September 2007 Archives

Mike asked me to post a pic of the dog. His wish is my command.

At the beginning of this summer I posted that my son had built himself a new computer, and that I had inherited his old one. His motivation for building a new computer: the better to play World of Warcraft, a game that always seems to require more computer power than one has.

Until Mike handed his old computer over to me, I didn't have a computer capable of playing World of Warcraft (hereafter referred to as WoW). Now I had a computer that came to me with WoW already installed. Mike had a 30-day "guest pass" that he gave me so I could try it out, damn him. I have to turn off extras such as terrain highlights, and I lag somewhat in Stormwind City, but the game is very playable. Too playable. And way, way, too much fun.

Mike has been playing online games for ten years. For ten years I've tried, in vain, to get him to limit the number of hours he spent in front of the computer playing games. He started playing each new game that came out, he beta-tested games and alpha-tested games. He dropped those he found less enjoyable, (sold his Everquest account for $250 on Ebay), went back to Ultima Online year after year, then switched to WoW when it came out a few years ago.

If you aren't familiar with the game this won't mean anything to you: Mike has 2 level-60 characters and 2 level-70 characters, all on PVP shards. He has played every race, done every quest multiple times. Killed every end-game dragon. Guilds, Raids, arena-dueling, he's done it all. Playing with him is like playing with an encyclopedia of the game. Like, I'll say: where the hell is the toolbox; I've been all over this stupid lake, and he'll swim out into the lake and say: swim to me on the surface, then dive straight down--it always spawns in the same place. So I swim out to him, dive straight down, and there's the toolbox.

I didn't want to play PVP, so Mike created a new character to play with me. I decided to be a priest, so he created a warrior, thus we were "a tank and a healer"--a good combo for adventuring. So, you may be thinking, how wonderful, mother and son playing online together; the family that plays together stays together blah blah. But here's the rub: during the summer Mike gave up the game. He said a rule-change "nerfed my character class", not referring to the warrior he'd created to play with me, but to his favorite PVP character, and he said Bah, or words to that effect beginning with eff, and canceled his account.

And here is where the irony comes into it: I protested. He reactivated his account on the condition that I pay for it. To my chagrin he played WoW all through college, but now that he's in law school he's taking his studies more seriously than he has in the past and he seldom has either the time or inclination to play. So I play alone, and I meet other people in the game and join their party, and although I haven't wanted to get too far ahead of Mike for our characters to play together effectively, I really can't help myself; I'm addicted. I'm already 2 levels ahead of him, closing in on 3.