I've taken a self-imposed break from WoW after reaching level 32 and to be honest I'm appreciating the fact that time doesn't have to disappear into nothingness. I want the gear at the end game but I really don't want to invest another clean 10-15x24 hours of my life getting there. I've seriously been considering pursuing a powerlevelling service and I reserched the risks of botting. I canvassed the idea of getting a guide that absolutely guaranteed reaching 60 in 5 days of /played. The game has me stumped because I usually compulsively finish games in 2-3 sittings. Obviously that's physically impossible in this instance. The fact that the end of the game is so damned long away and additionally that once I get there whether we've reached any type of conclusion is disputable is really disturbing...!

Nonetheless I've really settled a lot more into my class - Warlock - after running some instances and gathering some 1337 gear. I get the impression more and more however that there just isn't room in my life for my ambitions and success in WoW and that I may have to (shock) resign myself to 'losing' in WoW. I'll reiterate it - I'm simply not devoting my life to this game (a la South Park...)

Discovery is awesome.

It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. :)

WoW income!

By trying my hand at the Auction House (AH) in World of Warcraft and selling a pretty mammoth amount of goods created with my tailoring skills (and also selling a very rare drop I got) I've broken the 10 gold mark for the first time!

woot! :D

For reference's sake I got a Night Watch Shortsword which I sold for 8 gold I think. Picked it up in Stonetalon Mountains. I went on to use that money to boost my tailoring skill hugely (buying silk and leather of various types) and making spidersilk boots which I sold for 5 gold as well as heaps of shoulderpads and hoods, two pretty desirable items amongst lvl20s-25s. I also discovered 10 slot bags which I have very recently learned how to make are very popular usually disappearing within half an hour of being listed. It does help that the bags are deviously priced 1 silver cheaper than my nearest rivals! I still haven't been able to bring myself to check whether I'm making them at a loss however. That in my mind would be delving too far into the nerd culture of WoW. Seriously, imagine it.

'What are you doing?'

'Um I'm just doing a costing analysis of my bag production technique, establishing the costs of each intermediate stage and then figuring out the optimum price point.'

'Yeah, right, ok.'

The scariest thing though is that I am very tempted to do this, just to generate cash quicker. Why? It's a compulsion really. The game is scary in the way that it causes you to desire success and progression so badly. You want to so badly be as powerful as the level 60s. When an alliance team of 60s comes to raid your village for shits and giggles, you want to retaliate. You can't though, and that drives you on even harder.

The game rewards sinking large periods of time in the game rather than skill. This is something that has occurred to me in the last few days and I've really needed to get off my chest. It's no wonder many gamers shun WoW because it flies in the face of what gamings always been about. It's a test of gaming skill, a competitive framework to test your mettle. 2 player Tetris or at the most basic level, Pong. It's a battle of wits, duking it out with controllers for supremacy. World of Warcraft has more in common with Animal Crossing at a fundamental level. As the game is played for longer and longer items accumulate of greater rarity and desirability yet are there really ever any winners and losers? Aren't they both just a series of non-competitive mini-games? No ones reading this, so I'm not going to try and reconcile this into something explicitly meaningful but it certainly makes you think. Whatever the hell World of Warcraft is though, I'm still enjoying it.

Proof of my achievement!!:

Something I wrote

Given this is stll all shiny and new and I haven't really devised a running theme I'm not going to break it by posting this.

I was writing something to be translated into a french essay for a practice exam and I thought it turned out too well to have the nuance 'lost in translation.'

Voila:

French Essay – School Captain – Evaluative

It has been a great honour over the last year to serve in the position of School Captain. I hope my performance has met the expectations of those who selected me before the other very worth candidates and that I have made a lasting positive impact during my period as captain. Over my time in this position, I’ve had to manage my school career around the added responsibilities this role entails as well as succeed in my Year 12. Because of this experience and my success in balancing my various roles I’ve been asked to write this article – to give you, candidates for next year for this position, an inside view of what its like. For some of you it may strengthen your resolve to pursue it, for other it may become apparent that the role poses too much difficulty and complication. I write this merely so you can make an informed decision.

