So here we are...the long and awaited part 3. (Notice I have bolded this for those of you who read part 2 before part 1, tut, tut Mick, tut, tut!) :-)
This will (I think), be the final chapter to the post. Originally I had intended for there to 'be only one'. But 'The Highlander' film copyright laws kinda infringed on that a tad. Plus Sean Connery emailed to say he would be very angry at this and not invite me over for tea anymore and we cant be having that. That boyo makes a damn fine cup of Nambarrie goodness. (Bit stingy on the hob nobs though...but guess thats just the Scottish in him - sorry Neil, lol :-))
SO! Without further ado, onward we march into 2009. Having escaped the perils of 2008 with my life still intact, albeit with a slightly larger frame and waistline, I was again in reasonable spirits...(maybe I should see a shrink...*ponders....*).
BANG! CRACK! Were the sounds I remember hearing.....(oh no, I done that one already)...Sorry! :-)
In similar fashion to 2008, the beginning of 2009 followed suit. It began.....Like Shit!
My life was completed and utterly dominated by one thing. My new found career in a new office? No. My exciting impending wedding plans? No. My life was indeed under control from another entity. Three little words guaranteed to strike Fear, Excitement, Exhilaration, Sadness and Joy into over 11 and a half million people across the globe!
WORLD-OF-WARCRAFT! (Cue drums!)
This Godforsaken creation cannot begin to be explained to those of you who don't know what it is. But I shall try.
The official line from Blizzard Ltd; its money laden creators, is as follows:
"World of Warcraft is a MMORPG - A Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. It enables thousands of players to come together online and battle against the world and each other. Players from across the globe can leave the real world behind and undertake grand quests and heroic exploits in a land of fantastic adventure. So step upon the hallowed shores of this embattled world, and see what journeys await those who would plumb this ancient realm's many secrets."
The Unofficial line from Jogging, Blogging & Sleepless Nights Ltd however, is a little different:
"World of Warcraft is a FKOLAR - A F*cking Killer Of Lives And Relationships!". It enables thousands of perfectly normal, presentable, decent human beings to come together online and waste their lives away. Players from across the globe can leave the real world behind for good. Lose their jobs, lose their partner's, kids and home. So step upon the hallowed shores of this complete fantasy land and see what journey this new addiction takes you on, as you find out how quickly you can self implode your life and world as you know it.
That may all seem a little harsh - believe me, its not.
Many of us have either a Playstation or an Xbox at home that we enjoy to play from time to time. Nothing can beat playing your mates a few games of Fifa or Tiger Woods with a few beers. The one thing that separates these types of games from WoW, however, is that.....THEY END! - WoW-has-no-ending!!
You start the game off by choosing a character such as a Warrior, Priest or Mage for example (there are 10 in total). Your character begins life at level 1 with crap gear and hardly any spells or abilities. As you pick up and complete quests you gain experience points (also known as XP). Upon reaching a set amount of XP your character will reach level 2, and gain a new ability and some new weapons or armour. You then pick up some more quests, a little harder than the last, kill some more stuff and get more XP, then the next thing you know, you are now level 3, with another new ability and a new shiny weapon.
Before long you are soon learning the controls and the dizzying array of new spells and abilities your character has mastered. At this stage you are around level 10 and are moving into a new zone with bigger monsters, harder quests, but with also better weapons and armour.
On average, the time it takes to reach level 10 is around 2 hours. The level cap at the moment is Level 80 and soon to be Level 85! - The length of time it takes to reach this level (based on say 3 hours of gameplay a night) is about 3 months!! - Yep thats right! 3 fecking months!
Once you hit the level cap you then begin the next aspect of the game. Dungeons. As you levelled up you have always got better weapons and armour etc which pleased you. Now however there are no more quests. What you must do now in order to satiate your hunger for better 'gear' is clear huge dungeons with a group of 4 other people. All 5 of you marching through a dark mystical dungeon killing enormous beasts of every size, shape and stature. Once slain, these dungeon beasts drop much much better gear than you previously got from your silly quests.
So now, although you have no more levelling to do to take up your playtime, you must now visit every 5 man dungeon possible to get the absolute best gear for your character as by this stage the addiction has well and truly taken hold and you need this gear to make the world a better place and help you sleep at night.
