My Life in WoW - Day 1

Melodrama aside, I uninstalled the WoW software yesterday, which was a surprisingly fast (as in, blink and you'd miss it) process. Reinstalling the basic software was suspiciously fast as well. I was able to download half of the updates yesterday and the other half installed today without a problem. Yay!

Yesterday, the Good Doctor gifted me with the first two expansions, Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, both of which came in beautiful packaging. I am much more comfortable with installation via disc, simply because it does not rely on my Internet connection, which I am sure my ISP (<cough>Comcast</cough>) has been throttling. Of course, this sense of security was false and halfway through the first disc I encountered my first error. To quote Pepe Le Pew, "Le sigh."

A quick search later I learned I did not need to install anything from the discs - only the activation code was required and I could start right away. Huh, who would have thought? Full of curiosity, I logged in. After a brief movie of a huge fiery dragon wrecking shit, I could finally make my first character.

Zaraelspeth, Blood Elf Warlock
and general badass

What to pick? I waffled between playing a troll druid and a blood elf warlock. Druids get to turn into animals and can heal as well fight, but warlocks get corruption and fire spells and get to summon demons. Warlock it is! I decided to make her female and named her Zaraelspeth ("Zara" for short). And then I clicked the Enter World button.

Boy howdy! The blood elves live on an island that looks like it is in perpetual autumn. The trees are orange and the buildings are trimmed in scarlet. Everywhere, inanimate objects are floating and brooms sweep the floors themselves.

Ooh pretty!

Quzrot the Imp

Zara came with a little companion, an imp named Quzrot. I've decided that's pronounced kiz-rot. Right away, another blood elf, presumably someone in charge, told Zara some history about the blood elves, most of which went over my head, and sent her on a "quest." Like most RPG video games, many of the so-called quests are really just busy work. Characters too powerful to do the dirty work send send novice characters on errands. For Zara, that meant killing lynxes, "mana wyrms" (which look like giant floating paramecia) and feral walking plants. Or, fetching things for folks who just left them lying around. Really, you're too lazy to go get your own shit, blood elf mage dude? Oh, you'll pay me? Well, I guess I can go find your spellbooks then.

Zara and Quzrot go questing

For me, the first quest was simply learning how to move around. WoW uses the W-A-S-D keys on the keyboard to move. This sounded simple until I was actually in the game. It took me about an hour to really get the hang of holding the W key to move forward and then only press D or A just a little bit when I wanted to turn right or left. This is very important. I'm guessing all of the experienced players can tell the newbies because their characters are either lurching around awkwardly or running in circles. It's not dignified.

One nice thing I've discovered about WoW is that it doesn't take long for your character to level. I played for about three hours and got Zara up to 5th level - not bad for my first time "in world." By the end, Zara also got her first real quest: to slay Felendren the Banished, betrayer of her people. This sounded impressive until I learned Felendren is a crackhead who refused to do anything but "feed his insatiable magical addictions." He does have wraith minions, though, so there is that.

My Life in WoW - Day 0.5 or I Can Haz WoW?

Actually, this is more like Day 7, as this is how long it has taken me to get to this point.

I've had several delays in the downloading of the updates. First, due to the Gawker fiasco, I had to deal with my Battle.net account before I could start the downloads. Before you get all smug and snarky with me:

1. I do use strong passwords - however, if a site's database is hacked, decrypted and released to the Internets, strong passwords do fuck-all for you.

2. I did not use same password for the Gawker and Battle.net accounts. However, Battle.net, unlike Gawker, was proactive and reset my password once they realized my email address was on the list.

This was a minor thing and I was back to downloading quickly. Then, it was Tuesday.

Oh, yeah, that's right. I remember the good doctor saying that Tuesdays were patch days. Suddenly, a few more gigs of files were added to my downloads, raising the total to (drumroll please):

8 gigs

By yesterday, I was only halfway through the download, because my laptop still go to sleep if left alone too long. I adjusted the sleep settings again and then I went to sleep myself.

When I awoke this morning I discovered that Microsoft sent me a Windows update last night and then oh-so-helpfully rebooted my computer, thereby stopping the download. Again.

When I restarted the download this time, however, I got an error message cheerfully explaining the program had encountered an unexpected error (Really! so some errors are expected?) and that I should contact Blizzard support.

The program refused to launch, so I did what all computer support staff do: I rebooted and tried the program again. I got the same error message. A single word tickled the back of my mind, but I thrust it away. No, not that. Not yet.