Firstly, managing a large study load alongside with meetings, duties and out of school time commitments is tough. Year 12 requires that students spend approximately 20 hours outside of school time studying. Lunchtimes and breaks are a very necessary relief from class for most students. Captains, however, find many of their breaks occupied by organizational meetings for sports carnivals, assemblies, and theatrical productions among other minutiae of school life.

Next is downside of responsibility. While you are in control of many things and you can use this to see your creative vision spring to life, if everything falls in a heap, you are also responsible.

A position of importance and visibility also requires you to maintain good behaviour essentially at all times. This can become constricting and annoying.

Of course leadership has its unconditional perks. Access to the prefects lounge is always nice. Badges and other leadership paraphernalia make your blazer ‘bling.’ You’re the only one allowed this too! On a more serious note, you can actually make a difference in the school. If you don’t like something there is no one better positioned that you to make a change. Equally, if someone’s in trouble or struggling you can speak to teachers virtually on their level to create change.

The inside information is now at your disposal; the rest is up to you.

My experiences with World of Warcraft

I've only recently come to know this game, drawn in by labels of social phenomenon and the multi-million user subscriber base. Because if millions of people are doing it, it must be good right? When a friend of mine I'd never pick to be a World of Warcraft player announced he'd reached level 60, I decided a game with such apparently universal appeal had to be worth a shot. I'm not going to present to you an exhaustive analysis or review or anything like that. I'm just going to make some observations, some are aspects of the gameplay I think are crucial to the success of the game, others that I find inherently evil, others just benign observations. I'm writing these down while the game is still sufficiently novel so that I haven't yet become desensitized to them.

- You have to run everywhere - on the one hand this is a step forward in realism and certainly brings to the table the same enveloping realism that GTA3 pioneered. WoW takes it to the next level providing, in lieu of a living breathing city, a whole series of seamlessly connected living, breathing cities. In GTA3 travel between each city is handled via the action that becomes second nature of jacking a car and using your ill-gotten vehicle to transport yourself from point A to point B. Here travel between locations is handled via mechanisms appropriate to the setting - giant bats, zeppelins, griffons. Convenient and kind of awesome right? While these devices are all very well the majority of self-displacement is done on foot, over very long distances. This leads to running, more running and unsurprisingly even more running. The running puts you into a trancelike state. Even getting from one side of a sprawling city to another is painfully slow. Imagine if you'd had to run between missions in GTA3. It would have reduced the enjoyment factor somewhat right? That's definitely the case here although I suspect the motives behind maintaining running as such an integral part of play as less than simply adhering to realism. Running becomes much less important after level 40 when a player is given the opportunity to buy a 'mount.' This takes a significant amount of play time to achieve and one could cynically infer that such an irritating part of the gameplay is preserved to get people to play to level 40 and hence keep paying blizzard. I know as a mid 20s level player I'm strongly anticipating my ingame avatar ticking over level 40 just so I can stop plodding and start riding and I'm sure numerous other players are compulsed to perservere too.

- The game is addictive.

- The game has no distinct end. You can pour as much time into this as you want and you'll only keep progressing, you'll never reach the 'game over' screen.

- 'Timesinks'-a-plenty. see wikipedia reference.

- One of the things this game has succeeded at is causing gamers to realise the ultimate futility of their chosen pursuit. This isn't really so much of a problem when you play casually for an hour here and there and finish a game in the recommended 10-20 hours. The experience ends and real life sets in again. This game can easily gobble up days upon days of game time. In order to reach what could be considered an out point (level 60) a gamer must invest upwards of 500 hours. The addictive qualities of the game and the feeling of emptiness experienced by gamers when reflecting on their hollow time investment has spawned the site http://www.wowdetox.com. On this site, there are many thousands of regretful anonymous confessions testifying to gross timewasting inherent in levelling a character all the way to 60. The typical post-WoW refrain is 'What skills could have I learnt, practiced and damn near perfected in my 500 hour WoW accumulated play-time?'

In spite of the seductiveness, the apparent evil-ness of World of Warcraft doesn't distract from the fact that this is a fun game. The social interaction of the game is great (for the most part), exploration is a guilty pleasure (it's not real, but the environments are still compellingly explorable) and Blizzard have done the impossible and made a MMORPG that's extremely accessible. The process of writing this article and formulating and distilling my thoughts has probably made me more aware of the darker side of WoW than most but I've just gotta play... one... more... session...