It doesn't stop there. Once you have achieved all of the gear possible for your character from these 5 man dungeons, there is again EVEN BETTER gear - 'EPIC' gear as its known in the game. Items of epic quality and hypnotic purple in colour. These are the absolute best swords, axes etc that you can get. Even seeing another 'character' in the game with them makes u want to cry! The thirst has taken hold.....suddenly its clear - this game is a VAMPIRE!
These epic items can only be gotten in the elite way. To destroy the beasts that hold these items you require much more than your previous 5 people. You require 25 people! - Sometimes as much as 40!
Before I continue, let me explain what makes this game unique. As you run around hacking and slashing beasties, you will see many other 'characters' doing the same. These are actual real life people from around the world playing the game as you do. You can click on them and chat to them, and they with you. You can invite them into a party to team up for group quests etc, in this game there is certainly no 'one player mode'! - Eventually as you play you will get friendly with a few characters - it is inevitable. When you do, you can add him (or her, yes lots of girls play too) to your friends list. Now you have your very own in-game MSN Messenger type module.
Ok his name may be Johan and he may live in Scandinavia, but to you he is 'Auros, the Priest' and he keeps your ass alive with his holy spells as you strike down your foes with your over-sized axe! - A very worthwhile ally to have in the game!
As your friends list grows you may simply have too many people to keep track of. So, you do what any decent WoW player does. Visits the town hall of his home city and purchases a Guild Charter. This charter requires signatures from other players and once complete you have created your own 'Guild'.
A Guild is simply an in-game association of players/characters. Similar in real life terms to something like the Freemasons, or The Playboy Mansion. (Hubba Hubba!)
Guild's have no limits to how many members can join. Often a Guild has as many as 200-300 members. The purpose of a Guild is for the Guild Leader to organise and lead the afore mentioned 25/40 man dungeon runs (or Raids as they are more commonly known). There are hundreds and thousands of Guilds.
Once you have joined a Guild and proved your worth as a player, you attain 'Raider' status, which means you are one of the lucky 25 or 40 in the party to go and slay the big bad beasties for all the new shiny epic purple loot. However, the bigger the reward, the bigger the risk. Or in WoW terms. The bigger the time frame.
To advance through a 25 or 40 man dungeon, it does not take around 30-45 minutes as your previous measly 5 man dungeons did. No, no, no.....that would be like taking candy from a baby....a fire-breathing baby that is, with little horns and maybe a hellish minion or 2 as his feet...spitting on you...with acid. (You get the idea :-) )
No - to fully clear a 'Raid' dungeon, all 25 or 40 of you need not 1 hour, but around 10-12 hours!
SACRE-BLEU - I hear you scream! - This is madness!
Well my friends, this is not madness....THIS IS SPARTA WORLD OF WARCRAFT!!!
Obviously it is impossible for 25 or 40 people to sit glued to a computer screen for 12 hours simultaneously. So what do you do? (This ones a do-sie!) Your 'Guild Leader' or another high ranking member, creates (and i can't believe I'm writing this as I have done it myself!) your very own Guild Website!!!!!!!!!!!! Arrrrgh, the shame!!!! - Strike me down lord!!!!! :'-(
A Guild website allows the Guild leader to split the 12 hours of raiding time down into 3-4 separate nights via the new website calendar service (where members can sign for raids and confirm their availability status) so that no big bad monster survives and more importantly, more shiny weapons can be attained!
With the above explaining how a Guild works and how a lengthy Raid Dungeon can be cleared, there is one tiny thing I forgot to mention. At present for a level 80 character there is not one, but around 7 RAID DUNGEONS IN THE GAME!!!! - A top, top guild with the best players kitted out in the best gear would obviously whizz through these Raids in perhaps half the time, or sometimes less if you know what to expect and are familiar with the place. But taking even 5-6 hours to complete one of these is still a substantial amount of playtime. The dungeons are also of varying difficulty and have 'Normal' modes and 'Heroic' modes, which in effect doubles your playtime yet again. Its impossible to calculate.
At present most Guilds have a Raiding schedule of around 4-5 nights a week for around 4 hours a night. It is not uncommon however, for Guilds to raid every night for say 6 hours Mon-Fri and even Saturdays and Sundays. There is even a Guild called "The Night Shift" which caters for people wanting to raid who cannot meet the normal times of 7pm-11pm, because, as the name suggests, they work 'Night Shifts!' - Its insane.
