Once An Addict, Always An Addict

Facing the imminent possibility of the break-up of my D&D group, or the necessity of my leaving it on account of my having made everybody feel too bad about things too often, I've been feeling intensely the desire to return to World of Warcraft--or World of Warcrack, as my boss is given to calling it.

I hate WoW. But I love WoW.

WoW (and EQ before it) is wonderful in providing me with a sense of purpose. "Here's a quest, go do it!" says WoW. And, unlike in other MMORPGs, many of the quests are actually doable. And there are a lot of them. Many hundreds of hours' worth of quests. And in addition to the quests that I could ever actually do, there are a great many more that were contingent upon the assistance of other players, and these always hung just out of reach, like a fruit on Tantalus' tree, and they kept me interested even if I was barely ever able to satisfy them.

The so-called "real world" is very bad about providing me with a sense of purpose. Most times, when I complete a task, the reward is vague or long-term. If I motivate myself sufficiently to do my push-ups and sit-ups in the morning, do I get fanfare and a monetary reward and a sense that the world is right again and an observable increase in my capabilities? No, no, no, and no. If I write a piece, what is the reward? A brief feeling of satisfaction, followed by agonizing doubt, followed by nothing at all, as the piece lingers and dies on my hard drive. Or else goes to a workshop where my fellows pick it apart and show it to be the ugly and ungainly thing it is. That feels like more of a punishment than a reward.

But WoW is terrible in providing me with a sense of purpose. Even if I achieve maximum level--a feat which takes about a hundred hours of gametime, if not more, which equates to several weeks of real-world life spent doing nothing other than experience grinding--the finish line recedes away from me. "Oh, you're level 70," says WoW, "That's cute and all, but do you have a thousand gold for an epic flying mount? And you don't have any Tiered gear from the dungeons. So you need to start at the bottom of the level 70 instances and run each one between five to ten times (each run taking several hours to complete, and more hours to initiate and arrange, if it ever gets off the ground at all; most of them don't), and then work your way up until you have the gear you need to go see the biggest and baddest and most exciting dungeons." And all of this participation in the "uber" end-game is contingent upon other people to go into these dungeons with you. So that means that groups fall apart, or that if I am not up to an elite hardcore standard set by people who *only* play WoW in terms of gear or damage per second or knowledge of the intricacies of every little aspect of the dungeon, I am open to extreme and mean-spirited criticism at any time.

WoW is wonderful in providing me with a sense of discovery. Every new quest and new zone is an opportunity to see something new. And I like exploring. Not physically, so much, but intellectually, absolutely. There was so much to see in WoW--I don't know how many virtual miles of terrain actually exist in the game, but it's a lot. There are caves, and marsh channels, and purple-leafed forests, and cities built atop colossal mushrooms, and floating islands, and all kinds of interesting things to check out. And all of it filled with ore deposits and rare herbs and treasure chests and other exciting things to find, as well as strange beasts. And there are a number of classes to try, each with its own different playstyle.

But WoW is terrible in providing me with a sense of discovery. With all those pressures to get more gold and get better gear, now now now now now, many times it's difficult to actually appreciate exploring the virtual world. And with all of the pressure on being uber, the pressure is always on to copy somebody else's approach to playing one's class, or to be open to such comments as "You suck" or "You fail at life" or "Learn to play" if one does not. That, and it becomes abundantly clear after a while that the game rewards certain classes and builds (i.e., the ones that do a lot of damage) and punishes others that might have utility but that utility is too limited in solo play. But I know there are some people who always have groups and for whom this is not an issue; I've just never been one of them. You want to be a healer, or a warrior who uses a sword and shield? Tough shit, unless you're already level 80 with tier 8 gear (or whatever it is these days).

