We had a long and gruelling weekend fighting trolls in Jintha'alor with Kelayr. Ok, no, we actually had a long and really fun and gruelling weekend playing World of Warcraft with Kelly, who was on probation from her sons and who set up her fancy new laptop (and BTW Dell, I'm still pissed off you guys released the new XPS less than a month after I bought the old one) next to our machines in our re-purposed basement area. We were up until 4am on Friday evening, and that was the first trip up the ziggurat. Trip 2 on Saturday took us almost to the end but we ran out of time (and live party members) on the brink of success. Anne & I (Argwit & Bonemaul, Scarlet Crusade server) joined up with an excellent trio (including one of those all-too-rare priests) and dominated the place the following day to bring our Jintha'alor timesink to a close.

While our friend Molly genuinely cringes when online gaming is discussed (although in an excessive way that almost begs us to carry on relentlessly) and the rest of our dinner group friends range from incomprehending to sympathetic to slightly scornful on the topic of MMORPG's, this game in particular seems to have taken over a frightening about of our free time. (Let me spell this out in its impossible detail: something like 250 hours each for Anne and me -- very likely exceeding my actual lifetime hours of AD&D play -- over about six months.) Semi-serious pundits are predicting that -- minus the "G" part of the term -- MMORP's will at some point replace significant parts of the economy. I wouldn't go that far, but for sure World of Warcraft has already replaced almost all other computer games, and all real-time television in our house. The monthly charge is a significant savings from my old habit of picking up the best of the latest video games every couple of months, and the best part about it all is I get to play with my wife, who's every bit as much of a fan as me.

Of course I'm hardly the only one. Even the Globe and Mail has noticed the blurring of the real life world with the online one, and with 3.5 million users globally there are an aweful lot of World of Warcraft fans pumping their hard-earned dollars into making more virtual gold online. There are even secondary communities forming around these games. When two of my favorite web comics (which happen to have computer games as common topics) Penny Arcade and PVP took their friendly rivalry to the next level, they did so by forming online guilds to take each others' fans to virtual war on a daily basis. Life sure is fun...
posted by Tom at 2:08 PM | link |