If you live in China and enjoy your online gaming to the point of
addiction, you may want to go to a clinic now. The Chinese
government is testing a system that would enforce a time limit that players could enjoy their MMORPG's, such as World
of Warcraft and Lineage II.
The system would work as follows: after three hours of consistent playing, the abilities of your online character
would slowly diminish until they became virtually unplayable after five hours. The player must wait five hours after
that time to play again, during which he or she could check on their
child, make
amends to their fellow player in person, or simply cater
to their own health needs.
It would be interesting to see if this works, but I fear that China will not be able to regulate those who buy
multiple accounts for the game, switching to another account after three hours on the previous. That may, ironically,
boost the profits of popular online games in the region. I
guess time will tell on that one – expect the system to be implemented sometime in October.