As I rebooted and tried the program a second time, I started to get strange thoughts. Maybe, the installation process was the actual game! The players are on a quest for a magical game filled with dragons and trolls and elves and gold and only the most patient will be rewarded!

The word was nagging me again, but still I refused to acknowledge it.

On the third reboot, I imagined my own game in which I was giant with a huge club; the Blizzard developers would pop up out of holes like the Whack-A-Mole game at a Chuck E. Cheese and I would hit them again and again and again.

Question: A program you are installing doesn't work. Do you:

A. Contact support who may or may not be responsive and/or helpful.

B. Search online. The fix might be simple or it might be a half-assed patchy affair that leaves the application running weirdly.

C. Stop ignoring the dreaded word that's been hounding you through the whole process:

REINSTALL

If you answered "C," congratulations! You most likely work in IT or should pursue a rewarding career in that field.

The more I think about it, the more likely it is that reinstalling is the way to go. At this point, I haven't even made a character and I only got about 2/3 through the installation process anyway. I would like to at least, you know, try the game in the near future?

My Life in WoW - Day 0

I don't play PC games much. I have a laptop and playing games on it is physicially uncomfortable. I have an external keyboard and mouse, but they are best used at my desk. My desk chair is only comfortable for about ten minutes or so, so eventually I move to the couch. On the couch, I have to build a weird cockpit out of cushions to make the experience bearable: a couple of big pillows behind my back, a pillow to prop up the computer, a few more under my mousepad so that I can operate the mouse without my arm going numb. Eventually, my cats decide they absolutely must sit on my lap or stand on the keyboard or lie on my mouse arm. This is usually the point at which I either surrender or go completely and unneccessarily apeshit.

Contrast this with my XBox 360 experience:

I turn on the TV and console. I sit on my couch and a cat lies on my lap while I use a wireless controller to play. I can shift into different positions when I get tired or even lie down to play. It's like Bill Gates cares about me and my well being personally.

"Here, eris," he says, "have a wonderful time blowing the heads off those mutants with Mordecai's lightning shotgun. Perhaps later I will send a masseuse if your shoulders get tired from all that gaming."

Thank you, Bill. Thank you so much.

So when friends invite me to play PC games, I am ambivalent. I don't know many people who own a 360, so if I want to have the group experience it has to be on a PC. And I do want to have that experience. When they talk about gaming together, they laugh and tell me how much fun it is. I feel like the left out kid. But playing video games on my PC is in comfort level somewhere between being in traction and having an impacted wisdom tooth removed. Which is one of the reasons why I have avoided playing World of Warcraft (hereafter "WoW") thus far.

My friend, Doc Midnight, has been trying to lure me to WoW for a couple of years now. He has tried many tactics to kidnap me to the world of Azeroth, but I had plenty of excuses to deflect his attempts: my computer was too old or too slow, I didn't have time for it, I was too broke for it. But this last plan was so vile, so devious and cunning that I was utterly helpless to stop it.

At the end of November, I received an email from Blizzard Entertainment (the makers of WoW) with this subject line: "Terry has purchased a digital copy of World of Warcraft for you!"

That bastard bought me a copy. What's worse, he bought the two expansions after it.

I was toast. Utterly defeated, I conceded and was drafted into the WoW army.

"You need to download it. Like now," he told me.

"OK, I will," I replied.

"No, you don't understand," he continued. "They're releasing a new expansion that will change everything. If you want to see what it looked like before, you have to download it now."

"OK, I will."

"No, you really don't understand. You have to start downloading it now."

I was a bit puzzled, but I did go home that night and clicked on the link in the email. After the registration process, the download started. It was 3.2 Gb of data.

This was going to take a while.

I left the download running overnight, but discovered the next morning that the connection had been lost somewhere around 1.0 Gb. I resumed the download and left for the day. I had to do this again when I returned home that night. (My ISP is Comcast Cable - why do you ask?) While making dinner, I was startled by dramatic choral music that sounded like outtakes from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. I ran to the computer - Success! I needed to download one more small file and I would be ready to go. While the file installed, I thought about the kind of character I should make. What race should I try? Should I be a fighter-type or a wizard-type? Could it be I was actually looking forward to starting this game?

Until I saw a message that I now realize must turn the blood in a WoW player's veins to ice water: "Searching for Updates."

And there were updates.

There were many updates.

In fact, there were 4.7 Gb of updates.

I have not yet completed this download. I started it Saturday, but unfortunately, Comcast had DNS issues and I had no internet connection most of yesterday (Sunday). However, I am still optimistic. My adventures in World of Warcraft are delayed, but will continue!