MMO Weekly 01/09/09

01 Sep 2009 at 11:22:39 by Jeff Hollis

Oh, to be a noob again.  I honestly found myself wishing that this past week.

It all started a short while back.  You see, my wife's got a cousin (whom we'll call Tina for the purposes of this little write up), whom she's very close to.  They chat on Facebook, they play Farmtown together (no, I don't get it either.  It's a game about **farming**.  I just know that, somehow, Farmtown is more addictive than heroin), and they call each other four or five times a day. 

Sometime back, we learned that Tina had started playing WoW.  She's got a druid and her character is, at this point, maybe level 68 or 69.  My wife's got a number of high-end characters, and she's pretty darned hard core, so her cousin started asking for advice.  These conversations became more and more frequent. 

About that time we also found out that Tina's husband, Kevin, is also playing.  He's got a 72 hunter, and he's shooting toward the level cap.  They've got a son and sure enough it didn't take long until their son started playing.  He’s only seven years old and plays a warrior around level 17 or so.  He's also a total explorer.  Sure, he'll kill the occasional mob, but he's just as likely to walk all the way deep inside Ungoro Crater.  Thankfully, whenever he gets stuck in a zone, way over his head, he has a special skill he uses to get out of trouble.  He just utters the magic phrase, “Dad, I'm stuck and there are dinosaurs and mean gorillas all over.  Can you get me out?” 

That spell works every time.  :)

I'm telling you all this because we got to spend some time with Kevin and Tina this past weekend.  Sure enough, the conversation eventually turned to WoW.  We talked strategy, quests, PvP, guild drama, spell rotations, specs...you name it.  During these conversations, you could just feel their excitement and enthusiasm for the game.  It reminded me of how I used to feel.

Of course, I'm all burned out and jaded now.  I recognise that WoW is a great game; certainly, the best MMO to date.  But I've got this “yeah, yeah, I've seen it all, and done it all” attitude.  The thrill of it has certainly faded.  I've just got no desire to run a daily quest, or hit the same instance one more time.

My equally jaded and burned out wife did something unexpected a couple of weeks back.  She made a new character, just so she could play with Kevin and Tina.  She even rolled an Alliance (/shock and awe!) toon, which was unthinkable just a few weeks ago.  Oh, and they play on a PvE server.  You've got to know my wife to understand what this means.  She's a full-bore Hordie, and she never met an Alliance player she didn't want to kill, teabag, and corpse camp.  She's utterly ruthless.

And now, because there's something contagious going on with her cousin, she's playing a cute little gnome death knight on a carebear server.  Inconceivable, but true. 

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