In March of 2005 while driving home from somewhere, I forget where, I heard a broadcast on National Public Radio. This was a very exciting thing for me as the narrator described a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) called World of Warcraft!

This sounded so much to me like The Bards Tale, a game I spent hundreds of hours playing back in the ‘80s that I immediately went out to buy me a copy and get a monthly subscription to play the game. I’ve managed to go back and actually find a transcript of the broadcast that I heard. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4537744

What happened next I can only describe as being plunged into the depths of a serious addiction. I played the game for many hours every day, often staying up until 2:00 or 3:00 am in the morning to finish play. The World of Warcraft represents a separate reality. It is a world to be explored that is so elaborate that even after a year of play I did not come near to unraveling every facet of the game.

My chief protagonist was a Night Elf Warrior named Ladeaspios. I have a picture of him here:

 

The World of Warcraft is played by hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts around the world. Many of the characters that you will encounter during play are actually living persons who are sitting at their computers. The game is based on a system of growth in which the characters get stronger, richer, and more dangerous as they go on.

Ladeaspios was a formidable warrior at level 60, with weapons endowed with a fiery damage enchantment and enough armor that there were few creatures in the world that could actually bring him down easily. But with that said, the warrior in World of Warcraft is nearly the most humble of creatures. My own warrior was built for a defense specialty. He was most effective when in a party, and certainly needed a priest to keep him healed. He was, in the jargon of WoW, a TANK, built to take damage and to deal damage. He was invaluable in party quests, but quite vulnerable when out in the world on his own.

I had other characters (toons) as well… these included Gankaster, a level 60 Warlock who was capable of tremendous AoE (Area of Effect) damage, and had at his beck and call demons and creatures to fight for him. I also had Simulacra a level 45 rogue, capable of stealth and skills of poison and assassination. He was quite the killer. I also owned Drazah, a level 35 priest who was valuable as a member of instance parties because of his skill in healing his compatriots while they fought the monsters of the World of Warcaft.

After a year of play, I had to quit. I neglected basic business while I immersed myself in this game. I returned to Real Life just to shake the grip of the addiction of the game. I wiped the game from my computer and finally allowed my subscription to lapse. I went cold turkey.

The World of Warcraft is a product of Blizzard Entertainment (Blizzard.com). It costs about $15 a month to play the game. They also have the audacity to charge you for the front-end software (about $50)… and this software right off the store shelves has to be updated immediately by a massive download from Blizzard’s main server using the Blizzard downloader which has been cleverly designed to make dial-up data transfer about ten time slower than it should be. Their customer service is arrogant and slow and sometimes downright unresponsive. About once a month the subscriber will be treated to a new download that will take most of a day to complete. It is a tedious process that demands true addiction to the basic product to put up with at all.

The complicated environment of World of Warcraft is beautiful, and the music is inspiring and stunning. You can spend your time while online doing an endless number and variety of quests, or simply fighting monsters. Or, if you have a mind to, you can spend your time fighting or antagonizing the enemy. My characters were of the alliance faction consisting of elves, humans, dwarves and gnomes. On the dark side were the Horde, Tauren and the Undead and other vile creatures.

I was constantly humbled by the notion that I was usually playing against much younger players than I. The Hunter or Shaman pwning (sic) me in battle might very well be a pimply faced 14-year old boy sitting against his computer in his bedroom ducking his chores, much as I was ducking mine.

At the same time, there are players in World of Warcraft known as Chinese farmers. The Chinese actually make a living playing at the game, reselling their loot and gold to Americans with too much money. It’s an awesome thought to think that the pretend gold in the World of Warcraft is a sellable commodity on eBay. By my own calculations someone making a living selling gold must be making about $1.00 an hour. But if you think about it that might very well be a decent wage in China.

Blizzard treats all of their customers as though they are cheaters and potentially criminals. Every rule of the game is predicated upon the possibility that anything you might want, you’ll probably want as a matter of profit, and so is probably not allowed. In addition, the game fosters a very basic attitude of fascism… which is to say “might makes right”. It is certainly the wrong kind of lesson to teach the young people who might be playing the game. Many of them are accomplished back-stabbing gankers who play without any sense of honor or compassion. I say this fully aware of my own malevolence and violence in conduct in the game. While in general my characters comport themselves with dignity and honor in the game, I have never been above killing a lower level Horde character for having committed no greater crime than being of the Horde in the first place.

Finally I have withdrawn from play in the game. I quit knowing that I did not accomplish the high level objectives that offer themselves in the World of Warcraft. But that being said I miss the opportunity to ride my tiger of fly the gryphons around the world, to do battle against nameless monsters and against the honorless horde. And mostly, I miss my friends Janadine, Sathis, Mohgryn and Xania, and my many companions in my guild, the Awakened on Dunemaul server.

Maybe one day I’ll return to the Eastern Kingdoms and walk again in the corridors of Ironforge. Certainly my friends will have grown to great stature and will barely remember me.

Questions, comments and impassioned speeches to: Bud Houston, dogwoodbud1@earthlink.net.