Canned Goods

I’ve recently fallen off the wagon and become slightly addicted to WoW again. Can one be slightly addicted? Maybe I’m merely slightly obsessed. Well . . . in the least, I have really enjoyed playing recently.

WhenI had suspended my account in June of last year, I was a lvl 43 hunter and didn’t play again until the beginning of February (I had leveled up to about 47 during this time). Over the course of this semester, I became frustrated becasue most of the quests I had on my list to do needed 5 person groups, and I play solo much of the time. After completing such “mini-games” as make-yourself-some-cool-armor I came across some quests to solo that also took me to an new area to explore: Un’Goro crater (filled to the brim with angry dinosaurs that would like nothing better than eating the flesh from my Night Elf bones. Or perhaps they were just acting out their programming.

I entered the crater and found many quests that I could do solo that also rewarded player with several thousand experience points (XP) . I admit that I’ve spent nearly 15 hrs in the past week (to chagrin of my wife) leveling up to 51. And I want more!

But I have a stack of papers to grade tonight. If only I could get addicted to grading papers .

I’ll frame this post in a way that will hopefully keep me from seeming like I’m wasting my life away (part of believes I am, actually). I’ve been getting back into the swing of running again, and when that happens I feel a need to run even more and a withdrawal when I don’t. If one were to get addicted to running, we would most likely applaud that person’s dedication to physical fitness, but playing a videogame is different(?). There’s something about getting something in return for the investment of time, and maybe we need to quantify what it is that people are getting out of games.