Tobold’s MMORPG Blog: The Grind (the perspective)

Tobold’s MMORPG Blog: The Grind.

This post pretty much encapsulates my feelings for WoW.

I started playing warcraft some time after Autumn 2007 – probably about the turn of the year, although I’d have to check.  Before that, my experience of MMOs was limited to Travian – I played that for about a year – before they introduced gold servers  – which sort of ruined it for me.

The thing that I liked about Travian was building something.  And sharing time with real people online for a collective purpose.   We had group targets of how many different units we needed to produce.  We defended our group targets.

The thing that I didn’t like was that I could be attacked when I was not able to defend – when offline, at 3 am – and all that I had built could be destroyed without warning…

But also – and this was educational – that the end of the server would mean that all that I had made, and that the group had made, would end.  So many hours of making things – over in a flash.

So WoW was a welcome relief.  Although I have some PvP phobias, it’s nothing like being robbed blind whilst you sleep 🙂  And the death of the server?  That taught me about the value of “investment” of time in WoW – no matter how much we immerse ourselves in our characters and earn money to feed them and clothe them, and optimise our rotations/cast sequences – they are pixels on a server – we achieve nothing tangible – all we gain is fun and friends[1].  In our flesh-and-blood lives, we achieve not a lot more than watching television, or going to the pub.  Almost all recreational activities (sports, carpentry, knitting, singing, playing a musical instrument, sewing, cooking) have a more significant practical application than the skills we practice online.

Real Life is worth more than WoW.   So, if your wife/girlfriend/husband/boyfriend/significant others/parents need you, then they are worth more.    If your uncle has a heart attack and needs to go to the hospital, then go take him – don’t worry about whether you will lose your raid slot.  If it is your wedding anniversary and you are not a couple that plays WoW together, take the night off and have a meal out.

[1]For those who are guild officers, we might gain people management skills to be used in later life.