A Holiday in Azeroth

The Editor isn't the only thing that's been menacing the future viability of this miserable, limping blog; there's also been a terrible and destructive new interest in my life. I've been sucked into the World of Warcraft. I hadn't intended to -- as I wrote last year, I knew it would be a mistake. But I found a two week free trial in a computer magazine and thought I would be able control the urge to continue beyond that. I wasn't, and now my minimal free time that used to be spent complaining about Paul Martin's choices for the senate or trolling better sites than mine for content I could loot, is now spent grinding furbogs and weaving shirts to sell (long story).

My character is named Boneybruce and he looks uncomfortably like the Editor. He's an undead warlock trying to make a living in a difficult world. Considering he's a walking corpse with no soul that summons demons to kill for him, I've grown quite fond of him. Here he and his imp, Zepfip, encounter the Orc metropolis of Orgrimmar for the first time:

WoW, for those that don't know is a MMORPG -- a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game -- in which you join hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of thirteen-year-olds in a seemless (and huge) virtual world. Multiple parallel worlds -- or realms -- allow more players to play, and play in their own language. There must be hundreds of realms by now. WoW is the most popular MMORPG of all time, with over a million customers in the US and millions more in Europe and Korea (they're nuts about it over there). They've just set up in China as well. Read this article for a humourous (but possibly accurate) look at how these games will change the world.

So for as long as this new interest of mine continues, I'll write some posts on the game. I'd like to talk about the phenomena of Chinese loot farmers gathering gold to sell (for real dollars) to richer players, the psychological hooks the games uses to pull in hopeless dweebs like myself, and the culture that developed between players of the game. Or maybe I'll just write about the cool stuff I've found and how awesome my character is. I haven't decided yet.