WoW plugs into my monkey brain. As I explained in my post . . . Mr. Smarty-Pants.

It’s a toss-up.

And, just to get myself in a (okay, ANOTHER) ton of trouble, I think Missy Caroline’s definition of “two” as in “two hours” may differ from those of us who live in the real world. (Except when we’re playing Zelda, at which time a WoW two hours exactly matches a Hyrule two hours…)

Oh, and just for clarification, what do you think IS the best videogame of all time, if not WoW? Actually, don’t answer that. I don’t think I want to know!

When I was at my peak WoWing, an embarrassment of hours. Now, I try and keep it at about 2 hours tops. It can be a major time suck. And it’s highly addictive, too.

Ken,

I’m pretty sure pwning comes from the guys exciting typing about how quickly they ganked another player. It’s easy to type, “I pwned them ” rather than “I owned them.”

I’m not entirely sure how to describe playing WoW. For me, it’s highly immersive. I’m pretty OCD so the repetitive nature of some of the game play really plugs into that.

But in a nutshell . . . You start by creating a character. (If you ever played D&D, you have an idea of how this works.)

You chose the race, gender, and class of character. Do you want to do melee or distance damage? Do you want to be a support class or a healer?

There is limited paper-dolling, but you do get to customize your character some.

Then you’re plopped down in the world of Azeroth. You are given quests by various NPCs. When you fulfill these quests, you receive experience points and sometimes item rewards. (You also receive experience for defeating bad guys.)

As you level, you train and become more powerful.

There are two primary ways to play WoW. On a PvE server — i.e., the only enemies you meet are NPCs. Or you can play on a PvP server — which means you will also have to fight other player’s characters. (There are also role-playing servers, but ewwwww.)

Not only do you have a class of character (warlock, warrior, priest, druid, mage, shaman) but you also have professions you can learn. These allow you to make money in the game as well as making useful items for yourself and your friends.

The game has a stylized appearance that’s not quite comic bookie but not terribly realistic either. The world is contiguous and you spend time mapping and running through the world finding new places to quest. There are also “instances.” These are areas where characters go to perform certain tasks. They are technically not a part of the contiguous world. And there are parts of the world you can’t get to until you get to a certain level.

The other thing is that you have a lot of other people running around. Before I stopped playing a while back I think had about 20 people on my friends list and then I knew a lot of the people in my very large Guild. I do like these people, but my relationships with them are pretty much game specific. However, I do know of people who have met and married through the game. (And sometimes in the game, but ewwwwww.)

While driving back from Austin to Albuquerque (cities that run the gamut from A to…A) I listened to the wonderful spoken version of this read by Cory’s partner, Alice Taylor, who used to be a professional Quake player and is a Brit like Anda herself. That’s available here along with the entire Overclocked collection.