I’m going to talk about WoW because, well, what else is there to talk about? (Actually plenty, I would imagine, but nothing as fun as talking about WoW, is there now?)

I’m mildly surprised that the game has gotten me as addicted as it has. I mean, many players claim that WoW is a very suitable game for casual gamers because you can log in for an hour or two a day, do a few quests, and then call it a day.

How can that be possible?

When I visit a new village, I get ten new quests and I have to finish them all and also level up my tradeskills, then make myself some new armor, then go to the next village to get some more quests so I can level up some more to learn that next cool spell I’m going to get.

At least, when you first start out, you can’t just stop at an hour. It’s game sacrilege.

But I’m not going to talk about all that today. Today is “WOW Graphics! Day” because the WoW graphics just wow me to bits. Paired with beautiful music, each locale has a very distinctive mood and feel, making the game very immersive.

The Goonfather tried WoW for a few days last year but didn’t like it. He said the graphics is too cartoony and the gameplay gets boring fast.

I agree the graphics is cartoony, but it’s beautiful, nevertheless. The WoW scenaries inspire me like no other games have.

I have been impressed by game graphics before, notably that of Star Wars Galaxies, but I can’t say I’ve ever felt inspired. Now I can. Sometimes, I just stop in my tracks and gawk at the beauty. 

The peaceful places fill me with a peaceful serentiy. The majestic places fill me with awe. The sweet, beautiful places fill me with joy. And the scary places fill me with dread.

There was this eerie place I visited that had sort of a ghostly theme. Eerie horror movie music was playing, I was running alone in the wilds and everything was dark and shadowy.

I was alone in my room playing. It was around midnight and it was very scary. So scary I didn’t have the presence of mind to take screenshots. All I wanted was to reach my destination asap, get what I needed and bugger out of there.

It’s like the feeling you get when you play Fatal Frame on the PS2 or Xbox. Like something is gonna jump at you any moment. But, of course, Fatal Frame is scarier because things do jump at you.

Anyhow, I was reminded of how the Goonfather, while watching me play a few days back, remarked that the little human children in WoW look like Ju-on. (It was his way of telling me that WoW graphics is kiddy.)

And then, the next day, I found a little human child who has the same name as he does. Hah!

The Goonfather has a point, though. He does look Ju-onish.

But the big humans don’t. This is my character. Yeah, they all come with big boobs, the females. It’s not like in Star Wars Galaxies where you have a boob slider to adjust the boob size.

This is my second character, actually. I started with a Night Elf Druid (see above pictures) but when I reached level 14, Alex said, “Let’s go to Chongbaby’s server, yeah baby!”

So I said ok and since I had to create a brand new character in a different server, I decided to make something different. A Human Priest this time.

I like player healer characters. I find it much more fun to fill up hit point bars than to deplete them. It’s harder to fill them up because they keep depleting, whereas when you’re killing mobs, the hit points can only go down, unless you’re trying to kill a healer, but that’s not the point.

The point is that there’s more to life than killing.

There’s fishing.

But I’ll admit that fishing in WoW is silly because you just stand there all day and click a button when the fishing bobble bobs.

A WoW player who calls himself Mongoose, and whose quote I found in a now defunct forum, puts it very succinctly:

“Fishing is exactly the same as being dead. You sit there, watching your character watching his fishing bobble, and you are wasting second after second of sweet, precious life. It is time share suicide.”

Yes, so, for half an hour of my life today, I engaged in time share suicide.

But I caught a 19 pound catfish, so there. I know, it doesn’t look anywhere near 19 pounds, but the game says it is, so it is.

If you ask me, I would rather catch virtual fish than real life fish because, in the virtual world, you don’t have to deal with worms, blood and gut.

But, nah, fishing is never going to be an activity of choice.

I would ride a gryphon instead.

I was first impressed by the EQ2 griffon (spelled “griffon” in EQ2, “gryphon” in WoW) when the bird took me soaring through the vast lands.

But when the WoW gryphon takes me through the beautiful WoW lands, I am inspired.

So inspired that I take time off being inspired to come write this blog.

How about that?