That, and over the course of leveling up many characters in both the Horde and the Alliance, I've been there and seen that. The world doesn't change--or if it does, the change is slow in coming. There are no seasons and no weather. The quality of light is constant. NPCs stand in the same place all day, every day--unless they walk a predictable and prescribed path. If I kill a monster, a few minutes later it will be standing in exactly the same place where it fell, sometimes even looking over its own corpse. If I complete a quest, that same crisis will still be unresolved if I take another character to the same place. The world is persistent--which means that there is nothing I can do that will have any lasting effect on the game world. How could it, if it were to mean that one character gets to do something and then it is closed off to all of the thousands of other players on the server? I guess some Chinese or Korean MMORPGs have such things, but that is a large part of why they are terrible.

I love WoW because it makes me feel like I'm not alone.

I hate WoW because it makes me realize how alone I really am. The other players in WoW--they don't tend to be people who appreciate quality fantasy literature, or epic poetry, or even tabletop RPGs. They approach WoW from the perspective of a FPS (i.e., a first person shooter). To them, WoW is like Halo. What matters is score, kill count, and superiority. If they meet you in battle, they will kill you and then humiliate your corpse by an act of virtual rape, and then they will probably hang around for ten or fifteen minutes just to prevent you from getting back up and playing again. If they are in your group, they will constantly be checking damage meters and bragging about their primacy and criticizing those on the bottom. I'm not like that. I care about story and feelings and setting. And when I take all kinds of criticism because I'm not hardcore enough, it only serves to hurt me. A lot.

Or when the other players do want to discuss things, it tends to be television shows, or abrasive and uninformed political commentary, or how work sucks, or such things. It's generic, uninteresting, unstimulating, impersonal.

Or when the other players do want to engage in the actual "role-playing" elements of an MMORPG, it's even worse. They manufacture crises for themselves, and play out such dramas as though they mattered. They play at being nobles, or vampires, or great heroes (greater than the other heroes who are all around them), or tragic scions of extinguished families, and other such insufferable narcissistic bullshit. They have feuds and duels and factional wars, for no other reason that to generate conflict and resentment and opportunities for irrelevant antics.

Compounding all this is the fact that people tend to be extremely unpleasant while playing WoW. Much of this unpleasantness is attributed to foreigners and teenage boys, but I don't think all of it can be attributed to them. There is the bragging and verbal abuse and humiliation mentioned above. Then there are those people who engage in price gouging by purchasing all the items at auction and re-selling them at higher prices. Then there are the people who incessantly beg for money. Then there are those people who slander Horde or Alliance players in terms that would be hatefully racist, if they weren't referring to virtual identities. Then there are those people who overreact with threats or profanity at even the slightest of mistakes (or non-mistakes). Then there are those people who abandon your group for no reason at all. Then there are those people who refuse to help out with even the smallest of tasks, even when such an alliance would clearly be of mutual benefit, and instead insist on working at cross-purposes.

Two of my books now have been about the failure of the virtual world to sustain interest and a sense of self-worth. My current novel, After Life, describes an MMORPG that is so immersive that the characters have forgotten that they are characters at all, and they play out all of the racism and greed and meaningless agonistics that choke the real world, believing all the while that these tendencies are "perfection" in their virtual utopia. But, of course, it's all crap, isn't it?

All this...and it draws me back. Like the need of a clean junkie for just one last needle, WoW tries to pull me back in. It gets worst whenever I experience a fit of depression; then it seems most soothing to submerge my consciousness in a virtual world for a while, and so afford my soul a chance to regenerate. Until, of course, the injuries I sustain in WoW hurl me back out again.

I don't want to go back to playing WoW. I don't want to get back to those days when I begrudged the 30 seconds it took to go to the kitchen to get a cereal bar or to go to the bathroom to urinate before plunging back into playing again. I don't want to feel that intense sense of inferiority to those cruel bastard braggarts who enjoy making others feel bad about themselves, and so often feeling as though I am failing at life.

But there's an entire continent I've yet to explore, and a class I've yet to try. And I have been very depressed lately.

Fuck.

WoW is haunting my thoughts right now; recurring every thirty to sixty seconds or so. It won't be much--just a slight sting, an ache, a pang; a screenshot, a memory, a "What if" moment.

We shall overcome.

I hope.