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Benefit From My Wasted Life!Once, I played a lot of Everquest. A lot, a lot. Since then, I have matured. Now I play a lot of World of Warcraft. Now, as then, it is this hideous nightmare hole into which I pour hour after hour of my precious and irreplaceable youth, pissing away time that I could spend writing, or being with my family, or being involved with the community, or just, you know, doing something! The only difference between World of Warcraft and Everquest is that, when I raided in Everquest for many hours, I was the only person I knew who did it. I was the lone misfit, spending hour after hour raiding, while friend and family looked on and shook their heads sadly. But with World of Warcraft, everyone around me has been sucked in. People, male and female, who looked at my addiction with sympathy and mockery, are now playing more hardcore than I do. The sensible person I am married to is raiding several nights a week now. This is not a sign that humanity is headed in the right direction! The other day, someone in the game saw my character and told me how impressed he was. He was embarrassed that he had only bought the game the day before, and he wasn’t uber yet. I told him, “All you need to do to get this cool gear is to spend lots and lots and lots of time. I suggest uninstalling the game, returning it to the store, and living your life.” Unsurprisingly, I didn’t get a response to that. But hey, he can’t say that nobody warned him. And yet, there is one advantage to having been through all of this already with an older game. I get to see all of my friends learn the lessons with World of Warcraft that I learned from Everquest. If you are new to this activity, let me tell you what I have learned. It may make your life make a little more sense. First, people who inhabit online forums are idiotic losers. Oh, my God. Where do they get these people? Are they bred in vats? Is there a giant, invisible conspiracy of married cousins with DSL? What is it about game company online forums that makes people so dumb? That makes it so even the simplest, most obvious comment or complaint is met with arguments and flames? There is something infuriating about hearing someone say something truly stupid. It’s true in bars, it’s true at family reunions, and it’s true online. Don’t open yourself up to suffering. The first lesson is, stay away from online forums. If you can’t stay away, refuse to let those people get under your skin. And, if you do end up in a giant flamewar, a holy war in which you will not back down until they admit that they are totally wrong and you are totally right, don’t tell me about it. I will laugh at you. Oh, and by the way? No sane game designer reads the forums. No matter how sensible a change you make to a game, there will always be a pack of screaming yahoos tearing it apart. If you let those people get into your head, it’ll paralyze you. That’s why they stay away. Just so you know. Second, guilds are highly political, and people in them will be mean to you and not value you properly and screw you over. Those nice people you’ve been working with night after night to slay the fearsome dragon Onyxia? They don’t love you. They are not your friends. You are nothing but pixels on a screen to them. They will happily take from you that magic, Tier 2 helmet you clearly earned, even if it makes you cry. Actually, this is a valuable lesson about life. Everything gets political. Put three people in a room, and soon two of them will be plotting against the third. And guild politics are lightweight, beanbag stuff. You want to see some ugliness? Check out office or church politics sometime. Sometimes my friends who are new to the game come to me with tales of the idiots in their guild. The treasures and raid spots they were cheated out of. The guild leader who didn’t realize what precious, unique snowflakes they are. And I nod sympathetically. Hey, I’ve gotten crazy angry about guild crap myself. But the worst thing that can happen is that you’ll leave the game and return to real life. Which brings us to the third lesson. If you ever feel like quitting, QUIT! Seriously. Every once in a while, you’ll start to lose your energy. You’ll feel like taking a little break. Read books. Go out. Meet people. When that happens, when you get an itch to take a break, RUN WITH THAT! Feeling like quitting one of these horrible games is the sweetest gift life can give you. You can shake the addiction and get all those hours back. It’s like if you were a hopeless heroin addict and one day you woke up and said, “You know something? I don’t feel like any heroin today. I’ll go for a walk. See a movie. Get a job.” Yes! Do that! You caught a lucky break. Run for your life! Sure, you’ll be back. Eventually. But at least you might get some sunlight in the meantime. I have long felt that these massive online RPGs are the best educational games ever created. If you pay attention, you can learn a world of things about human nature and about working with and motivating people. And they’re pretty fun. I’ve learned a lot. Now all I need is to learn to stop. Once I manage that, golly, how smart I will be. Like computer games? A great fantasy adventure awaits you here. |
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