Martin Crownover

Despite my having a girlfriend, a job, working on the Reflect Games website update, helping a buddy with his new blog, considering entering the 3rd YoYo Games competition, trying to finish GTA4, and various other real-world obligations, I've also started putting in a little bit of time on World of Warcraft again.

In my defense, it wasn't an idea entirely my own. My brother, Spencer, had a lot to do with it. He's just as addicted to games as I am, and his boredom led him to persuade me to play some WoW with him again.

"I'm thinking about playing WoW again," he mentioned to me one day. "I want to start a new character on a friend's server."

Being bored with my pre-GTA library of games, I expressed some interest. Soon, we had a plan set; we'd blaze through the game as the fantastic duo of warrior and priest. I'd beat the hell out of monsters while my brother made sure my health level was maintained. This is surely a strong combination of might against just about any type of foe... well, except one. Computer hardware failure.

Spencer's computer seems to be suffering from either a bad power supply or a heating problem, as best I can tell. After getting our characters rolling up into the bulk of the game, his computer began crashing WoW every few minutes. He's re-installed the game multiple times, and I've torn his computer apart and re-assmbled it, but the problem persists. He's due for a hardware upgrade though, so when that day eventually comes, the adventures of Ismashya and Autzen will continue. In the meantime, however, I was left with an active WoW account, and not much else to do.

I started an alternate character (a hunter) and began the game anew. After only a week I had leveled to 42, and already had my first mount. But leveling began to take longer, and I started looking upon the higher levels with envy. Every visit to a capital city reminded me that there was an entire world of upper-tier players riding around on their flying mounts, making ridiculous amounts of gold, doing player-vs-player activities, and raiding the high level dungeons.

I tried playing some of the battlegrounds (special PVP raid battles) with my hunter, and while I had fun and got a taste of the party the higher level players were having, it wasn't the same. I had to wait over 30 minutes to get into matches sometimes, and finding others to quest with was virtually impossible. Azeroth is a big place, and with most people on the server playing upper level characters, I was left to fend mostly for myself.

So did I persevere? Did my lonely hunter (and mountain lion pet) conquer all and become one of the elite of Warcraft?

Of course not!

Instead, I dusted off my long-dead level 69 paladin, grinded to level 70, and began partaking in all the upper-tier goodness a guild-less player can. I got my flying mount. I've battled the battlegrounds (with players who have alarmingly large amounts of health compared to me). I made over 1000 gold over the weekend. And I've started trying my hand at some of the daily quests.

I'm sure I'll get bored of it again eventually... especially if my brother can't get his computer running soon. But for now, I'm having some fun with it, and I'm still spending plenty of time with my girlfriend, on my own projects, Grand Theft Auto 4, and everything else, so I see no harm in it.

In the meantime, if you run into a companionless paladin (whose name reminds you of bite-size pizza) mining the earth of the Outland or getting slaughtered in Eye of the Storm, it might just be me.