A short history of my WoW

-you see a hooded figure approaching through the fog, slowly using a stick to push his small boat forward in the cavernous halls of the internet-

I've spent countless hours (well not countless, the /played command will show me my total play time in game) playing this highly popular MMO. When I first started it was interesting and kinda fun, moving through quests and the lush landscape of Mulgore. I eventually made my way to the capital cities, joined a small short lived guild and got to know the instances scattered throughout the lands.

My second guild was the one that turned into a small online family and is still going strong after nearly 3 years. They were the biggest reason I kept playing the game.

The playing got out of hand a few times and affected my studies and sort of threw me off track of what I had been focusing on, which was a career. At times I'd stop playing for a few months, only to start again at a much heightened pace of playing. Eventually I decided that next time I turned my account on, I was going to race to level 60 using a hunter. For this I needed help, so I bought Joanna's 1-60 Leveling Guide. It worked, and quite well. So I did again on my druid. This was before the release of BC, if I remember correctly. I think my best time was around 7 days of played time on my hunter.

BC was released and was an absolute blast to play. I tell ya there is nothing in WoW that is quite like discovering all-new areas. My favorite was the mushroom forest. Once I had reached 70 on my main character (a shaman), I was ready to raid. The rest of the guild was, for the most part, behind me on raid progression so I waited a few months before everyone was ready to give it a go.

I like 10 man raiding...a lot. We started going to Karazhan weekly. I eventually became frustrated as we only went once a week, so I switched my main character to another guild. In some ways it was a regrettable decision yet I did do a WHOLE LOT more raiding, and thankfully the guild leader was someone I knew from past times in WoW.

Playing this game went from something fun I do every now and then to a full blown "Let's see how far I can get through endgame content" drill. Once you get to the upper tiers of the game and progress through the story, you get into raids of 24 other players. That's better than the number of people they used to require which was 40, but you still get lost in the numbers and you lose some of the experience because of that. Probably the biggest downside to 25 man raids is waiting on everyone to show.

I've recently slowed down my pace a great bit but I still do the Kara or Zul'Aman thing every now and then. My goal now is to get 5k gold before WotLK, since of course the new mounts will probably cost 10k this go around.

This game has destroyed lives and careers and takes some kind of discipline on the part of the player not to get lost in this world. There's no doubt in my mind now that the game works like an addictive drug, and it was intended to be that way.

Crafty company, Blizzard is. Damn them.

I wanna be the guy...no, seriously!

I've been playing that insanely difficult game lately and somehow I'm starting to enjoy it (but FUCK YOU Mother Brain, you're going down.)

Update time. There are a lot of games being released in the coming months, and most of the ones I'm looking at seem to be coming out on the PC. That's fortunate not just for the obvious reasons but also for the fact that my PC really needs to be run through a gauntlet of new releases to see how much my performance decreased over the months as games become more demanding and PC components become obsolete (though many of us are aware that these said components are usually obsolete as they hit shelves).

Spore seems like it will be quite an innovative game. I've fooled around with the Creature Creator for an hour or so and found the possibilities really can be endless when it comes to customization.

Fallout 3...well, I don't know. This is my relationship with the past two fallout games: I bought both 1 and 2 and set them aside for awhile as I just did not get into it as much as I had hoped, though so many people had raved about the game. At this point in time the graphics in the game are quite out of date (though I am aware that this is not what gives a game its true fun factor), and besides that my two CDs have somehow grown a small hole through the data so that neither game will install. I'm willing to give this a chance though.

WotLK. IT'S WOTLK! Wrath of the Lich King, the next expansion for WoW, is due out in early November. I was kinda pissed that I didn't get to play the beta but, eh. So far there's a lot to like about this one. I'll be one of the first to buy this latest form of digital crack once it hits shelves.

I'm looking forward to trying Project: Origin as well, as I just recently finished out the second expansion for the first F.E.A.R. game. This is supposed to be its sequel, but due to some bullshit about rights to the name of the first game, it's not F.E.A.R. 2.

Lastly I'd like to say that Starcraft 2 had better be fuckeen arwsome. It's been too long of a wait to have to QQ over an unpolished game.

And I'll leave you with one last sad bit of news from this gamer's world: my Wii has been stolen. I know it happens, but it's not usually your roommate that does it. I was compensated by one of his family members later, but that does not take away the fact that I camped out in front of Target for that white brick. That was definitely a first for me. Thankfully the guy next to me in line had the foresight to bring brewskies and shared a tall boy with me. I did not sleep that night nor late into the morning as I simply HAD to try Wii Sports and the new Zelda.

It's funny though, because around the time it vanished I was considering selling it due to the seemingly lack of quality games being released for it. Yeah, very fucking funny.