It was an hour before midnight, three hours into the night shift with nine more to go. At his workstation in a small, fluorescent-lighted office space in Nanjing, China, Li Qiwen sat shirtless and chain-smoking, gazing purposefully at the online computer game in front of. The screen showed a lightly go mountain terrain, studded with castle ruins and grazing deer, in which warrior monks milled. Li, or rather his staff-wielding wizard character, had been slaying the enemy monks since 8 p. Twelve hours a night, seven nights a week, with only two or three nights off per month, this is what Li does — for a living. More than eight million people around the world play World of Warcraft — approximately one in every thousand on the planet — and whenever Li is logged on, thousands of other players are.