Well, the husband and I just went out and bought World of Warcraft. Damien, when he was up this past weekend, gave both of us trial accounts so we could play and get a feel for the game. Ian had played once already before using a trial account sent to him by Jer, I think. The graphics are really retarded in that nothing looks realistic and it’s all very cartoonish, a major downfall in my opinion, and the game play is simplistic enough that ten-year-olds can do it–and they do, in droves (another downfall).

So despite the fact that the game looks ugly and it’s overpopulated by pre-teens and other children, we’ve been playing it since this weekend and Tuesday decided to go out and actually buy the games. We figured that since the base install (prior to expansion) was only $20, it wouldn’t be too bad especially considering that we still have our free 10-day trial from Damien going and then get another 30 days free from having bought the game. In this way, if we decide not to continue after the 30-day trial is up, we’re really only out about $5 each compared to both of us having our EQ accounts up for a month. No biggie, eh?

I know lots of people who play WoW such as one of my ex-boyfriends. I’ve had many students tell me that I should switch from EQ to WoW because “it’s so much better,” and while I don’t think that it is all that much better (since I love the complexity and detail of EverQuest not to mention that the graphics are about a hundred times better), it does have less downtime which means I can hop on for an hour, do some stuff and hop out and actually feel like I’ve accomplished something rather than needing far longer chunks of time to do basically the same stuff in EQ. EverQuest will always be my favorite, but during the school year, I simply don’t have the time I need for it. I figure that conceivably World of Warcraft shouldn’t take up as much time, and this way I get to play a game with Ian since we both started at the same level and can keep leveling up together. In EQ, the level discrepencies between his main and my main were just too much so he’d have to switch to a secondary to even group with me. Now we both have level 13 humans–he has a rogue and I have a palladin–and we run around doing quests together. It’s nice having this “us” time even if it is in different rooms.

So yeah, we’re playing WoW. I’m not immensely proud of that fact, but I’m not resigned to it either. It’s just the next thing we’re doing. I was never overly against WoW; I just felt that EQ was better and that I wouldn’t want to relearn an MMOG system. I still feel that EQ is better, but the WoW system is monkey-learning-simple, so I’m giving it a shot. It also runs better on my laptop (Brannagh is a ghost, btw, if I haven’t already mentioned it.) than EQ because its graphics are worse. Go figure. Oh well, time to get to work!