Breivik used World of Warcraft for rehearsal

OSLO - Reuters

This image, taken from Blizzard Entertianment’s website, shows the cover of an online game, World of Warcraft.

Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breivik told a court yesterday that he used computer games to prepare for his attacks, once spending an entire year isolated from society playing a game for hours on end.

Breivik, on trial for massacring 77 people last July, said he spent “lots of time” playing Modern Warfare, a first-person shooting game, and also took an entire year off to play World of Warcraft, a multi-player role-playing game with more than 10 million subscribers.

“I don’t really like those games but it is good if you want to simulate for training purposes,” Breivik said as he discussed Modern Warfare, smiling when asked about the aiming system.

Breivik, who once played Modern Warfare 17-hours straight on New Year’s Eve 2010/2011, said he used such games to simulate the police response and the best escape strategy. “I calculated the likelihood of surviving unharmed at less than 5 percent,” he told the court in his third day of testimony, referring to the bomb attack on government headquarters, when he expected to be swarmed by police officers. “I trained myself to get out of such a situation. That is what I was simulating.”