Maybe I should just go ahead and start a gaming blog...
My name is Blake Wilson and, it’s been half a year since I’ve played “World of Warcraft.”
If you’re reading a blog like this, you probably have played the game or at least know the basics. You level up, complete quests and raid, with bouts of farming and mind-numbing reputation grinding to support your adventures. Most MMPORGs have the unending drive to get better armor and cooler-looking weapons, as well as the social aspect of working with other players to take down raid bosses. What distinguishes WoW from games such as Everquest and Eve Online is the relative easy of entry, smooth progression, stylized presentation and the addictive qualities of popping bubble-wrap.
It’s this addictiveness that’s the rub. I can more or less guarantee that WoW players all have at least one moment of shame worth talking about- from flying into nerd rage over loot distribution, spending more time with in-game friends than living, breathing ones to putting off important dates/anniversaries/work deadlines in order to keep playing. It’s a game that ruins lives, marriages and is the cause of a number of deaths in Korea to date.
My own story takes place in Molten Core, where I got my first epic item. What seemed like a minor inconvenience at the time was that in real-life, I was amazingly hangover and playing with a bucket next to my computer in case I had to puke during the raid. I remember thinking at the time that I couldn’t back down from my commitment and that without me the raid would be down one healer. This was more important than staying in bed until I could hold down breakfast.
It’s this social aspect that drives the game at its best and makes it insufferable at its worst. It’s not hard to find a guild of like-minded people in game, and even the most boring aspects of the game are fun when joking around with friends over Ventrillo.
I first got interested in the game in 2005 or so, after seeing the box at a friend’s house and reading up about it on the web. It was not long until it had started to consume most of my available free time. I essentially gave up all other video games and TV in the first few months, and by the time I was preparing for my first trip to Japan it was biting into my reading and writing moments too.
This was all before the first expansion, and things were a lot more difficult and brutal than they are now. The grind up to the-then final level took months of repetitive game play that would have driven me away faster than real work had I not fallen in with a bunch of good people. I was also playing a Paladin at the time, which was barely useful in a raid and not even that outside of one. Most of my enjoyment of the game at that time came from talking to and playing with my friends and guildmates, who were witty, generous and wielded phat loots.
My separation from the game began in late 2006. Before this, I would never have said that I was hardcore or l33t. When a game involves spend more time looking at spreadsheets of item drops and auction values than killing things, even I can walk away. It’s the main reason I’ve never gotten into EVE Online, despite many of the crazy stories I regularly hear coming out of that game. I think a more apt phrase for me would have been “dedicated, but not particularly good.” I would regularly finish my night job, then go home and play until 8AM the next morning. After a few hours of sleep, I was ready to go to my afternoon job and continue the cycle. I didn’t get very far into the end game content before the aforementioned great bunch of people turned into a squabbling gaggle of children and the guild collapsed around me.
After this, I kind of lost heart. I was also planning to move to Japan to start work and a new life. When I did finally make it to the island chain responsible for 10% of the world’s coolest things and 50% of the most bizarre, screwed up stuff, I was unable to have a computer of my own or an internet connection for a period of seven months. In that time I began dating the girl I would one-day marry, travel the length and breadth of central Honshu, meet new people and on occasions too frequent to be good for my health, be drunk under the table by them. Yet despite this, I still hungered for my online fantasy adventure even in the midst of my real life one.
I finally got back into the game in July of 2007. The group of people I once played with had moved on, and my character was still where he had been when I was packing my bags to move. I sought a fresh start by joining a new guild with a new level one character, but the close-knit fellowship I had experienced before was gone. Some of it may have been that they were level 70 and I was starting all over again, or perhaps I had already gotten too used to concentrating time better spent on gaming on such trivial things as relationships and career. For my second run through the game, I was essentially playing a massively-online multiplayer game by myself.
Fast forward this chain of events to a year and a half later. The “Wrath of the Lich King” expansion was out, the content had never been better and I was already level 80. However, I would regularly log on and spend the next few hours riding or flying around the landscape, playing purely out of habit. The game had lost its spark for me, and it had done so a while ago. I hadn’t even peeped inside the previous game’s content, let alone the newer stuff. I checked my friends list and saw that most of the characters listed could no longer be found, either deleted or transferred somewhere most exciting than a role-playing server.
The party was over, but I was the poor sap who was still drinking in the corner by himself.
One of my favorite quotes is that “It’s easy to quit WoW; I’ve done it 20 times already!” I have had smaller breaks before, when work or real life became too persistent to ignore. I was inevitably pulled back in by nostalgia, new content or the lack of any better alternative thing to do. However, this time I’ve been clean for more than half a year and of my own free will too. I’ve boot camped my Mac in order to catch up on all the great games I’ve missed since 2005, such as the Half Life 2 series, Portal, Peggle, Left 4 Dead amongst others. But most of all, as a married man I don’t have the time or energy to stare at a computer screen until 4:40 in the morning, surrounded by half empty cups of coffee, bread crumbs and a phone that no longer rings.
This is Blake, formely Buzwell, signing off
posted by Blake Wilson @ 4:55 pm
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