Well, I can’t say I have been the most forthcoming on here about what is actually going on. Most of life is stuck in the same old same old every day. Over the last few weeks, I have been working, playing, and sleeping. Unfortunately I think that playing has taken up a lot more than it’s fair share.

The change: World of Warcraft. I bought it a couple weeks ago because there are a great many people playing it.

The good:

• The world is huge - 2 weeks and I haven’t even seen half of the world.
• The social aspects - playing with friends is really the best part of the game. This game doesn’t encourage as many new friends as City of Heroes, but it’s still wonderful
• Ongoing story - quests really drive the game. There are thousands, and some are in chains so you can see the whole story unfolding.
• Graphics - it has won awards for it’s wonderful graphics, and I can see why. Sometimes it is fun to get to other parts of the world just to see the scenery. Localities in each area have different properties, and the transitions are fluid.
• Multi-Platform - while it would just rule to also have a linux client, I am happy that I can play the game both on my iBook and the Windows installation I keep.

The bad:

• Playing too much - this is the main beef with the game. I think I’m going to try to restrict myself to playing for less than 2 hours a day from now on. It’s simply taking up too much of my time.
• Technology - as expected, the game takes too much processor and graphics for either of the machines I play it on. I am glad that Blizzard let me play on this old laptop (it doesn’t officially meet the specs), but it has awakened in me a desire to upgrade which isn’t really healthy right now
• The “other” social aspects - Di was bitten hard by someone who got sucked into games. I am confident that I will get bored with the game soon, but she has reservations. I have made a pact to myself that I won’t play when she is around because of this - most of all, I have a problem if it affects my love.
• Limited updates - I have yet to see a MMORPG which actually delivers on making the game more interesting for me after the initial month, which is probably why I’ve never played one for longer than a month.

As expected, the good are better than most other MMORPGs that I have played, and the bad are all the same. I really think that the MMORPG model is flawed, at least for me. It captures interest because the world is new and fresh, but then the quests all seem to be the same, the world becomes less and less novel, and nothing updates. If someone wants to keep my interest for longer than a month, they will have to show me that they are actually making major content updates frequently. At the same time, the game cannot be unfinished when I buy it. I think I would pay good money for a game in which there are a set number of quests and things in the world, and they actually were depleted after a while. The respawn world just bugs me for some reason. Things don’t just appear from nowhere in the real world, why should they in the game world? Also, I shouldn’t be able to save the same child from the deadly disease, save the same tower from ruthless robbers, kill the same big boss guy, as everyone else. Once the big boss guy is dead, he should be dead for everyone, forever. The MMORPG model does not allow for this to occur. A game that does that might actually get my attention for longer than the “free” month (that I pay $50 for).

At any rate, the time for me to get more actual work done has come. More updates on everything else later, I guess.