I’m so old…

I met my other youngfella the other day for the first time – he’s sixteen, so that must mean I’m a hundred and eighty three – and he forced me to install WoW on my rig, completely against my will and despite rigorous protestations. (I said “I’m not really a gamer”, and later sighed dramatically.)

So I watched while he showed me the ropes, taking nothing in, and today I logged in for the first time on my own and proceeded to suck monkey nuts at it. I don’t really know how to fight, for example, and I’m guessing that’s kind of important. So I’ve logged out, and now I’m reading the Getting Started part of the manual. I’m so old…

James, you’re a gamer, where’s the Autopilot key?

2 Responses

  1. A word of advice – tread very carefully with World of Warcraft. It sucked up 8 months of my life in a heart beat. I let my sister use my account while she was in the middle of medicine exams and found she had played 30+ hours in one week. I introduced one of my friends to it and it nearly destroyed his marriage – he would be up at 4am bidding on a magic cloak in the auction house. His 5 year old son is now equally addicted.

    WoW is a really amazing game, and lots of non-gamers get hooked. It is a good activity to play with the youngfella (as long as he isn’t a level 70 Outland whiz, in which case he should create a new character to level with you), and I know a lot of guys who play with their kids or wives or girlfriends (as strange as it may sound, it is surprisingly common, even among “normal” people).

    The good thing is, it doesn’t really matter if you suck as long as you don’t make it too obvious by running into a load of high level creatures and making them aggro you. Just keep your sense of direction and keep the head down and you can’t go too far wrong. Some people get a kick out of spending hours in Stormwind typing “/silly” and “/dance”. Can’t believe I miss the gnomes going choo-choo. A tip is to make your character a priest, because then people will always love you (because you heal them).

    Learn a few shortcuts (like tab to select nearest enemy I think). I can’t remember most, and I never really learned a lot to begin with. If you stick with it for more than a week, then get a good user interface mod (whatever every body else is using). This gives you lots of shortcuts and co-ordinates on the map (so that you can cheat and look up websites to find the location of items and stuff). Check youtube for “leeerooyyy jenkins” to find out what not to do.

  2. Thanks for the detailed post James! I can guarantee I won’t get hooked anyway, gaming just doesn’t do it for me /at all/, but your tips won’t go astray anyway. :)

    adam