Chapters: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
Not quite at the end of the free trial period I decided the World of Warcraft was probably not singing to my better angels: the household entertainment budget seemed like something that was due for a stoic reevaluation rather than an impulsive expansion and in just over a week I had rediscovered in myself a caution-worthy inclination towards shoveling solitary hours into the Grind - that low level, light-skill playing towards the gradual but inexorable accumulation of treasure, levels, virtual skills (as opposed to the real kind whose acquisition is far from automatic regardless of the time you sink).
Much has been made of the dangers of immersion in these new virtual realms, and I tend to think it is pretty much all invented hysteria. Escape is always going to be an attraction in an epistemologically ambiguous and frequently egregiously unpleasant physical universe and there are always going to be people who ride escape to genuine ruin - whether the medium is sherry, bridge, novels or glue. Obsession over new media is just something to sell papers with, another bit of grist for the feuilletons. Nevertheless, I let my subscription lapse. I would hope perhaps that someday I will sort out my personal issues of money, time, and personal balance to the extent of allowing me to really enjoy the possibilities of one of these new social environments.
I left my dwarf in an Inn with the beast he’d just tamed (new “skill”) at his feet - I spent a few coins to buy him a drink, even. It is all a goof, narrative wrapped in technological moonshine, but we’d spent a good few hours together nonetheless. In some sense I think of him as being there still.
That wraps it up for Nine Nights in Azeroth, and I think for the 2011 edition of Phree as in Phreakshow unless something AMAZING happens. What’s next? No idea.
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