Stranger Things Star David Harbour Says World of Warcraft “Ruined” His Life

Stranger Things fans should be no strangers to seeing Dungeons & Dragons referenced all throughout the show, but as it turns out, actor David Harbour who portrays Jim Hopper was apparently really big on another hit game at one point: World of Warcraft. Harbour spoke about his self-diagnosed addition to the game recently during a Netflix Geeked Week event and shared his account of playing the MMO relentlessly until The Sims of all things provided him some unexpected introspection.

During an after-the-show program for the latest season of Stranger Things, Harbour talked about his WoW addiction by recounting details about his playstyle and even the specific year that he played during which he was “wildly addicted.”

“In 2005, I played the s–t out of this game,” Harbour said. “It ruined my life for like a year. I mean, I was like out of my mind.”

“I was a Night elf warrior called Norad, and he was second tank of my whole guild,” Harbour continued while adding that he was all about some raids back when he played.

Overplaying games like WoW is something people can likely relate to pretty easily, but in Harbour’s case, it was a different game that presumably helped him snap out of it. He was playing The Sims (he didn’t specify which one) and said that he had an avatar in the game who was an actor. He kept instructing his avatar to work on traits relevant to that job, but all his person wanted to do was play games.

“You have to work on your speech and on your body, right? But I remember my avatar got to a certain level in his career, and I kept trying to get him to work on his speech – he was like a supporting player – but I wanted him to work on his speech and his body, and all he wanted to do was sit around and play video games, and I kept being like, and then I was like, had this vortex moment where I saw my life before my–”

Harbour joked that’d he’d done alright since then and that he “came back” from his time with WoW.