More Mundane Meanderings.

I rolled up a Dwarvin Hunter and shot through the early levels pretty quickly, completing a great number of extermination and body part collection tasks for the dwarves in my home village. Soon I was able to tame my own pet, so charmed a bear, named him Bjorn, and we were off to kill countless kobolds, gnolls and bandits. Before my free time expired, I visited two large and beautifully rendered cities (Ironforge and Stormwind), flew on the backs of griffins, rode a seemingly anachronistic subway and performed many good deeds for the citizens of the Alliance. Then time ran out, and I could no longer log in.

The presence of so many fairly easily completed quests that helped your character advance quickly was a very refreshing change from my Everquest days. There are many, many quests that you can find and complete within a reasonable amount of time (at least in the early levels). I could almost see myself being pulled in to another quasi-addiction. "Just 3 more kills and this quest is done! And after that, I just have to collect 2 more red bandanas to complete another! Ooh, and after that I'll almost be to the next level. I might as well keep playing until then." The presence of so many little goals can compel a player to keep on going, just a little more time than they had planned.

Luckily, I have a powerful anti-addiction force in my life: my wife. She doesn't like me playing the game more that she thinks I should be playing it. Oh, she'll let me keep playing, but at the same time she'll give me That Look. I don't like That Look. That's a good thing, I think, since I could keep playing such a game much longer than I should, keeping me from doing other, more constructive things.

After my guess pass time was up, I decided I'd buy a retail box and upgrade my account to a real one, even with The Look. We were at Target, picking up some cat food, so I went over to the electronics department. They were sold out of World of Warcraft. We also had to go to the mall, so I stopped at the video game store. They were sold out of World of Warcraft. I went out the next day; Circuit City, Best Buy, CompUSA and the PX were all sold out of World of Warcraft. Amazon.com had a ship time of 1 to 2 weeks. Blizzard themselves were sold out. It looks like I'll have to wait a while before resuming my play.

After the game is is publicly available again, I'm not sure I'll actually go out and buy it. My addiction was still rather weak when I was forced to quit, and the intervening time will give my system plenty of time to flush the toxins. Blizzard needs to have the product available when a newly-made junky finishes up their free trial—any drug dealer knows that.