Tuesday, May 20, 2008

What I've been doing

OK, I suppose the time has come to admit to this. I've been playing World of Warcraft. For those of you who aren't really in the whole role playing/online gaming/MMPORG scene (like me, frankly), WoW is more or less Dungeons and Dragons online with cool graphics, other players, and some unique features. I'm going to assume you all know what D&D is. I didn't actually know about the game at all until some time in college- must've been that rock I was living under. You know, the one with all the cool kids ;)

(Side note: I realized last night that I have never had a relationship of any significance with a boy who has not been a gamer at some point in time. In fact, I think they've all played D&D. Robert was highly amused by this realization. "Now who's a dork?", he laughed. "You are", I said. "YOU are the one who played D&D!")

Anyway, Robert is doing research on the game and actually attended a conference there a week or two ago. It was all super legit, co-sponsored by Science magazine and all. So we bought the game (for work, see?) and Robert started playing so he could attend the conference (it was online, in WoW). A week or so later I started playing, and I am surprised by how much fun it is. And I'm not only a role playing gamer, I'm not a video gamer, either. So I hope you'll all take this into consideration, as Robert and I really, really really want RL friends to play with :D

In case you're the type who revels in the nerdy details of other people's lives I'll tell you that my character is a Blood Elf, her class is Hunter, and she has a pet lion/lynx named Kitty. Robert has two characters, a Tauren (minotaur type) Hunter and an Orc Warlock. Both kids are interested in the game (especially Zion, but Liel loves Kitty), and love to play imaginary WoW games whenever they can't watch us play the real thing. As you might guess, Zion plays his imaginary games most of the time, since he's only allowed to watch 15-30 minutes of WoW a day. Media is tricky stuff. We really limit what the kids are allowed to rot their brains with because, well, it rots their brains. We had a zero TV/movie policy for nearly 4 years. A few months ago we decided to allow 15-30 minutes of movie 3 times a week, and now we've added WoW. I don't see us adding anything more, and I'm glad the commercial aspect of the media is still absent from their lives, but I'm still kind of ambivalent about the entire media category.

3 comments:

the main stitch upholstery said...

i played d and d in high school for the last two years i was in havasu. yeah, says alot about me i suppose. that was not on-line though. good old fashioned cards. we had many late nights at friends houses (i was not allowed to play) fighting the enemies. i don't remember much anymore, but i don't play games anymore either. too busy sewing and wishing i was needlepointing.

Andrea said...

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Robert M Geraci said...

fucking google fucked this up.

short re-typed version:

becka played not-d&d, since d&d is not played with cards, only fake versions are.

jovi is dorkier than i. i only played d&d in my youth; jovi is a lifelong _d&d groupie_!