A coworker related at lunch today that he lost a job when he was in college due to his EverQuest addiction.

Anyone else have problems like this with online games?

Yes.  Lots of people.

My best friend lost his girlfriend, a real sweetheart that he'd been going out with for 4 years, partially because of Evercrack.

One of my friends at school failed his A-Levels because of it. He didn't get in to any universities.

Mind you, he's earning more than I do right now as a plasterer.

You'll catch up and pass him soon, Colm, I feel sure.

I'm avoiding evercrack for that very reason.

Yes.

I have a greater problem with CoT than online games...

I was stuck on Asheron's Call for 6 months.

Some days I'd play for 8 hours+. 

'course, this was back in 1999 when I had no future.  i'd just failed another year of university and was stuck on probation again.

it was before i had any idea that i'd become a programmer by trade.

AC got me through a really tough time, and I have no regrets.  I even had a pretty amazing online romance (with a person I never met).

If Colm uses CoT to slack off anywhere near as much as his friend did Evercrack, he'll surpass his friend in no time.

I used to have a serious problem with online games, and had serious problems in school because of this.

Then I just quit cold-turkey. Just thought about it and realised that it was better to "play" in the real world than to spend many hours a day in virtual worlds.