Drew, who asked to have his last name kept anonymous, was a senior in high school when World of Warcraft was announced in 2001, though the game wouldn’t ship until 2004. At the time, Drew’s parents limited his game time to two hours per day, but like a lot of kids, he found ways around it. He would lie to his parents about how much he’d played, and resorted to elaborate schemes to stay connected to the internet. One time, Drew dangled an ethernet cord from one window of the house to the basement.

World of Warcraft was not Drew’s only addiction. There was alcohol, food, and smoking, too, but World of Warcraft went on for so long, and was so all encompassing. It still casts a shadow, years later, after he’s managed to get so many of his addictions under control. He lost two jobs over the game. His health fell into disarray. Friendships would come and go.

World of Warcraft arrived at the same time Drew went to college, a moment in the lives of a lot of young adults where, for the first time, they’re granted extraordinary freedom. At first, World of Warcraft was like anything else, a hobby to fill the time. It sat alongside his decent grades, and an active social life. But the summer of 2005 is when it started going downhill.

In late August, Blizzard succumbed to years of demands from fans desperate for a way to play World of Warcraft, the company’s genre-defining online RPG, in its original form. With World of Warcraft Classic, the game operates exactly how it did in 2004, a time when World of Warcraft didn’t just become a beloved video game, but a legitimate obsession. And for some, that obsession ran deeper, an addiction that ruined lives and relationships. As World of Warcraft Classic neared, one response I saw on social media, over and over, was tangible anxiety, with the mere discussion of World of Warcraft sending some people to a dark place.

By the end of the summer, he got what he wanted, but the journey was harrowing.

“Have you ever seen those game shows where everyone has to put their hand on a car, and the last person to remove it wins the car?” he said. “Or a bunch of people have to stay on a roller coaster, and the person who stays on longest wins $10,000? Those aren't really contests of skill, but will—a contest of endurance. Whoever has the most free time wins.”

Drew decided he wanted to achieve the rare “High Warlord PVP” title, part of World of Warcraft’s in-game achievements. They’re ultimately meaningless digital trophies, having zero impact on the moment-to-moment of playing the game, but part of the appeal of shared online experiences is being finding ways to stand out, whether cosmetically or with a trophy.

“I ordered pizza delivery every day and only left my room to use the bathroom and very occasionally shower,” he said. “I only left the house for extremely brief intervals to make quick trips to the grocery store and to buy cigarettes.”

For weeks at time, Drew was spending more than 20 hours per day playing World of Warcraft. His summer was specifically designed to accommodate this. He asked a professor to grant him an “independent study” for credit that would require minimal effort to complete. Everyone in his life—friends, family, girlfriend—were told he was spending the summer at his computer working on that study. In reality, he was grinding away.

To understand what Drew wanted to achieve here will take your breath away. Achieving the High Warlord PVP title required no skill. You did not have to be good at PVP, or player vs. player combat, to achieve it. It was a time sink, a massive time sink that required weeks of daily investment. A “high score” only means you spent more time than the person under you, and the amount of time required to achieve it is staggering to the point of being unbelievable. In 2009, one player on the popular World of Warcraft wiki Wowhead talked about playing PvP all day, every day for six straight months , cutting back on sleep, and regulating their meal times to no more than 10 minutes.

When I put out an open call for people to share anxieties about World of Warcraft Classic, some of the stories I heard, like Drew's, were horrifying. One person wasn’t there for the final moments of their pet’s life, who was experiencing a seizure nearby, because their “ass was busy raiding Naxxramus.” Their parents took the dog to be put down later, an event they did not attend because they were still raiding in Naxxramus. Later, still in the raid, they cried.

For Drew, there was no big moment when he “quit." He can’t even remember the last time he logged on. But as he got older, the weight of pointless in-game accomplishments ate at his psyche. He wanted relationships, better health, and to pay off his student debt.

“It’s difficult to describe the level to which it overtook my life,” he said. “I often recount to people that I ‘lost’ about eight years to World of Warcraft from 2004-2012, when I finally gave it up for good.”

Things are better for Drew now. He has a fiance, a house, his own business, and only on occasion does he pick up _World of Warcraf_t, mostly to check out the new expansion content. It hasn’t been a problem. He does, however, smile when Blizzard reports the player base for the game has dwindled over the years. In his mind, it means fewer people can get hurt by it.

“Were they aware then that they had a serious addiction problem on their hands—that their gameplay design was causing real harm?” he said.

“I ordered pizza delivery every day and only left my room to use the bathroom and very occasionally shower. I only left the house for extremely brief intervals to make quick trips to the grocery store and to buy cigarettes.”

Most people know someone who’s said they were “addicted” to World of Warcraft, a game that, by design, demanded hundreds of hours to experience everything it offers, a game where grinding was the point, not an exception. But there’s saying you’re addicted, an exaggerated way of suggesting you’ve played a lot, and legitimately being addicted, when it becomes a priority over everything else. World of Warcraft is the kind of game that inspired places like Wowaholics Anonymous, where people shared experiences about trying to quit. Their website has closed, but Wowaholics Anonymous has an active community on Reddit.