And...there goes my soul

I've always been surrounded by stereotypes about WoW players. I've been taught to imagine them as gnarly caped basement-dwellers who live with their mothers, eat intravenously and eschew sleep entirely. To a certain extent, I'm sure this is true for an extreme minority, but when I started to play WoW, I realized that many people who play aren't nearly as conventionally nerdy and socially inept as I had imagined. In fact, when I told my friends that I'd be playing WoW as a trial, several of them admitting to being hopelessly addicted WoW players, revealing their secret identities as undead priests or gnome mages. 

Under their watchful eyes, I signed in to WoW and began to play. Immediately, WoW was not at all what I expected. Well, God knows what I expected, but certainly something more difficult. It was organized and beautifully designed. People were friendly and not out to attack me. In fact, I was saved on several occasions by a mysterious knight who undoubtedly found my saucy human mage to be dazzlingly beautiful. When I accepted my first quest, I was pleased to discover that it seemed deliciously easy: I was to kill nine wolves and take their meat. Sweet. I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that casting spells took very little gaming ability. For some reason I expected some sort of complicated keyboard algorithm, rather than nicely timed "1" pressing. Of course, my first encounter with a wolf was somewhat less than impressive. I recall shooting it with frost, being stunned when it actually responded and chased me (who could have imagined that a wolf would  fight back after being shot arbitrarily with a frost bolt?!) and running my character quickly away while making frightened noises in real life. Once I calmed down and realized that the wolf was not in fact real and going to crawl out of my screen (I've clearly watched Videodrome one too many times), I shot back and killed it. A little part of me was sad that I had killed an animal, albeit a digital one, but soon I was grotesquely fascinated. This rabid killing spree lasted until I, in a fit of excitement, accidentally killed a bunny and began to mourn. It turned out though, that once I got the hang of it, I absolutely loved WoW. I'm finding myself opening new e-mail accounts solely for the purpose of getting more and more free trials. So even though I had previously imagined WoW players as social pariahs, it seems like I've become one of them. And by God, I'm proud.