Nerdcraft

It's been long enough, I think, since I canceled my World of Warcraft account that I can mock the game without being knocked from my chair by Hypocrisy in some corporeal form.

By any estimation, there are way too many people - somewhere around 9 million active accounts, last I heard - paying monthly subscriptions to play Warcraft for the game to be just a trend. In my case, several friends started playing while we were still in school, and I was glad to join in as soon as I had a job and a broadband connection. The prospect of running around a huge virtual world with the guys, beating the virtual tar out of virtual enemies controlled by lesser nerds the world over, made several months of catch-up seem worthwhile.

And, for a good long time, it was. There's a lot to Nerdcraft, and we had hours of fun completing quests and picking fights. We'd stumble upon a group of morons tormenting new players, and kick them around until they ran away. We developed quite the skillset for finding the lamest, dirtiest players around, then smashing their faces until they cried and logged off.

The problem came from our lack of virtual dedication: the better your pretend armor and weapons, the tougher your character gets, and when the annoying losers playing the game (it's a game that attracts more than a few) spend 4-6 hours every day grinding for better gear... most fights are determined by mathematics alone. Um, sure, I'd love to sit at my desk for 30 hours a week clicking 2 buttons a hundred billion times so I could be that awesome. Thing is, I already have a job, so I'll pass.

I never wanted to play World of Fight This Monster Four Times A Week Until Your Armor All Matches, but unfortunately that's what the Warcraft developers had in mind for anybody who hangs around more than a few months. I should add that for every complaint my friends and I have about Warcraft it sounds like Warhammer ("Nerdhammer," to keep the theme consistent?) poses a solution. Until then, if you see one of the Warcraft commercials on TV and think "Wow, that must be the dorkiest thing ever," ..you're right!