A top shrink has come to the conclusion that World of Warcraft is really good for your psychological wellbeing.

Doctoral candidate and researcher Huon Longman said that he has found relationships formed as members of teams help players cope better the real world. Players apparently form friendships with each other, and while adventuring together in the world, fighting monsters and slaying dragons, they often discuss what is going on in their offline lives with these friends.

Longman conducted his study on the internet with the help of about 200 players from around the world. The average age of his sample was 26, with about 90 per cent of them playing WoW for 20 hours a week.

However it was not all wonderful. Longman found that a small minority of gamers who spent considerably more time online didn't experience the benefits of better psychological health. People who played for longer than 83 hours in one case were just basket cases, Mr Longman said.

This was because they were not receiving any more social support from the game and they were receiving a lot less from offline and they had significantly more negative psychological symptoms.