This is slowly filtering through the metaverse. In what can only be considered a marketing coup, Blizzard are hitting the mainstream by getting a 14 day free trial of World of Warcraft distributed with this coming Saturday’s copy of The Times. And not just the trial either - they’re also giving away an eight page game guide to get players started.

The Times. Giving away a video game guide.

Arguably, with 8 million players*, WoW is already the mainstream. What’s possibly a little more surprising is the target demographic that they’re now aiming for. After all, if you look at the careers section of the Times on any given day, the jobs available aren’t graduate positions, supermarket shelf stacking jobs or working from home money making oppurtunities - they’re all white collar, executive, 6-figure (or near as dammit) wage bracket jobs. Perhaps an over exaggeration but you know what I’m getting at: the general perception is that Readers of The Times != Players of World of Warcraft.

Perhaps it would explain Caitlin Moran’s article in Monday’s copy of The Times, titled My life as a bearded dwarf in which she admits that “Dragon embarasses me.” What can I say? All in a days work for yours truly!

Oh wait, sorry - that should have been “Dragons embarrass me.” Quite simply, Ms Moran, who was sceptical to say the least about being given an assignment to find out more about the lands and inhabitants of Azeroth, found herself logging at 10pm to spend 20 mins ‘getting her bearings’ and found herself still playing 3 hours later, such is the appeal (and some would say “addictiveness”) of the game.

What’s more interesting (aside from her giving out her toon’s name and realm for any online stalker wanting to track her down) are the comments to her article, many of which read along the lines of “I’m a 30/40/50+ year old mother/grandmother who has a high level character on another realm!” Those of us who play already know this to be true. I may well have mentioned this before but while I’m by no means the youngest member of the guild I currently belong to - we recently recruited a 17 year old from Belgium who uses the same battlecry at 11pm every night: “Woohoo! South Park! Cya!” - I am nowhere near the eldest either. There are several 40+ year old players amongst us although it’s not surprising that most of us work in the IT industry or similar. Having said that, one of the guild officers is a landscape gardener, another veteran member is a chippy by trade and regales us with tales of life on a building site. We could probably all be described as geeks but many - if not all - of us are married or in long term relationships, enjoy going out and certainly enjoy a drink or two. It’s social and friendly and in some ways I can associate with these people more than I can with the regulars I mingle with at my local. The only thing in common we have is that we live in the same village and drink in the same pub as opposed to the former group, my guild, with whom I share a hobby and interest.

Moran’s article is by no means in depth but it is an easy and interesting read. It nearly makes up for this weekends Sunday Times article on what teenagers are doing on the web in which it relegates YouTube, Wikipedia and Second Life to being solely the domain of teenage internet users and failing, once again, to recognise the widespread appeal and use of these sites by all spectrums of the online world. Or something. Whatever - all I know is that it pissed me off and I mean to blog about it.