EQ was a big part of my failing college and losign a scholarship. Not the REASON, mind you, but its was what I was doing instead of going to class. I ended up with... 15 65's before I quit :( I owned a server's economy pretty much, and made decent real life moneys doing it. I would never do it again.
I've been playing WoW since October. I have a 46 hunter, 25 priest, 19 rogue, and i'm happy liek that. i play maybe 2 hours a day, when i get home, and most of that time is spent LFG in a city, talking to friends. I coudl be playing the whoel time, WoW isn't a game where you have to LFG all day, but I just prefer to sit and talk to my friends instead. I average 10-12 played hours per level, compared to 2-4 if i push it. Its about having fun now.
MMORPGs aren't evil, jsut some people that play them are emotionally weak. They use it as a crutch to get out of real life. That just doesn't work. I grew up -- some of them never will :(