World of Warcraft begins...

Inspired by Andrew and Melissa's enjoyment of the game, I recently embarked upon World of Warcraft, a MMORPG [Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game]. Follow the links if you'd like to learn more. If you don't know what this means, and you don't follow the links... well... maybe this post isn't for you [and you could possibly freak out at the description: Dungeons and Dragons using a computer, playing with friends from the internet].

The photo above is pre WoW excitement... somewhat mixed feelings after installing the 4GB game, only to install another 1GB of patches and updates. The silver lining here is that internode is a very gamer friendly ISP [internet service provider] and hosts the files for quick and free download [free as in doesn't come of my bandwidth quota [please tell me I don't have to explain bandwidth at this point]].

Here are some examples of things that intrigued me about the game:

• people pay hard cash for money, items and even characters in the game
  
• some people are so successful at selling these items, they can get deported from Japan back to China for making at least USD$50K and a suspected USD$1.3M while on a student visa [apologies - I've been unable to find the original article]
• people get addicted to the game, and internet addiction is steadily rising in credibility towards that of alcohol and other drugs - for an interesting account from an addict how quit... read here.
  
• the gross national product of the WoW universe - not money that the game makers make... but the amount of money that changes hands over in game assets - is HUGE, and has been getting lots of press. The taxation of income from in game assets is also fascinating. I did manage to find a concise article that explains it really well!

Anyway... Jodie just reminded me that I've been at this post for a while. When I said that I had to research the post - she gave me one of those smiles, that if put in to words... Oh, Cameron *sigh*. I'll be done soon... I'll get to bed, and cook pancakes for our guests tomorrow. I really will.

I was surprised how much fun it was meeting up with people in the game, and getting help with quests, and even some presents to help me on my way... Thanks Andrew, Mel and Matt. It reminded me about the time that Andrew W connected to my Quake 2 server from the UK, and I fragged him to kingdom come, since being on the other side of the world, connected to hardware [a dedicated server no less] on my LAN, he had a 1 second delay in game.

So it's off to bed for me. I'll leave you with a picture of my character. A Human Warrior - Borgthor. I just can't wait to try out that two handed axe!

P.S. Just in case you don't get my position on this... Video games are just another valid form of entertainment. Just like movies, music, books and other wholesome activities. If that doesn't make sense, then you'll have to get in line behind the book burners, movie censors and those that claim rock is the devil's music.