Wandering Roads

I spent the weekend wandering over the roads of Azeroth. I've been trying to figure out what separates the roads in World of Warcraft from the roads in the real world. I think that placing the real road against the virtual one will reveal interesting ideas about the nature of both, although I am concentrating on the nature of the virtual one.
First, I tried to come up with a few basic points to build off of:

1. Machines travel on the roads
2. It's a path that players follow
3. Promotes a tourism of sorts
4. safer than the pockets of wilderness
5. does it allow reflective, thoughtful travel?
6. builds community

Alright, now I've got to see if I can't break these down, and who knows maybe I'll come up with more.

So Much for so Little

Admittedly, virtual worlds are something I find myself longing for. Last week I went four days without playing one game. During that time I found myself fantasizing about playing video games again. Not one game in particular, just to experience a world that isn't this one. It's nice to give up all the mounting pressures of life, if only for a short while, for the frivolous pressures of unreality.

Oddly, I find myself not wanting to play one of my characters, Leye. The main reason for this is that playing him has brought a lot of it's own pressure with. Two of my real life friends and my dad are in the same guild as Leye. When I'm not playing they constantly pester me to come on and play citing that the guild needs my help. When I went on to play last week after my four day hiatus I had high hopes of helping the guild defeat the huge black dragon Onyxia. Too bad I wound up having to complete a boring task, which felt more like a chore than any sort of thrilling experience. I had to compete this task to get the key that would allow me to enter Onyxia's lair. While I was doing this I listened to everybody else having fun on the voice chat software that we use which works like walkie talkies. After I completed the menial task I logged of dissatisfied.

Afterwards, I asked myself “why would anyone want to play a game that requires so much work with so little reward?” I still haven't found the answer.

Day 7 Bitch in the Vineyard with the Thieves

The other day I was playing as Kef, a human warrior, who starts off his journey in the northerly parts of Elwynn Forest, helping out the denizens of the Abbey. That's just what I did by lending a hand to whatever task the NPC's were programmed to give me.

I picked up a quest from this chick who had a vineyard nearby. Woefully the place had been overtaken by a gang of beastly thugs who spent their hours munching on her virgin fruit. Thus I grabbed my sword and headed into her ravaged garden to weed out the villians, but mostly to get some of the burgeoning fruit, 10 to be precise. I made short work of the Briggands of the Defias Brotherhood, thumping them on the skull with my hammer until this larcenous prig paladin came and started stealing grapes from me after I did all the work of dispatching the treachours fiends only to be undone by a compatriote. You see if a player is on your side, Alliance in my case, it's not possible to physically harm them, although I wished to crack her skull like all these foul rogues that lay about me. All I could do was try to keep away from her. A difficult task indeed since she followed me about. Thankfully I did manage to lose, I suppose she got bogged down by the grasping fingers of the desparados she revered. At least there is some justice in that.

Afterward I returned from the garden, fruit bursting from my bags, and was directed by the lady to give the fruit to the old drunkenm monk in the attic of the abbey to be made into wine. Oh what glad errands I should run for the sake of these suffeering people who are beset by evil on all sides.