I played World of Warcraft a couple of years ago when my Nephew and family decided to check it out. I didn’t mind it, but was just starting to get into EQ2 when we moved and so it was a bit frustrating in that regard. Within a month or two we moved back to EQ2 and have stayed there since.

I’m still playing EQ2 each weekend with my family, and having a lot of fun. But every once in a while I think back to World of Warcraft fondly and imagine that it might be fun to try it out again. Interestingly, WoW is pretty much the only MMOG available for the Macintosh, and so it seemed like a logical progression that one day I would install it on my MacBook.

Of course, I don’t want to go to the store and buy it, and I decided to try out the demo download. It often makes me chuckle when I realize that I’m using an Internet connection dozens of times faster than my modem of yesteryear… and yet the size of the things I download has more than kept pace with the increased bandwidth available:

Ah, a mere 11 hours… well, almost time to read a good book

I don’t play World of Warcraft any more- it was fun, but lacked depth. But apparently William Shatner plays WoW, or at least he claims to in a new World of Warcraft television commercial.

And Will Shatner isn’t the only celebrity doing TV ads for WoW- Mr. T does one too, and claims to play a “Night elf Mohawk” (the off camera director reminds him that it is a Night elf Warrior, and there is no such thing as a “mohawk” class.

The commercials are kinda funny- I like them. But the more interesting thing to me is that this is the first MMOG commercial I’ve seen with “mainstream” celebrities participating. I guess Blizzard has mountains of money to spend, what with something like 10 million people subscribing to World of Warcraft at $15 a month each.

I wonder how Mr. T reacts when he gets ganked in PvP? “I pity da fool…”

I play massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs, or sometimes MMORPG if the game is of the roleplaying type). At times in the past seven years or so, playing these games has consumed the lions share of my free time: up to about 20 or so hours a week.

When I first started playing, there was really only one: Ultima Online. I hated the PvP environment in UO so much that I would never go back after I quit, and nearly didn’t ever play a MMOG again…but thankfully (?) I tried EverQuest at the urging of my nephew. And for a couple of years, that was really the “only game in town”

I’ve found myself with more and more “good” games to choose from as the industry has matured. So has everyone else: this has fragmented groups of old gaming companions as we’ve ended up in various games. More choices has, for me, actually been a little bit of a curse along with the blessing.

I’ve bounced around through several games over the past couple of years- sometimes because I personally wanted a change, sometimes because someone I played with regularly wanted to move. Each time I move, there is a period during which I usually find it difficult to cancel the “old” game…just in case.

Once again I find myself paying two subscription fees: one for World of Warcraft, one for EverQuest 2. Since I was initially playing EQ2, then played WoW, then went back (about two weeks ago) to EQ2, I’m really in a bit of a quandry.

I should just cancel my WoW account and be done with it….but what if we change our minds again? Sigh

I got my MMOG “fix” today…several hours of monster slaying in World of Warcraft with Shane, Monique, and Bryan…that’s the best kind of gaming for me. Then, a little later in the evening, I logged in again and finished a handful of quests.

I have to wonder about the way I play MMOGs, though. I love to be in a group of people I know and trust…people I’ve gamed with for years. The ultimate expression of this, of course, is the list of names in the above paragraph: my Nephew, his wife, and my brother in law. Family. But when it comes to grouping with people I don’t know…well, I forget that whole massively multiplayer part of the game entirely

Case in point: while working on my quests, I came to one part where a particular gnome had to be slain. There was another player nearby when I arrived at the scene, so I checked with him…sure enough, he was waiting for the same gnome. Since he was there first, I tell this other player “when the gnome shows up, he’s yours- I’ll wait.” The other fellow replies…”Uhm, we could group up and both get credit for him at the same time…”. D’Oh…yes, we could.

Forming up a group, possibly with a stranger: that’s at the heart of MMO gaming, and yet here I was playing like it was a single player game. I joined forces with this fellow, we killed our gnome, and everything went well. But here’s the question- why wasn’t grouping up the first thing I thought of?

The whole online gaming phenomena has created some odd social dynamics. To an extent, other players, thousands of them, are kind of like your next door neighbor in modern urban society. You know they are they, you appreciate there presence, but except in rare cases you really don’t want to get too close. If you talk to that neighbor, maybe invite them over for coffee, you are trapped: if they turn out to be jerks, or just incompatible, you can’t get rid of them…they are right next door. I can hear you saying “But I like my neighbors, and I love socializing”- hey, great for you! But that isn’t the way my mind works- I’m a natural loner.

And in a MMOG, everyone is “right next door”: every time you log in, if someone wants to they can know about it. Everyone has to go through certain areas…chokepoints, sort of…to get from area to area, to shop, to train- so you are bound to run into that “irritating neighbor” again and again. And since its a game, its something you do for fun- who wants their fun ruined by an unwanted intruder?

Thus I take the path of least risk- I avoid grouping with strangers. Strange…that word pretty much fits me