-grammar police

You have to take those breaks. I find I can't play for more than a year.

Even a cursory google of your name will usually turn up something embarassing, especially for the under 30's who grew up online. And wrt this post, if you played WoW even a little bit, there is a post somewhere out there with your epic nerdgasm over finally getting that last set piece drop from Blackrock Spire.

Shutting up now and feeling appropriately ashamed.

I don't worry about that nearly as much as the fact that my mother reads what I write.

Anything for my country
Sir Ta-nehisi sir!

But this position is the equivalent of saying not to pass along anybody who drinks socially because he might be an alcoholic. That would be a stupid, foolish decision that would not indicate responsible management. In a culture that that has assimilated gaming, a smart recruiter/employer needs to ask more probing questions to determine whether the candidate is responsible with his hobbies, not just assume.

Is there some sort of rampant real-life guild-on-guild PvP going on? Sort of like the Nortenos and Serrenos only with those fake swords you buy at cutlery stores? Because I'd pay good money to see my friends working at Apple hitting each other with warhammers while screaming "For the Horde!"

One sad side-effect of high unemployment is that all of us will be placed under this kind of scrutiny, allowing employers to force all their life-style standards on the rest of us.

Companies should only worry about MMOers if they find a lot of Runescape installed everywhere.

Maybe we should all be like Jennie Breeden and just stick to LARPing.

I've got a friend in Chicago who, at times, refuses to go out or hang with any of his buddies for days or weeks on end so that he can WoW it up. Sometimes he lies to us and says he's busy with stuff to do for work, but then my brother once caught him at his apartment playing the game instead. I've got no problem if he's a Class 50 Knight Warlord, but it does have an effect on his ability to socialize with us properly.

Of course, I think the bigger issue for employees who lack focus or have strange sleep patterns because of WoW isn't that they are irresponsible. It's that they hate their jobs and would much, much, MUCH rather be questing instead of sitting at a desk looking over company reports.

Looks like it's back to work for me......sigh.

@Doctor Cleveland: Substitute "gnomes" for "blood elves" and you might be on to something.

"Kill my boss! Do I dare to live out the American dream?"

1) The guys and gals with 6-year-olds starting off at school, needing parent/teacher conferences on a bi-weekly basis?
2) The guys and gals who are football/sports fanatics who take every weekend to RV to their alumni for gameday? And by weekend I mean "all the days after Wednesday, and maybe up into Monday thanks to the 3-kegger tailgating hangover".
3) The guys and gals volunteering at their community churches for such things as soup kitchens, blanket giveaways, bake sales to fundraise for all these homeless shelters getting overwhelmed this post-Bush era?
4) The guys and gals working two extra jobs to pay for health care/mortgages/college loans?

Think any of these groups are giving "100 percent" at work? Think employers have a right to discriminate against any of them?

Both kids basically reduced me to zombie status for the first eight months of their lives as they were both breastfed and refused to sleep through the night for far too long.

I am also frequently called upon to miss work due to school closures (weather), school plays, music festivals, track and field meets, and child illness.

Based on my experience, no parent of young children should ever be considred for any position with any company.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/27/AR2008042702213.html

As a late thirtysomething who grew up just before the days of the web I'm often quite shocked at what people will post. Having made it through grad school to get a tenure track research job, I'm often asked by my fellow students a few years ahead or my students now about the job thing. One thing I say: Make sure to start cleaning up your internet presence a year or two BEFORE you plan to go out on the market. You can explain away a WoW habit or those pictures of the trip to Cabo with your old girlfriend if it was a few years back. You can't if it's last month.

This is even more true given zero-defect hiring now that the economy's down.

So how come you're the only Atlantic blogger blocked at work by Websense? Same URL, right? I assume you've done something dastardly to the link that makes me have to come home to read your stuff.

You go around killing stuff in true hack 'n slash style. Its nothing like proper DnD at all.