the TV, but the release of Lich King has led some psychiatrists to raise the alarm about young players' potential to become addicted, Scottish newspaper The Herald has reported.



'Some of my clients will discuss playing games for 14, 16 hours a day at times, without breaks and without attending to their physical needs,' psychiatrist Dr Richard Graham of the Tavistock Centre in London told the newspaper on Thursday.

'For those, the consequences are potentially severe,' he added with startling prescience, hours before the boy's collapse.



He spoke of his concerns that such prolonged gaming could produce 'a sort of socially withdrawn figure who may be connecting with people in the game but is largely dropping out of education and other social opportunities.'



