Did you know that, according to the figures, more people play World of Warcraft than live in Switzerland? In fact, at over 10 million subscribers, there’s about as many people playing Blizzard’s all-conquering MMO as there are people who live in Belgium. Maybe more by now. Azeroth could feasibly have it’s own representation at the United Nations.

While personally I’ve managed to kick the habit on account of trying to focus on getting writing done and not introducing Alliance scum to the taste of a freshly conjured shadow bolt, there are some who are not so lucky. For some people, it is an all consuming obssession that pervades their lives, threatening their jobs and destroying their relationships. There is no hope for these people.

Or perhaps there is - World of Wifecraft
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Captain Kirk and B.A. Baracus now advertising World of Warcraft.

That’s right folks, hot off appearing with Bristol’s most errant son, Justin Beardybloke, on “Bring back the A-Team”, Mr. T. is now promoting the “number 1 online game” (which, actually, it isn’t - at least in terms of subscribers.) Unfortunately, he has to compete with Bill Shatner who, predictably, plays on the side of the gods*. No. Contest.

*Horde for life, baby, Horde for life!

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.
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And now we present the highly anticipated final part of this ambitious and not insignificantly geeky trilogy. Viewers are warned that the following may contain spoilers and that this post has been rated S.

For spoiler.

And sad.

And scuttlebutt.

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Oh yes, there’s a part 2! Did you not notice it said part 1 last time? It’s a brief interlude, again about story telling, before I conclude my trilogy. I know you can’t wait so here we are!

When Blizzard announced that Horde would be getting Paladins as a new playable class, I sighed and rolled my eyes (like just about every other WoW player out there). You see, Paladins are all holy holy, goody two shoes, god-fearing, hammer of might and justice type guys. Regular superheroes who have a real chip on their shoulder about undead dudes. And warlocks. And especially undead warlocks. Which my main character is. There’s a whole seperate issue about how the only thing they’re good at is summoning their protective force shield and running away and about how they’re entirely ineffective as a character class and yada yada yada.
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One thing that has really struck me about the new content in World of Warcraft is the storytelling. Of course it’s not going to win any literature awards but it this is fantasy and escapism and, obviously, a video game. I’ve always been a sucker for involving stories in video games from way back when I used to play lots of graphic adventure games. Highlights are Monkey Island 1 and 2 (blatantly ripped off by Pirates of the Caribbean and Ron Gilbert should definitely sue!) and the marvellous “Beneath a Steel Sky”* (with artwork by Dave Gibbons, comic artist responsible for illustrating the seminal Alan Moore graphic novel, Watchmen as well as Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper and other 2000AD strips).
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…I learnt from World of Warcraft!

Okay, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration. However, this much is true. Today, I had a load of jobs to do - tidy the house and garden in preparation for an estate agent photo sesh, sort out contracts for new job, walk the dog, train for my 100km walk, do some website design and other stuff.

All in all, I got very little achieved.

So I sat down this evening and started writing a list and a plan for tomorrow. Lists are something Mrs D. introduced me to. The idea of planning and making lists was alien to me up until I met her all of, how long has it been? Wow! Almost seven years! To a certain extent, they still make my skin crawl. I’m just not a list-making kinda guy. But I have begun to recognise their usefulness and begrudgingly accept that my life is easier with them.

But how does this relate to WoW? Well, I’ve recently being practising powerlevelling which, for those of you who couldn’t care less, is progressing your character as fast as possible up the tiers of advancement known as “levels”. Trust me when I say it’s a piss easy concept to grasp. Levels are gained by earning enough “xp” (or “experience”) points through doing random shit like killing ten rats or delivering the package to Farmer Hogsmartin or picking 10 pretty Madeupnamius flower for the pointy eared, tree hugging elf. It’s pretty straightforward. However, powerlevelling is doing exactly this but doing it in such away that you maxmise you xp return vs time spent.

For example: Reverend Prettyboy wants you to redeem (i.e. mercilessly slaughter) ten (10) Goddamned Hoodies. Sergeant Brownnose wants you to find 10 mobile phones that the Goddamned Hoodies have stolen. You have two options: either you can do one of the quests, turn it in to claim the reward and then do the other one or (and you may need to sit down at the revolutionary thinking that I’m about to unleash on you) you could do both the quests at the same time. Which, for those of you struggling to keep up, means you can do 2 (two) quests in the time it takes you to do 1 (one).

Clever, huh?

Anyway, back to my list. While writing up my plan for tomorrow, I suddenly found myself thinking in exactly the same way I do when I’m questing in WoW. “So if I walk the dog over to where the car is parked then I can pick up the car at the end of the walk and don’t need to make an extra trip to do so. If I take the dry cleaning ticket with me, I can go straight to the dry cleaning, via the dump and the supermarket and then go back home and turn in all the quests which should get me enough xp to ding!*”

Like I said; clever, huh?

*Ding: MMOG slang for gaining a level. An in game sound effect normally goes “ding” whenever you earn enough xp (or experience) points to advance to the next level.

There’s a guy works down the chip shop swears he’s Elvish!* (Another “zzzzz-inducing” WoW post featuring orgiastic naked elves**, trips to Outland and other mediocrity.)
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Having survived the slightly turbulent flight home and in deference to watching stupid, ugly people on television, I decided to install the WoW expansion and have a butchers at the new content. And blog about it too. After all, why not?

21:40 - Load disc 1 and start install
21:55 - Things progressing nicely
22:04 - Disc 4 fails, installation stops, swearing ensues
22:08 - Start copying discs to hard drive. 15 mins per disc? Wtf?
22:09 - Launch WoW, starts to download 2.05 update
22:12 - Try getting into WoW again.
22:13 - “Your account is registered for the expansion which requires newer files. Please install these files.”
22:15 - “Failed to copy disc 4. Cyclical redundancy doodah encountered.”
22:30 - Locate torrent of required file after discovering that disc 4 is fucked up for a lot of European users. But 12 hours to download? Damn!
22:38 - Pour another glass of wine. Try cleaning disc 4. 16 hours left on download. 16? Wtf?
23:17 - Finished perusing Zach Braff’s blog (Scrubs is teh funnae!), try one last time to copy disc 4 before going to bed. It works! Jaw hits ground.
23:43 - Out of wine, on the Baileys. Expansion installed? Check. Patches reapplied? Check. Terms of Service agreed to? Check. Time to go to bed? Quite probably! Sigh!

Two hours to get it installed - typical IT project all in all. More tomorrow.

Big day today for all them 8 million World of Warcraft addicts: the first expansion “The Burning Crusade” has been released and is live today. I, of course, won’t get to play it being out of the country and not having an available PC to fester in front of. In fact, I only even ordered my copy today despite knowing about it for months. Still, I was able to nick this screenshot of the Dark Portal from somewhere (if it was you, let me know and I’ll credit it because I’ve forgotten)

It’s mighty purdy looking. Of course, everyone will be rushing to make a character with one of the new races, the Alliances Draenei or the Hordes Blood Elves. As one person on the forums has already pointed out, the Horde side will be flooded with female Blood Elf characters and who can blame them? Apart from allegedly sounding like some sultry Surrey seductress, they are well up there with the Lara Crofts of this world when it comes to fanciable digital characters. Pretty sure I’ll end up breaking a habit of ages and make a female character for a change too (and before QE - an habitual virtual crossdresser himself - rushes to point out, yes I did once have a female character, an undead warlock called Mortysa, but that’s been the only one. Ever. MMORPG might well mean Most Men Online Role Play Girls, but I’m not one of them.)