Merchant of Death

Not too long ago Mr.1up laughed after overhearing a sales pitch of mine, and called me 'Worse than a drug dealer'. I laughed too.

Because, you know, it being funny and all.

But the comment stuck with me. See, what I was doing was no normal sales pitch...I was trying (and succeeding) at convincing someone to pick back up WoW. After all, there were all these new awesome inane details and shit that I'm totally just faking any interest in whatsoever!

Maybe I should have felt bad. I didn't, and don't, but I do feel a little bad about not feeling bad. Fact is, a gamer who plays WoW is about one-hujjilion times more active in their game of choice than anything even remotely similar. I'm loathe to admit it, but Blizzard's dollar is very frequently my dollar. In the bizarre nightmarescape I live in, the more people who play WoW, the better.

I imagine a darkened world, nothing more than a grassless, rainless field shadowed by a sky of perpetual thunderclouds. In this place millions of people sit obediently and quietly, shoulder to shoulder...playing World of Warcraft...stretching off to the vanishing point on all horizons. Then, using a kind of fusion, I could harness the natural energy-giving body heat of each player, thus generating enough power to sustain my synthetic race of evil robotic overlords...

No? Okay, maybe thats a little too plagiarized (but then again, look at the source!). But you see what I'm getting at, right? Heaven to me is a world where everyone but me plays this damn game.

As you might have gathered, I don't dip into the WoW. Not out of elitism or some perceived high ground, but rather because man, FUCK World of Warcraft.

Sorry, sorry, that came out wrong. What I meant to say is, it's not for me. Also, due to the tragic and sordid story of my predecessor and life-long friend, it is strictly against company policy to play any MMO while at work (You always know you did a good job when you leave new rules in the vacuum of your absence!). And even outside of work it's frowned upon by the Inner Party, much like unorthodoxy.

Now, I'm not here to make judgments on the implications of addiction in any medium...be it real drugs, videogames, prescription drugs, TV, food, pornography, or snowglobes...just wild speculation.

What I've surmised is simple. Anything in extreme excess can be a damaging addiction, most things in some form of rational moderation can be ok, and a very few things are always bad regardless of the volume or circumstances (head cheese and dick-piercings, for instance).

It's more complicated though, as life always is. If videogames in general are your drugs, then maybe your favorite FPS is a good joint. If this logic holds true (and I'd like to think it does!), then World of Warcraft is crack-cocaine.

Ok, not to be unfair...not everyone who plays World of Warcraft is an addict, true. But then, if I were a gambling man (and I am!), and there was a roulette wheel filled with a random selection of truly-addicted gamers (out of any possible game), guess which game I'd bet my piece to fall on? Which would you?

I don't have to be a snide Mr.1up, linking you to dozens of different stories about how a WoW player died of malnutrition, or a couple starved their baby, or whatever. I don't prescribe to that brand of extreme, impersonal reporting. Nay, I live thirty feet from a pair of what were once human-like vegetables.

Mr. Furious, my predecessor, lost his job (one he liked quite a bit) and months of his life to the endeavor. The other, his roommate, ditched his family, friends, job, and college to live off his student loans and play WoW, all day, every day.

Mr. Furious eventually kicked his habit and even pocketed a wad of cash from selling his digital property, but this isn't reason enough to give me hope. The poor sap that coughed up the dough for the opposite side of the exchange is what's really telling.

The cycle never stops, and like the growing number of people I've gotten to re-start the habit shows...no one ever really quits.

And as Cthulhu stands in as my witness, I'll keep on selling.