So Hipgno (Voted “Second Least Likely to Update His Blog”) called me on Saturday morning. It was rather unexpected, since he woke me up at about 9:30 EST, proclaiming that it was “almost 11:00″ my time. We had a nice long chat though, that I enjoyed a great deal as our schedules don’t overlap that frequently.

Part way through the chat, while we were discussing our high-school love of the Dragonlance series of pulp fantasy books, he mentioned I should check out World of Warcraft.

Holy god man. I now completely understand why he never updates his blog.

Monday afternoon, after a day and a half of deliberation, I decided to go buy it and see what it was all about. I joined the same server Hip plays on, and he promptly schooled me in how to play the game and led me all around through my first 30 or so quests. I’ve now played about 6 hours a night for 3 nights in a row, just because I can’t stop until it becomes to uncomfortable to sit at the computer anymore.

I can’t really explain why it is so awesome. But it’s BY FAR the best game I’ve ever played on a PC. The freedom the game allows, the interaction with the other players, the scenery, the interface….everything is perfect. I suppose it helps if you have some repressed part of yourself that loves pulp fantasy novels and Dungeons and Dragons. There’s also just the awesomeness of meeting up with a close friend that lives 3000 miles away and running around in a fantasy world fucking shit up and getting drunk together, despite how it doesn’t compare to the real thing.

It’s the first time I’ve played an huge on-line RPG thing like this, and I can honestly say I was completely missing out by not getting in on it sooner.

Thanks, Hip. My blossoming social life just took a hard hit. Fortunately I’m a level 12 mage that can handle some fairly hard hits.