on world of warcraft

for various reasons too numerous to detail here, i downloaded the ten-day free trial of world of warcraft. it doesn't run well on this little computer of mine, but it ran well enough that i could check out what all the fuss about the mmorpg is about.

it was fun, sure. but, it wasn't really that much fun that i'd consider paying for it.

i tried one of each race, and one of each class.

the two most fun i had were with the hunter and the mage. more specifically a troll hunter and a gnome mage.

i leveled them up doing quests and slaughtering pixels both to level eleven.

the gnome mage was the most fun, i should say. he was a cute little death machine of fire and ice. his spells were the most fun. i had more success solo-ing this character than any other, though it isn't supposed to be the class that solos well (?) because it can't go toe-to-toe with anyone.

i had more success going toe-to-toe with beasties with my little gnome mage than i did the hulking brute paladin. mage spells do very, very much damage. you don't need to spend any time going toe-to-toe with beasties.

anyway, gameplay grew tiresome after an hour or two. how many times can you polymorph an ice troll to pull it from its group, then back up and wait twenty seconds for the sheep to turn back into a very pissed off troll that will now chase you over hill and dale alone while you blast it with fire and ice?

how many times can you pop guilds onto your ignore list? how many inane discussions can you listen to about football in a dwarven castle while you are trying to find just that one stupid idiot to finish your quest?

i should at least peek my head behind the curtain of an RP server just for the sake of completion. who knows? maybe the tauren and night elf quests won't be completely and disappointingly lame if teenagers aren't hitting on my female-shaped avatar?

hm. a strange thing. i'm glad i didn't pay for it.

also, it's not as much fun, or as awesome as books.

books like this one: