kicking it old skool

Yes it’s true: I am addicted to video games. This however is well known by all that (really) know me and I have on occasion unashamedly admitted as much on this site. But I have discovered a game so intoxicating, with a grip around my heart and mind so complete that I cannot deny its sweet advances on my (already shot to hell) social life.

The beautiful creature in question is World of Warcraft.

For the uninitiated, it’s a MMORPG. For the even MORE un-inititiated, that’s short for “Massive(ly) Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. The concepts are simple enough: You “role play” someone (or, in most cases, “Something”) other than who you are in the real world, right down to their own unique ego, skills and traits that they will use to accomplish goals (mostly in the form of quests) in the digital world.

“Oh my God, what a Geek!!”, I hear you say. Really? Do you have a blog site? Ever chatted online or dreamt you where capable of something more than your current, pathetic husk can ever accomplish? Hell, ever watch a SciFi flick and thought “damn, wouldn’t that be cool?”

I rest my case. But I digress.

Given pause to examine why I would become so enamored with this style of gameplay, I cooked up this delicious 3 layer cake:

1) Immersion (Chocolate Brandy Sponge Cake): if you play a Troll, or a Dwarf or a freakin’ Elvish Priestess, how far do you go to maintain that persona in-game? Does your character have a lisp? Maybe he/she/it’s afraid of the dark, or tight spaces or rude and un-approachable most of the time, except after a flaggon of Mead? You can be whoever you choose to be.

2) The “Digital Realm” (Creamy Caramal centre): and in this case, it’s nothing short of BREATHTAKING! Riding a Griffon / Bat through picturesque mountains and ice flows, 1280 x 960 pixels flying at 85 Hertz of pure bliss through your hair... fucking awesome man!! Blizzard, the company that developed WoW, is nothing if not a company of artists who happen to be experts at forging 1’s and 0’s into master pieces. Their “world” is massive (!!) and overwhelming. But therein lays the beauty: it never gets old. There is ALWAYS something new to discover, or explore or fight.. you get the idea. And when that gets old, create a new character and play as something else!

3) Friends (ICING, complete with Cherry!): that is, after all, the point of immersing yourself in something like this. Sure, you can solo and do your own thing. But nothing compares to fighting good (or evil, if that’s your thing) alongside people you know, in the real world. The camaraderie and sense of belonging is very much a big selling point for me.

4) People are stupid: Ok, I know I said "3 layers" Consider this the sexy packaging the cake came in: this one is relevant, beacuse real world people are stupid creatures not worthy of existince and the only way I can stomach their ongoing assault on my sanity is to escape this reality via a broadband Telkom link and leave them to die a horrible, slow and painfull death on the planet they have destroyed with thier, erm, stupidity. (ok, that was a run-on sentence of note. Consider the point driven home)

But as with all addictions, there is a price to pay (and I’m not talking about the monthly subscription fee). You can well imagine that to be all that you can be in the digital realm, you need to invest real world time. And real world time is expensive. You have to split that shit up into things like work (to pay for addiction), bathroom breaks (never shit where you sleep, even dogs know that), eating, girlfriend (primary user of my “free time”. She is quite insatiable), friends, family, feeding the fish and (gasp) SLEEP!! Notice I omitted friends. That’s cus their online all the time as well, so technically I’m multitasking :)

It’s gotten so bad that I’ve had to fall back to my old habits, like I used to do in school. I used to make myself deals like: “ok, you can play games for 3 hours straight, if you finish this math assignment, do your chores and clean your room. BUT ONLY THEN!!”. I shit thee not!

My list the other day was: put some laundry in the washing machine (and actually hang it out to dry as well!), make bed / clean room a bit, shower (no, really!), have a REAL breakfast, run an errand or two and clean the fish tank (which basically looked like someone poured a bottle of Jack in there), and then, and ONLY then, am I even allowed to brush up against the power switch on Mac Daddy (my Uber-Hard PC of Destruction 2000(tm)(r)(21SVNL).

So yes, I am addicted to World Of Warcraft, that sweet sweet escape to another reality where nobody bugs you about work, unpaid bills and taxes, where death is part of the fun and do-gooders everywhere shudder at the very mention of my name.

[Raikko, Evil Troll Priestess], out

for the HORDE!