Damn you World of Warcraft!

First off, lets rewind to 1989. Remember when Baseball Stars came out on Nintendo? They had the brilliant idea of keeping stats and gave us the ability to save the game. I believe this was the first Nintendo game that allowed you to do this. By saving the game, you could record your progress so you didn't feel like you were starting from scratch every time you played. You always were accomplishing something (winning money for your team, signing free agents, increasing player abilities). Every time you played, you got better. Because of this, it was the most addictive Nintendo game I ever played. I always wanted to play more to make my team better.

Side Note: Remember stacking your team so heavily that everybody was batting over .700 and hitting homeruns every other at bat? That was awesome.

Now back to present time. Pretty much every video game available allows you to save your game. World of Warcraft (WOW) has taken the whole "saved progress" phenomenon to a new level. Of course it's hard to compare this to Baseball Stars since WOW is not a sports game, however it runs on the same principles. Build your character up and stack him with the best gear and weapons you can find. Also, you are not only working to increase the character's experience level, but also his class level and profession level. You don't need to know what that means, I'm just trying to show that there is so much content and so many ways to make your character more powerful.... and every time you play you get better. Just like Baseball Stars, yet so much worse.

With BStars, you could build a team in a few minutes, start making some decent money in a few hours, and could have a pretty stacked team in a few days... maybe a week. With Warcraft, you can spend weeks or even months just trying to upgrade one piece of equipment (BTW, you wear 14-15 pieces of armor and have 1-3 weapons)... and you are playing against tens of thousands of other people at the same time. It's hard to even fathom how much time people waste playing this game.

What's crazy to me is that there are certain aspects of the game that require the cooperation of 25 to 40 different people at the same time, and will take multiple hours to complete (6 hours or more in some cases). That means you pretty much have to dedicate an entire day to playing the game without much of a break (don't worry, I don't do this kind of stuff... yet). You also need to be really good at playing your character because any mistake you make in the game can cause the death of many people. These instances require huge guilds that will only let you join them if you meet their strict guild standards. These are the hardcore guys, AKA the guys who will always be better than you.

Since I have OCD when it comes to video games, I hate it when people are better than me. So I keep playing to get better. Unfortunately I've been playing the game for more than 6 months now.... and I suck! Seriously, I'm terrible. A couple of months is not enough time to learn all the ropes and become competitive (like baseball stars). Becoming really good at this game could take years. This reality is slowly starting to sink in and it's depressing.

Fortunately I've made a bunch of friends in the game and it really increases the enjoyment level. It's becoming less and less about having the best character, best gear, and best strategies and more about hanging out with some cool new friends. The game is both exciting and a huge waste of time... and 100% hands down the most addictive game I've ever played.

Where did September and October go?

This has definitely been my longest time between posts. I'm blaming it mostly on my new World of Warcraft addiction (which deserves a post all on it's own). That stupid game is ruining me. Anyway, I just wanted to post an update on all things me. Here we go.

Favorite new Album: Spoon "GaGaGaGaGa". This album is awesome. I started liking Spoon when "Gimmie Fiction" came out (their 4th or 5th album I believe), but wasn't really hooked. This new album (ga...) is my new obsession. Spoon is such a unique band, it's nice to have something different to listen to.

Favorite new Movie: Superbad. This movie was hilarious. I can't wait for it to come out on DVD. I even named one of my fantasy football teams McLovin. Sounds like a sexy hamburger.

Fantasy News: Speaking of fantasy football. I decided to concentrate on 1 team this year. Of course my friends created 2 leagues so I had to join them both. To fix this dilemma, I made one team of entirely Patriots players (excluding Moss cause some jackass picked him in the third round). Anyway, my Pats team (aka McLovin), is currently 4-4 and has been in the top 3 teams in scoring the last 4 weeks! How awesome is that? That tells you how good the Patriots are this year. Even without their top receiver, I'm still topping the scoreboard in my fantasy league by only starting Pats players. It's awesome. I even beat the jerk to stole Moss from me on draft day. It was sweet revenge.

Good Books: I read a couple of books by Chuck Palahniuk recently (Fight Club, Survivor & Lullaby). They were all really unique, quite morbid and very fascinating. I think I need to move on to another genre for a little while before I decide to go out and shoot somebody.

Awesome Prediction: I was 100% right about Roger Clemens this year. Not that it was a tough prediction or anything, but it made me happy to see him struggle so much. I don't know what the Yankees were thinking when they offered him such a ridiculous contract. He's so old! On the other hand, I did like the cell phone commercial that he did. That was kind of funny.

Baseball news: Speaking of baseball, the Sox won the world series! This needs it's own post.

Basketball news: I've decided to join a basketball league here at work. Yeah, I'm starting to get older, and trips to the gym normally require a 2-day recovery period for me, but I think it will be fun. I get winded pretty quickly so hopefully I can get in the games, run around for a few minutes, then grab a sub before I pass out.

I guess that's it for now. Hopefully I'll post again soon.