World of Warcraft

I blame Dean Groom and Jo Kay for this.

After many years of fending off the urge, I’ve finally taken the plunge and downloaded a trial version of World of Warcraft. Now, I say fending off the urge not because I thought I wouldn’t like it, but rather because of all the stories I hear about people spending heaps and heaps of time in the game – which I have a tendency to do. Given the very little sleep I get at the best of times, it seemed a logical decision based on self-preservation. But I finally gave in, and it’s very, very cool.

I’ve been into Role Playing Games sinced the days of paper-based Dungeons and Dragons in the 1980s. How geeky does that sound! I would regularly get together with a couple of other people, develop characters, go on quests, and have a really great time.

Somewhere along the line I got out of the habit – mainly, I suspect, because I moved and couldn’t really enjoy D&D on my own. So I more or less stopped.

Then when I moved to Australia I discovered the Baldur’s Gate series, followed by Icewind Dale, then Neverwinter Nights, and the Etherscrolls – all of which are offline, single-player games. Nonetheless I found them invigorating and really fun to play and ended up spending countless late night sessions fully immersed – sometimes not stopping until the sun came up.

When I was finally awarded a work permit (I wasn’t allowed to get a job for the first 6 months), this habit quickly subsided – and especially so when children came along. Kids don’t care if you went to bed at 5 am; they still want to play. Hence where the self-preservation part came in.

So with all this in mind I’ve begun to explore WoW with some initial reluctance, which quickly gave way to “hey this is really cool.” Not only is the plotline of the game brand new to me, its depth and scope is really incredible. Furthermore its multi-player nature adds a really interesting dynamic that I haven’t experienced before.

I haven’t really delved into that aspect of it too much, but am keen to try at some point (when time and kids permit of course). I have found though that WoW is appealing to me way more than SecondLife ever did – largely due to the presence of a central plotline that ties the social elements together. SecondLife is interesting to pop into now and again, but it really only ever seems useful when attending unconferences and presentations. It my opinion it lacks that continuity.

Please note here I haven’t raised the prospect of educational uses of WoW at all in this post – though others are certainly exploring this idea. I’m definitely keen to investigate what people are doing to support learning in WoW, but that will need to wait until I’ve surpassed the n00b phase I’m currently in..