Every Time I Think I’m Out…

I don’t know how this happened. I really thought that, finally, I was completely done with World of Warcraft.

You’ll notice that I haven’t written about it for a long time. That’s because I haven’t played it in a long time. After a particularly rough couple of trips through an instance, I was surprised to find (this was maybe a month and a half ago) that I just didn’t care much anymore. Sure, getting armor was cool, but it was just another picture on the screen, to be replaced with yet another depending on whatever drops I happened to come across. And, as any WoW player knows, in the mid 50s, which is where my main character is, things slow down. A lot. It’s not like you get a level a day anymore– you’re lucky to get a level a week.

So I really thought I was done. I did have a goal to actually get to 60 (which, admittedly, I’m still planning to do at some point), since I figure I at least have to somewhat beat the game. But every time I played it, I found myself more and more turned off by the inocuousness of it all. WoW, for some reason, just seemed… kind of… boring.

I played a few times this past weekend to try to get back into it. After all, I’m still playing the monthly fee– I should at least get some of my money’s worth. But I only played a few hours, and even then didn’t really get into it.

And then, last night, I decided to switch over and play my priest.

My main character is a warrior, which is the exact opposite of a priest. Warriors can sit there and take damage– priests can’t. Priests sit back and cast spells– warriors don’t have a spell to speak of. Priests heal, warriors hurt.

And so at first I discovered why I’d quit playing my priest in the first place– I sucked at it. I couldn’t seem to get the spells right. Even the lowest of enemies could rock me. It wasn’t as fun as the warrior, where I could just go into battle, and hit everything repeatedly until only I was the last one standing. In fact, as a warrior I could kill things, and that wasn’t fun anymore. As a priest, I couldn’t, so it wasn’t fun at all.

Until I made what might have been my fatal mistake. I read a priest guide. All over the internet, you can find guides on how to play classes in WoW. And I read one.

And I discovered I’d been playing the thing all wrong. I was shielding when I should have been using Renew. I was Mind Blasting when I should have been Power Wording.

So with my newfound knowledge I went back to the game. And I rocked it.

Completely rocked it. I was killing two, three things at a time, with plenty of health and mana left. I was wiping out whole quests in minutes, getting all kinds of drops I’d never thought I’d get. And the weirdest thing is that, maybe because I was doing so well, the World of Warcraft became real to me again.

And I mean real. I could see the grass move in the wind. I heard wolves bark in the distance. The music seemed mysterious to me again. I found a new item to wear, and thought my character looked pretty darn cool.

No– I thought I looked pretty darn cool.

I didn’t turn the game off until two in the morning, long past my bedtime. I haven’t stayed up that late playing this game in months.

So now I’m back in. Curse you, Blizzard, but you made me find a little bit of gameplay, a little niche of experience in this gigantic game that I hadn’t found before. And now, my life is wrecked for another week.

So if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. My priest is calling, and, even though I can’t believe it, I have to answer.