World of Warcraft

Today I made a purchase which has seen people laughing, crying, and shouting at me.

Well, not really. Just a few people making jokes at my expense and others being perhaps slightly annoyed by my spectacular display of ignorance and apparent stupidity. I bought myself a copy of World of Warcraft. My sister thinks my social life is down the drain. My brother’s anticipating many more dumb questions. Some of my friends are saying their good-byes, others are quietly removing me from their MySpace friends as I write this.

No, not really. Though, with the cult following and associated media coverage that this game has, you’d expect people to react strangely to the news that someone close to them has taken up the hobby.

Often referred to as simply “WoW” by its fans and “World of Warcrack” by its detractors, the game is an MMORPG which currently boasts over 10 million subscribers worldwide.

Why have I decided to join them? Well, over the years I’ve disregarded the MMO+RPG genre simply because I didn’t enjoy the typical universes they were set in. Medievil times lend themselves all too easily it seems to be the base subject for the majority of RPG titles. Previously I’ve never been particularly interested in this type of fiction; specifically fantasy. However, I cannot deny that over the years I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading all the Harry Potter novels (and seeing the movies). More recently however I’ve taken to reading a few fantasy novels, specifically, the Sword of Truth series and Sarah Ash’s Tears of Artamon series.

This newfound interest in fantasy, combined with my waning interest in online FPS games led me to the thought that I should give something new a try. Even though in the past I would’ve referred to the MMORPG acronym more sardonicaly as “Massively Mundane Online Really Poor Game”, I decided to stop being a closed-minded fool and give it a go.

And what do you know? I enjoyed playing the free 10-day trial of WoW so much that I decided to buy it. Perhaps too early, as I’ve still two exams to pass before I finish uni forever, but I believe I can manage my time…