The Lich King is Dead

Gamescape Northerners finally got the bastard. Meet your new Kingslayers:


Adirah, Arianwen, Bellatrixa, Bellazune, Etspiritu, Hyphae, Letlia, Makat, Miko, Moradan

Word of Anesthesiacraft

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts now that I am mostly unemployed, one of which is NPR's Science Friday podcast. In catching up on back episodes, I came upon a topic from September 18th - the relationship, during the Romantic period, between science (natural philosophy at the time) and the arts. One vignette is about Samuel Taylor Coleridge helping his friend Humphrey Davy experiment with the effects of nitrous oxide (laughing gas). Davy finds that nitrous has an anesthetic effect, and writes a paper saying that this could be used in surgery. At the time, however, it was thought that the agony of surgeries like amputations was medically necessary, however, because it was believed that this mobilized the body to heal.

Now we know better, for physical ailments anyway, but this podcast has had me thinking all day. In my own experience, emotional pain can be very necessary to enact change or healing in a person's life, much the way that physical pain was thought to be necessary to surgical patients in the 1800s. In thinking along these lines, it suddenly struck me that WoW is serving me as an anesthetic for my feelings of boredom at this point in my life.

I compared it to nitrous oxide. I enjoy playing WoW, just like I'm sure I'd enjoy taking some recreational nitrous oxide. I know WoW isn't as extreme as abusing a medical anesthetic, but the connection was made in my mind. What I realized is that it may be necessary, in order for me to be more creative and more productive in my creative endeavors, to take a break from WoW so that I will have to feel my boredom. Hopefully it will motivate me to do something about it.

We'll see how it goes. I want to see if I am in fact more productive, or if I am instead just more bored without WoW for a while.

Anybody out there had an experience of taking a break from some consuming hobby? What was it like for you?

Game Addiction Therapists Treated For Addiction to Gaming

This is the real headline: "Therapists Join World of Warcraft to Treat 'Addicted' Players."

The story is that a group of therapists are asking Blizzard for free access to WoW to search for and identify people addicted to the game. This is because, they say, that true addicts are hard to reach by other means since they are always in their rooms.

While it is no doubt, well intentioned, I couldn't help but see this as a situation ripe for parody. It will probably start well, but 6 months down the line this is what I predict:

Therapist: Die! crazy cat lady die!

Assistant: Dr. we've received an email from another concerned parent...

Therapist: Shhh!!

Assistant: Yes but...

Therapist: Shhh!!! I told you not to bother me when I'm raidin... fuck. Another wipe.

Assistant: I know, but I thought you might be interested, this seems like a serious case.

Therapist: Do you know how many times we've tried this fight? She's one sadistic little...

Assistant: The kid's name is Ryan. His character on your server is a Tauren Druid named Wowzalot. His mom says he has been playing about 17 or 18 hours a day lately.

Therapist: Fine. Fine. Make up a file and put it on my desk. I'll go over it after... did you say a Druid? What spec? We could really use a tree in our raid!

Assistant: I don't think that's what his mom had in mind when she asked us to help intervene.

Therapist: Yeah, probably not. Oh well. Listen we'll have to talk about this later, the group is reforming, gotta buff up.

Assistant: Sir...

Therapist: What!?! I told you we're about to start again!

Assistant: Don't you think you've been playing a little bit too much lately...

Therapist: Don't start that again! I pay you to answer phones, not to be my personal nag.

Assistant: Okay...

Therapist: Here we go! Bitch is goin' down this time! Ayaaaaaaaghghhh....

The End of an Era

This summer, I'm hoping to be able to join my friend Brian's Vampire the Masquerade game that he runs online. I was in it a while ago but didn't have the time when I was trying to keep up with schoolwork and life.

To do this over the summer, though, I will need to end the era of my involvement in Wow. Its oddly nostalgic, which is stupid, but there you have it. I'm currently figuring what to do with hundreds of gold pieces worth of imaginary items that my imaginary characters are currently wearing and carrying. It'll mostly be donated to friends or guilds that I've had fun with. I'm also going to do a few things before I retire permanently in the next week or so.

I hate to say it, but there is another reason for this decision. If the Vampire game doesn't work out for some reason, or maybe if it does, there's another way I'd like to spend some time. We'll see.

Thorium Brotherhood server, its been great. Goodbye.