Adventure Report

Two hours into the experiment: The weather was fair at the moment. It had rained earlier today, but the clouds had soon dissipated, leaving the land as unblemished as before the rain. No puddles were to be seen; the ground looked dry, as it always did around these parts. I was glad of the change in weather. Not that the rain bothered me, but it did reduce my visibility, making my task all the more arduous. I was out hunting. A man in the nearby town wanted some crocodile skins, and was willing to pay me for six of them. He needed them for some undoubtedly important purpose, which I hadn't bothered reading about. Not that it mattered in the least, especially since this was the third time I had done this particular assignment. After a few minutes I finally spotted a crocodile. On closer inspection, I noticed that it was the wrong type. For some reason, the guy wanted only the skins of young crocodiles. The next one I saw looked more promising. This particular specimen was a bit more powerful than I was, but I trusted in my skill and the element of surprise. I tried to turn a bit to the left, to make sure it was alone, but I only managed to move a few inches. Annoyed, I looked down at my mouse and turned it over. Sure enough, there was a small hair stuck to the laser light at the bottom. I let out a frustrated sigh; 1600 dpi, and the stupid thing couldn't even shine past a thin hair. That was the problem with laser mice: if something interrupted the beam, the mouse wouldn't register any movement. I took a blunt pencil and carefully removed the hair, inspecting it more closely. It was light brown, almost sandy colored. “If those gerbils don't stop shedding everywhere, I will work them over with a lint brush,” I thought angrily. The rough sounds of combat coming from somewhere in front of me interrupted my thoughts. I looked about for the commotion, and saw that the crocodile I was trying to kill had approached while I wasn't looking and was now busy biting and snapping at me. I freeze it in place with a spell, then moved out of its combat range and bombard it with fireballs and more ice spells until it dies. Rummaging through its remains, I find a broken tooth and a scrap of hide, but no complete skin. “Just one more hour,” I silently repeated to myself like a mantra, over and over again.
Thirty minutes into the experiment: I was bored. I had forgotten how repetitive this game could be: “kill ten of that, bring me eight of this,” again and again. Whether collecting pirate hats or troll skulls didn't really make a difference. Yet for some reason there were thousands of people in this country and tens of thousands world-wide who played this game for hours at a time, some even non-stop. I had heard of people dying of exhaustion and lack of food because they did too many all-nighters without taking any breaks. But what was it about this virtual world that enticed so many to spend more time in it than the real world? What had this man-made universe to offer that people longed for? It was this question that made me decide to spend three hours in Azeroth, the world of the popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft. To tell you the truth, I couldn't see what made it so special. The effort it would take me to become fully immersed in it would far outweigh its benefits. It it is fun for a while, but definitely not a substitute for the real thing. Maybe some just hated their life and wanted to escape it? Or had they become so reliant on their technology that they had to immerse themselves as fully as possible in their devices? After three hours of trying, I was not much closer to finding out what made a WoW fanatic tick.