Hello again -- Cantique here, sorry for the delay in posting. We’ve been talking about WOW or the World of Warcraft game and I mentioned earlier that I’d talk about some of the mechanics of the game, but this post I wish to address some of how I came to play the game.

I think I pay $30 a month for the game. First you have to purchase the initial world of warcraft game – honestly I do not know what it sells for at this time, but when I bought it, It was around $40 for the boxed game. After you install it, you “join” the game online and pay a monthly fee of
$30. Now, since I’ve started playing, the initial game has expanded twice. What that means is that I had to go out for each “expansion” and purchase the “rest” of the game. Twice. About $40 a pop. Each time there is an expansion there is more content and more fun. Blizzard, the company that developed the game keeps things interesting so you don’t get bored and leave. They want that $30 a month. At this point in time, I think they have about 12 million players. WOW, indeed!

There is also a World of Warcraft magazine to which I subscribe. Four issues a year. Very nice rag, colorful, full of information and worth saving. I was so excited to get that first issue! I share it with my family and friends at work. Okay enough advertising…lol.

My grown son, Thything, introduced my husband (Shadew) and me to the game. I sat next to Thything and watched as he showed me a tiny bit of the world of Azeroth. (That is the name of the world in which the game takes place). He showed me a dark underground city called Ironforge and pointed to the characters moving around. When he said to me, see that one’s name (I don’t remember the name, but lets use Olwei). When he moved the mouse pointer (cursor) over the character I saw the name. Thything said, “That is a real person who has also bought this game and is sitting at his computer at home and I can see him and he can see me in the game.” I was amazed!

You can make your character or “toon” walk (or run, or jump – LOL) up to other toons and type things that you would want to say to them. For example you can type “hello” and the toon and all the other toons close enough can see what you typed, or you can whisper to the other person and no-one but you and he can see what you typed. You can do simple commands by using the
backslash and some words - /dance – or /laugh – or /cry and your “toon” will do what you’ve typed. This part of the game can be very intricate and evolve into good rp (or roleplay) or it can remain simply communication of a “hi, bye, whatcha doing” nature.

I have learned that there are some folk that play the game that are very annoying and say things you don’t want to hear. There is a filter for cursing so you don’t have to see that and there is a very handy thing called “ignore”. You open a list and type the person’s name and click “ignore” and they don’t disappear, but you don’t “hear” (or read) anything at all that they are typing and they cannot whisper to you anymore. I will talk about the “Friends list” and guilds at a later date.

Anyway, there I sat absolutely enthralled. Some of the characters are simply computer generated -- not at all real people – they are called NPCs for None player character I think -- but they interact with you to give you directions, or instructions for quests. (more about quests later).

There are cities, and villages all over the place and roads to get from place to place. There are different continents and oceans. There are ships to go from continent to continent. There are creatures from which you can purchase rides to other same-continent cities (remember, I talked about the coin in an earlier post) There is a tram from a city called Stormwind to the
city Ironforge. I couldn’t take it all in. I wanted to play the game just to be able to see the sights. LOL.

Done. Purchased the game, joined the online community and logged in. I had to create my character. There are so many choices I know I took more than an hour just to do that. Did I want to be a cute, small gnome character or a human, or a dwarf? (there are many more) Did I want to be a warlock, a priest, a warrior, and so on and so on. What color of hair did I want? What style? Male or female? Also, skin tone, things like earrings, and the very important FACIAL features. But the most important thing to me was the NAME I picked for my character. On World of Warcraft this is all very easy. It is fun!

Boom! I created my very first toon called Esiwlil – Gnome, female, mage, red hair, three ponytails, brown eyes, sweet face, and 3 or 4 earrings, pale skin. (I still have her and am working with her to get her to her top level) Hubby created a character (forgot its name at this time.) We were set up. Nice.

The very first problem that came up was: Whose turn is it to play? So, hubby played for a while and I watched. Then I played awhile and he watched. – We are good at playing things together, we played Myst sitting side by side with one running the computer and the other helping to think about how to solve the puzzles of that game – However; I think it was the very next day, we decided that we had to purchase another account so we could both play at the same time. Two computers, two purchased boxed games, and two accounts. Whew! I could then take my time and not feel like I had to explain all my choices to hubby who was totally busy with his own game.

Much better.

At this point we also decided that in order to help afford the monthly fees, we would discontinue television service. We haven’t missed it at all! Isn’t that amazing? So we have had no way to watch television shows on our television since 2006. We have a lot of videos and are constantly adding to our collection; however, and that is what we use the television for exclusively. The price of the television service was about the same price as the two WOW accounts. I have never regretted that decision. I can pick up a few shows online if I want to, but I almost never do.

I will wrap this up by saying that the creation of characters to play with in the game is one of the most fun aspects for me. As such I went on to create many, many, other toons, so I do not get bored being a mage, or a gnome, I just switch over to one of my other “people” and do other stuff. In World of Warcraft an account can have up to 50 characters. Isn’t that terrific? Only ten per realm. (we’ll talk about realms later)

So, there I was at the time around 51 years old and super excited about this new-fangled way to play and to interact with people from all over the world. I still haven’t finished the last game of the MYST series. I do still take time to read however -- I try not to let WOW take up all my spare time, but it’s hard. LOL!