The designers of Achaea, one of the biggest online text-based games, have recently introduced a virtual addictive drug -- known as gleam -- as part of a story line in which a crime ring has been attempting to infiltrate the game's cities. And some players can't take it fast enough.

"What we wanted to do with gleam was we wanted to see how the player base would react to something that's pretty bad," said Matthew Mihaly, the CEO of Achaea publisher Iron Realms Entertainment. "It's really nasty. We didn't tell them it was addictive.... (Non-player characters) showed up and said, 'Hey, I've got this stuff here, wanna try it?' Being new, they pounced right on it."

Achaea characters who take gleam get hooked quickly -- suffering typical addiction symptoms: violent vomiting, shivering, irrational sobbing, begging for the drug and even overdoses resulting in death. Some of the game's players are angry about gleam's introduction into their world.