"I do wish we could chat longer, but I'm having an old friend for dinner." ~ Silence of the Lambs, 1991

For some reason, Mom thinks you might be interested in what I have been doing with my time lately. When Mom is happy, everybody is happy, right?

World of Warcraft (more commonly referred to as WoW) is a very popular MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). This may all seem somewhat overwhelming for someone who doesn’t play, but is all too familiar to a dweller of Azeroth. The main premise of the game is: pick a race, pick a side (of this ongoing war), pick a job and then pick a fight, with as many dungeon dwellers as possible to gain experience to fight even stronger dungeon dwellers. Sounds a little like real life, doesn't it HiDHo?


There are many different races. On the alliance side there are the Humans, Night Elves, Dwarves, and Gnomes. On the Hoard’s side there are Orcs, Trolls, Undead, and Tauren (Minotaur like creatures). Within each race there are different classes to pick including the Warrior, Mage and Hunter, but I don’t need to name them all. Completing various tasks ordered by NPC’s (Non Player Characters) will gain you more experience points as well as some much needed armor or weapons.


Now that you have the gist of it, I should be able to tell you all of the strange experiences I’ve had so far. With all the Quests you need to perform in the game, it’s always good to have a friend. Mr. Darnell, my history teacher, plays the game and occasionally gives me items to further my character. Mr. Darnell can’t always be on, however. I have met some interesting people on some of my Quests. When first you 'talk' to other WoWs your immediate assumption is they’re close to your age and to think of them as that. You would be wrong. Most people that play this game are at least in their twenties sometimes even older than that. It launches you into reality when your party member needs to “go take a smoke” or “wait for her husband to get online”. I am currently in a guild ~ which is kind of a club for nerds. It isn’t a very good one though. I’m going to have to work on that.

I can’t say if Mom likes the game or not…One night, I accidentally stayed up until 6 a.m. playing the game. I had to sneak upstairs while Dad was in the bathroom. I was really afraid he would catch me. I thought it was like 3:00 maybe. Mom was miffed and I couldn’t play the game the rest of the day. She also made me get up way before lunch.

I recently spent the night with my friend Jonathan. I really like his house because he has 3 computers on a LAN network with high-speed internet. My ping (time it takes to talk to server) at Jonathan’s was around 180ms which is a green color. The ping at our house ~ 1945ms sometimes 3690ms ~ which is red and not very good. You can’t win them all I guess. Currently, I am a level 14 night elf hunter. Not bad, but the highest level is 60. Again, more work to do and as Mom says, valuble brain cells to fry.

Mom can't figure out why I would rather play WoW than say practice my French Horn or maybe read Wuthering Heights for AP English. You know I can't explain it to her. I hover over her while she is trying to work on her computer until she gives up and let's me play. She is such a pushover.


Back here in red neck heaven waiting for you to get home. Keeping Dad happy, Mom entertained and Mo walking the line. Eileen