World of Warcraft owned me...

I was never a hardcore gamer. Not even when I was a kid. I loved video games and everything about them, but I rarely had a next gen console, and I was never chasing graphic card evolution when it came to PC's. But I played a bit of everything, from Street Fighter II to MMO's and World of Warcraft become my prefered gaming passtime for a reasonable period.

At university my housemates and coursemates where all into the same kind of games, and at that time First Person Shooter (FPS), Real Time Strategy (RTS), and Role Playing Games (RPG) were in their element. We played and created custom maps for Duke Nukem and later Unreal Tournament, peppered each other with tanks in C&C Red Alert and Total Annialation, and spend hours pouring over stats in Diablo and Baldurs Gate.

Oh man Baldurs Gate. What a game. It was single player game so detailed and beautifully storied that it was often the reason for a missed class or drinking binge. Diablo on the other hand was an excuse to drag our respective machines round to each others houses and connect them up so that we could battle the elements together. This soon became the case for every game that allowed mutliplayer and we continued the process of lugging computer gear miles and miles long after we left University.

By this time we were into whatever lastest version of UT it was at the time, Quake 3 Arena, and the latest incarnation of Diablo - but soon Massively Multiplater Online Games (MMO) started to loom onto the horizon. Initially dismissing them as forums for nerds with far too much time on there hands I was encouraged over time to sign up to a game a group of my friends were playing called EVE online. This changed my perspective on video games forever. EVE was, and will likely always be, the most thought provoking, involving, strategic, and satisfying game I have ever played. It dominated our lives and our discussions for a very long time. I struggled with the time commitment it asked of you, and still shared some perspective from outsiders that it was a soul dominating environment that asked too much and ultimately in the grand scheme of things gave nothing - but still it was a huge draw for all of us and we formed a Corporation in game that we lovingly ran, developed, and enjoyed.

In the end EVE turned out to be incompatible with girlfriends, and bit by bit I pulled myself away from the scene.  Still starving for a game pastime I persued a new incarnation of the Warcraft universe, an MMO called World of Warcraft. WoW advertised itself as "any game-time commitment" friendly, in that if you weren't there you weren't losing out. In fact the longer you were gone, the more experience points (XP) you would build up so that when you did return the things you slay we more valuable and consequently you were easily able to catch up. A fine design, and exactly what I was looking for! EVE had been a punishing Player Vs Player (PvP) world in which absence could result in lost teritory and income, whereas WoW promised the same game experience whether you were online all day or for an hour.
EVE had been heavily sociable, and with my friends still persistant in that game and almost none in WoW I headed back to EVE online for a time to enjoy it from the angle of playing the bad guy, as many of my friends had also chosen. For a while this was a "time friendly" way to enjoy the game - it mainly involved logging on, heading out into the cosmos to find someone with either money, materials, or simply easy targets, and dispatching them for their precious cargo or another notch on the killboard. It was satisfying and profitable.  But the cracks started to show again, and I found it harder and harder to manage a new girlfriend and the late night rampaging through the game - and once again I put it down to persue other interests. It was the right thing to do, but had the ill effect or losing some Real Life (RL) contact with my buddies - which was highly regrettable.

With gaming still in my blood, once again WoW become the prefered option and I feaverishly got back into it. I wasn't terribly interested in running dungeons or grouping and the single player aspect tickled my every fancy. More and more friends dropped in to try the game and those that stayed organised a guild and it was a highly enjoyable period.

Online games had long been a bone of contention with my partner however, and my penchant for saying "just 5 more minutes" and being online for 2 more hours was growing thin with her. I'd now seen alot of the game, actively participating in guild activities, running more and more dungeons, and taking a liking to more group activity based challenges. I very much did not want to stop playing, but it had gotten to a point where I was allocated a night I could play (Tuesdays) and (a) if I missed the opportunity it would really grate me, and (b) I was totally unable to hold myself too it, often slipping online Friday nights, Saturdays, and Sundays.

There are worse crimes obviously, but my home life was starting to suffer a little from it and I gave it up on the basis that the Xbox I received for my 30th birthday would be able to sustain my gaming wimms, and perhaps I could finally break the additction of WoW crack. And that's the way it worked..... up until now :-)

I still read the odd snippet about WoW and now and again I get those pangs that make you want to break your online silence and once again ride forth through Azeroth. Obviously the soon to be arrival of a baby is highly incompatible with this thought process and the mear mention of the game may well send my wife into hysterics.... but, every now and again I think about installing it and taking a peek to see what new features are cool and whether anyone I use to play with is still around.

I mustn't! I won't! But still, none the less, World of Warcraft owns me....