Lastly, like any normal world, be it fantasy or real, there is always mans greatest desire to take into consideration. Money. Currency. Or Gold, in WoW. Yes thats right, WoW characters are all self employed. For every quest you complete you receive either some Gold, Silver or Copper. 100 Coppers are worth a Silver, and 100 Silvers are worth a Gold. You use this Gold to buy items from virtual salesmen in the game. Be it food to replenish your health, or a visit to a blacksmith to repair some of your damaged gear. There is everything to be purchased. Sick of running around everywhere across the barren lands on foot? - Simple, buy a horse, a dinosaur or a wolf to ride on. Sick of riding everywhere on your wolf? - Simple, visit a flying trainer and buy some flying skills and a Dragon!
The gold you accumulate also lets you learn and level up 2 'tradeskills'. For example, if you were to choose Tailoring and Enchanting as your 2 professions, then you could create a new magic gown or hat or even a flying carpet; then you could enchant it with magical properties to make your spell power increase, to make you move faster etc. There are around 10 available professions.
There is also an in-game Auction house where players can buy and sell items of various power to each other. A WoW Ebay if you will. The possibilities are endless.
PHEW! - Sorry that went on for so long guys...as you can tell it truly is a game of immense proportion. Even with that thorough explanation, there are many many things which I have left out, and also, I think its far to say, that its looking at this stage as if a pt.4 to my blog may be on the horizon. :-/
So to bring myself back to the subject in hand....my wavering fitness levels, growing waistline and depleting energy levels, let me enlighten you with the role WoW played in this...
I previously mentioned that a level 80 character takes around 3 months to level up - based on around 3 hours a night. Couple this with 5 man dungeon runs and eventually the big 'raids', you are probably looking at 6 to 9 months to finally have your character at a level you are satisfied with (until of course some new content and raids are released). A long time by anyones standards to play what is essentially, a computer game.
What if, however, you were now as I was. What if, you were maybe playing for a little more than 3 hours a night, what if you were maybe playing for 5 hours a night plus around 7-8 hours on a saturday and a sunday. What if you even spent the odd Friday night playing until around 6am on Saturday morning as you knew you had no work to get up for....if you were playing for those time frames....what would the possibilities be then?!?!?!?!?!
Well...please allow me to elucidate.
I began playing WoW around 2006 as a pastime. I enjoyed it, but was far from hooked. The controls were clunky and difficult. The whole point of the game passed me by. But unbeknown to me I was already addicted. Even though only playing for maybe an hour at a time every few nights, the game was ever so slowly drawing me in....
Soon I had my main character, Ofafu. A Warlock. A dark caster from the nether who can summon demons to do his bidding and disabling his foes with DOT (Damage-Over-Time) spells! A very powerful class! I had reached level 40 or so and joined a casual guild. I learned a lot about the game from the other members, and became more 'involved'. The social side of the game also encapsulated me and soon I had a group of 'friends' who I could happily chat to as I honed my skills. The game became even more inviting.
Very quickly my playtime was increasing night after night. I was even rushing home from work early to try to gain another level in my drive to level 80 and the wonders which it brought.
DING! Level 80. I was there. Simply overcome with a great sense of achievement. 3 (almost 4) long months of questing and running around in search of the next XP point. I soon began the dungeon slogs, gearing up night after night. Neglecting time with my family, friends and myself. The game had taken control over me.
In the months which followed however, after Ofafu had reached the peak of his powers...I became strangely.....lost. There was no more a real clear goal to aim for...what was I to do? - Had this all been for nothing?
Sadly, No. What I failed to mention is that there is no limit to how many characters you can have, so I simply created another character of a different class, an Orc Warrior, and went through the whole process again....The same thing happened. I grew bored of my Warrior and then created another character to feed my addiction....
......and another, and another, and another.......
Fast forward to the beginning of 2009, I now had almost 7 x level 80 characters and a handful of others around levels 50-70. I had just applied to (yes, you actually had to complete a thorough application form and process!) and was accepted into one of the top Guilds on the server. JOY OF JOYS!
I was at the pinnacle of current 'Raiding' content and excelling above all other Guild members as my class of a 'Damage Dealer' with my latest character, Flippmo, a Death Knight.
