Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
World of Warcraft, four years later
I couldn’t help myself. The craving was too strong. It’s just to sight-see, I told myself; the memories of Azeroth were as solid in my mind as real world vistas. And Best Buy, like any good pusher, was offering my first fix cheap: two dollars for a fourteen-day trial.
I had stopped playing for different reasons than Jake. My son, if I’m not mistaken*, stopped playing out of boredom. For me it was frustration. My main character, She-Witch**, had reached the level cap and had progressed about one or two levels toward the New and Improved level cap. I’ve always preferred to solo, mostly since when I team with others they get annoyed with my slowness, and soloing had become damn near impossible. I got tired of getting killed. I got tired of watching my leveling bar progress only a millimeter per hour, or something ridiculous like that.
But over the intervening years, my mind keeps returning to various areas of Azeroth and I’ve realized that I miss it. I won’t be able to take the grand tour as I would like to do, since my now-level-10 hunter troll would get her troll ass handed back to her in many of the medium-level areas, not to mention the high level areas where I imagine a passing mouse would kill her with a tail-flick. But I can still get a taste.
The environment has changed in a number of subtle ways. Jake and I were wondering how a seven-year-old game would manage to compete with the better graphics of newer MMORPGs like Rift, and the answer is, they’ve been updating it. Not only that, but they’ve been tweaking the game constantly, so towns look different, quests have changed, and whole areas are vastly modified thanks to the Cataclysm (which I haven’t bothered to learn the history of at the WoW Wiki). Oh, look, southwestern Durotar is a swamp! Cool!
Some things never changed. I still get challenged to duels by numskulls who have nothing better to do. Don’t they know that it’s all about leveling? And grinding is still grinding and will always be grinding. But even grinding has its merits. Let’s see, I could be killing quillboars by the dozens or I could be reading article after article on Cracked. It’s all a matter of what you’re in the mood for.
Will I purchase a full account once my fourteen days runs out? I don’t know yet. Maybe. It’s a question of whether I’ll get WoW out of my system, or, as with any junk physiology, WoW will have taken over my system.
D.
*He hates it when I misrepresent him in the blog.
**The name She-Bitch (not misogyny, I promise — it’s a reference to Army of Darkness) had either been taken or had been deemed inappropriate. I can’t recall which.
*sigh* I so miss WoW, but I have no idea if the deteriorated vision will let me play, and even if it does, I can’t really spend hours motionless in front of my computer. 🙁
I hear ya. Karen can’t play because of the sitting-motionless-for-hours problem, and I’m having problems because I’m wearing old glasses that suck. Not as bad as your problems, but I think I know what you mean.