MSTU 5510.005

Week 3: WoW

So, my not-so-captive audience, let me explain a little something I like to call Holy WoW! Here's the deal. A friend of mine, who I believe this blog is linked to, though if that's not the case I will make it so, who is now in Maryland doing his graduate work in theatre-whosits discovered a game called World of WarCraft. Now Paul isn't a big game player because he likes to get a taste of a game, but will soon lose interest. So he was playing this one game, League of Heroes or something like that, and somehow he gets turned onto World of WarCraft. Perhaps someone in his guild said something, I don't know. The point is that he starts playing WoW and is bowled over by it. He keeps talking about it like it's gods gift to video games.

So I play.

In fact, I started on Sunday. I meant to install it, play around with it for a bit, and then go back to my normal life. Instead, I played six hours with him mentoring.

A word about starting the game. Rather, a lot of words. Get a mentor. Have someone who has obviously played play with you, teach you the ropes, etc., because you don't want to be flipping through the 500 page manual they give you with the game. Instead, Paul was gracious enough to stop playing his level one-million warlock demon beast-monkey to help a lowly Night Elf Hunter. I don't know if this is a drawback that you really should have someone help you out, or if it's good because it forces community and relations and all that. It's certainly a lot more fun. Paul was patient, letting me know that typing /laugh will make me laugh, that I need to left click on an enemy to stab it, that I don't need to KEEP left clicking... etc. There's a lot to learn.

I'm sure that there are other ways to communicate through WoW, but we use Skype. In fact, I feel that the only reason I quit the other day was because my ears hurt from the earpieces. However, the game is so good that you actually go through these ear-stages:

1) Feeling fine
2) Ears feel the minor discomfot
3) Ears start to hurt
4) Ears feel like they are bleeding and about to fall off

I usually push it past stage 4 for as long as I can, which is about six hours I've found out.

posted by Stager @ Thursday, February 02, 2006