For Health and Safety reasons - and my own sanity, I will refrain from working out exactly how many hours, days, weeks and months of my life I have lost to this terrible affliction. What I do know is that all that time lost I will never get back. Time simply wasted away by sitting in-front of a computer screen which could've been spent perhaps exercising or with my friends and family.....its disgusting.
Around April of 2009, again I grew bored of the game. There was nothing in the game that I didn't know about. Whatever question anyone was to ask me about any aspect of it, I could answer in a heartbeat. My playtime then flipped and slowly began to decrease, week after week, I was playing less and less...the game for me, strangely, had ended. And the addiction had parted ways with my Mind, Body and Soul.
I do not use the term 'Addiction' lightly as that (whether I chose to accept it at the time or not) is exactly what it was. I can console myself in the fact that I am not alone in having fallen victim to this game. To be honest, I have an addictive nature and probably shouldn't have began playing in the first place. But life if full of 'ifs' and 'buts'. It was recorded that around 60% of all players become addicted to WoW, and when you consider there are around 11.5 million subscribers, thats a hell of addiction caused to the population. To think of the amount of teenager's that play this game is staggering. Teenagers who get caught up in a fantasy world, more focused on attaining fictional objects than maybe studying for their exams. Potential Doctors, Nurses...life savers who maybe end up as taxi drivers because of this game.
Blizzard Ltd sure aren't concerned with this I feel. In order to play the game you must subscribe. The subscription fee is £8.99 per calendar month. If you were receiving £8.99 every month into your bank account from almost 12 million people.....would you be concerned?!?!!??!
Thankfully, there are forums around now and websites out there such as www.wowdetox.com and www.warcraftaddiction.com to help stem the flow of potential new addiction cases. Unfortunately, the reality is that some never get the chance to read them. At my last recollection I was aware of around 10 cases where people have actually died from playing WoW for days on end. Regardless of whether is was through exhaustion or whatever, these are facts of how bad something can become if you let it take over you.
Because of these cases, World of Warcraft inadvertently claimed for itself the more sinister title of 'World of WarCRACK'.
Addiction affects people in different ways and can cover a vast spectrum of different things. From smaller things such as exercise and tattoo's to more serious ones like drink or drugs, the next is equally as ugly as the last.
In my case it was a brewing storm. Just as my old character, Ofafu, damaged enemies with his Damage-Over-Time spells, its as if a similar spell was on me. I was never aware of the direct affect playing the game for so long had on me, but from time to time, little pieces of truth raised their head.
By playing the game I was neglecting my sleeping pattern - often staying up later than usual to finish a raid. My health - sitting in the same place for so long has affected my posture, back strength, carpal tunnel in my wrists (taking into account I already sit in a chair at a desk in my job its amazing i'm still able to walk). My diet - When rushing home from work for a raid I had no care, want or time to think of cooking a dinner - so I was ordering pizza's, chinese, kebabs...anything that you could really eat with one hand, and fast, while you focused your mind on the raid. My social skills - soon I began to find myself using WoW language - speaking of things like 'Nab', 'Loot', 'DPS', HOTs', 'Gief' and another word I still haven't been able to quite shake yet, 'Epic'. These may mean nothing to you but these words are like second nature to me and I could quite comfortably find a place for them in pretty much any conversation.
South Park once made an episode dedicated to WoW and at the end of the episode all the kids in the cartoon, Cartman, Kenny etc had became hugely obese and covered in spots while playing online in a dark basement with an online friend who happened to be a grown man, in a similar condition as themselves. As funny as the episode was, it felt as if there was also a hidden message portraying just how bad things can get.
I am thankfully now all but over my addiction to WoW. Although I am not one for having regrets in life and feel as if everything happens for a reason - perhaps this is one that slipped through the net, and all I can do is chalk it down to experience.
In closing this 3rd part of my post, I do so in a somber mood. The realism and admission of my WoW exploits has left me with heavy heart. I guess owning up and revealing hidden truths about your self can do that.
I am only grateful of this soundboard for enabling me to do so - as it is, in similar effect as my other posts...a little weight lifted from my shoulders.
This third segment has ran on more than I expected, but I suppose until you start typing there is no pre-defined start and end point - and nor do I want there to be.
What I can say however, is that part four will, definitely, be the final post in this journey of mine through the past few years. And it is, thankfully, a little more upbeat and lighthearted than the above.
Thanks again for reading and I will publish the closing article very soon.
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