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!
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