Oh and apologies this is going to be about videogames.
But the videogame in question does play host to 8 million players...
I am talking about the World of Warcraft.
Now I don't want anyone to be bored or confused by the knowledge fest that is this article so I'll give you a brief description of how the game works:
1. You buy the Game
2. You install the Game
3. You register your credit card (it requires a monthly fee)
4. You spend all night updating the Game via the internet (if you're "lucky", in my case I had to try to fix a problem that caused my computer to crash.)
5. You go to log into the Game
6. You realise you can't play because it's a Tuesday and that's when the servers are down for maintenance.
7. You curse the day you ever bought this game but hope you'll get to play it because everyone has told you it's really good.
8.You finally get to play and a magical world akin to dungeons and dragons has opened up before you (oh yer you choose a race of character but that really is a side issue).
9. You do some quests (ie collect a certain amount of something by killing stuff).
10. You talk to some real life people
9a. You do some quests
10a.You talk to some real life people
9b. You do some quests
10b.You talk to some real life people
9c. You do some quests
10c. You talk to some real life people
9d. You do some quests
10d. You talk to some real life people
9e. You do some quests
10e. You talk to some real life people
9f. You do some quests
10f. You talk to some real life people
11. You run out of quests as your character is not strong enough (levelled up) to get new quests or go to a new area.
12. You grit your teeth and try to fight the wildlife which is now strong enough to kill you in a few hits.
13. You eventually pass that stage but realise all the quests are exactly the same and you're really not getting that much from this experience but decide to press on as you've spent all this time and maybe it gets better.
14. Steps 9 and 10 are repeated.
15. You get to a dungeon and recognise your character is not anywhere near strong enough to deal with it.
16. You exit the game and uninstall it and go to bed because it's 3am and you've got to be up early.
I'll point out now that I didn't actually have to pay a monthly fee as I was on a 10 day trial. But it didn't stop the fact World of Warcraft appeared to be very shallow and a bit shit. Oh and it kept logging me out on occasion which was damn annoying.
And just incase anyone tries to argue it's point:
A) I did have people to play with.
B) Yes I do like RPGs
So to you World of Warcraft player I say: You're addicted - the 1st step to solving the problem is admitting there is one. Just let it go, I know you've spent a lot of time and money but it's not very good and you're hurting yourself (and possibly family and friends). Go cold turkey and play something less addictive like Tetris or the real life RPG world of drug addiction.
