So much has been going on lately -- it will take more than one post to catch up. I will do two today and go from there.
First of all, Shiblon. He isn't a rogue, like I said in my last post. He is a warrior. Big difference. I think I said rogue becuase that is what I originally chose but then I changed my mind at the last moment.
It turns out that starting to play World of Warcraft is like taking the red pill. I had no idea how deep the rabbit hole went. Holy cow!
I started playing for two reasons. One is that I finally got tired of playing solitaire. I had gotten pretty good at Spider, I could win about 1 of every 4 or 5 deals at the most difficult level. Each game took at least 15 minutes to play. Also I was getting good at Freecell too. I could win up to 25 to 30 games in a row before losing. After losing a game I woud reset the win stats and start again -- trying to hit 100 games in a row. Wat a waste of time! I figured that as long as I was wasting time, I may as well waste it on a different game becuase Solitaire was getting old.
The second reason is because some ex-coworkers that I enjoy hanging around with are playing the game also. And my two younger sons (by younger, they are 20 and 23) play the game. By playing too, I would have more in common to talk about. And it seemed mildly interesting. I hadn't played much of other games since the Neverhood (about 7 yrs ago), and Space Quest (about 14 yrs ago). I wanted to see how much games had progressed.
Turns out, this game is like nothing I had ever imagined. Your character starts out pretty weak. You have him move around the world using your mouse or cursor keys. It is like you are moving around inside a cartoon world, where the cartoon graphics are very sophisticated. Like a Pixar movie type of world. You walk (or trot) around the country, talking to other characters that are part of the game. These characters give you quests. Things like “deliver this letter to so and so”, or “kill 8 troggs”. Over time you gain experience points and after you get enough you are raised to a new level. This makes you stronger. You get to “loot” the things you kill and get money or items. You get more armor, better weapons, etc. as you loot, or you can buy them with your money. Pretty cool.
But then, there is a whole nuther dimension to this game, which totally blew me away. My first night in the game, I was walking down a road and came across a group of characters sitting around a campfire. I was not familiar enought with the game to know if they were computer generated or not. I walked up and typed "/say Hi there". The /say command puts a comic strip style bubble over your character's head with the words in it. One of the guys at the campfire said hi, and started introducing the others. I thought this was pretty good AI, so I wanted to see just how good it was. I said "Are you real or are you Memorex?". One of them said "Memem...". Another said "Huh?". Then I said "Oh that's from a TV commercial that played in the 80's". One of them said "I was born in the 80's". Whoa!!! These were real people. I said that this was my first night on the game and I was off to find some Troggs. They said bye and good luck.
Amazing! I know this game was a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (or MMORPG for short). But I didn't realize how significant this was. This is a social game. As you are running around you see other people running, jumping, dancing, whatever. They are controlled by real people sitting at their keyboards in another part of the city, state, country, or world. You can interact with anybody. You can team up to work together on a quest. You can challenge them to a duel. You can trade with them, ask for or give advice, whatever. Most of the people are friendly. Some are jerks. You can set up a friends list and converse with those friends whenever they are online. Eventually you may make friends with them in real life.
So you enter the game and you are carried into another world -- kind of like the Matrix. It is a meta-verse. You join a guild, they help you along. You join parties where you pool your strengths to beat common enemies. More about this later.
So far I have spent at least 150 hours in this game in the past 3 1/2 weeks. And when I am not in the game I think about it a lot, and I discuss it with my friends and kids. There have been some news reports about people who obsess with the game, and spend most of the day in it. Some kids have dropped out of school, lost girlfriends, etc. I can see why. People who are prone to obsessing with anything (such as golf, bars, etc.) can be dragged into this as well.
I have been careful not to neglect my real world duties. I think I am going to be with this game for a long time, but I am not going to let it take over my life. It is just a diversion. I will cut back on hours in it after the newness wears off.
I have a lot more to discuss regarding WoW, but I will save it for future posts.
-- Shibby (that's what my frinds call Shiblon in the game)