The wonderful World of Warcraft

With over 12 million users, World of Warcraft is the most popular online, mutliplayer game. What is its huge attraction? Recently I was introduced to a group of friend who proceeded to educate me on topic. When you enter this world you are confronted by an overwhelming number of terms that unless you come to grips with you would find it hard to understand a conversation between the game's players.

The sterotype of this game ranges from 12 year old boys who are always in front of their computer's to middle aged men sitting in their mother's basement eating pizza. The sterotypes, as most often is the case, are mostly false as the group I met defy them. They are all fun, social, 20/21 year olds who actually go out, have girlfriends and have lives. Their company is absolutely fantastic especially when I finally got to grips with some of the strange terms.

There are 'Guild's' which are teams in which 'raiding' is mostly down (although sometimes you can be invited to raid or 'do a dungeon'). Each player can have multiple characters but will have one main character to which they focus on. These character range in gender, career capabilities, different uses in battle and even species. Most players work to have a powerful level 80 character with a decent DPS (the amount of damage they can do).

At one point I was allowed to create and play a bit with my own character; Arrf is Worgon and I must say the few tasks I completed were a lot of fun especially as I had an experienced player pointing out the many mistake I made in my inexperience. Something which I find quite awesome, also thanks to my inexperience, is if you die; you don't need to start over but are 'resurrected' close to where you were killed by say the giant troll.

A raid is made even more entertaining by the players having headphones with microphones, egging each other on or telling the player that got most of the team frozen while facing Sindragosa (a dragon that freezes you with her breath, you then need to be broken out by a another player); that he is an idiot. This is usually done using the characters name since the Guild's, although having some connection like friend of a friend, don't necessarily know each other. Where this group broke from the sterotype is, Guildmembers not only play online together but also meet up to socialise.

Call me a nerd if you want but this world is quite intriguing to me and the players even more so. The game doesn't make the player, the the player makes the game. Enjoy the raid guys!