Dr. Fitzgood : Or How I Learned To Stop Hating Azeroth And Love The W.o.W.

I need to get something off my chest. I was a WoW-Hater. "Join the club." You say? Well, I still feel guilty. I was the worst kind you see. The type who hated the game and had never even tried it. Looking back, I see how terrible that is of me. Especially seeing as how any good game journalist should try to remain as unbiased as possible toward a game until they actually experience it.

My biggest argument for not playing was one of the most common ones as well...the graphics. In all honesty they really didn't appeal to me. All the screens and video I saw never really grabbed me. That brings me to another dirty little gamer secret of mine. I am a graphics whore. Pop some high quality models and textures in your game and make it remotely fun, and I'll probably waste some of my life playing it. But, when looking at World of Warcraft, I just didn't see any " shinies' ". Nothing that stood out or made me say "wow"...so to speak.
But after much goading from my partner here on the site. I finally broke down and gave it a try. One week later, much to my chagrin. I found myself actually wanting to login to the world of Azeroth. I...was enjoying World of Warcraft. Yes, I actually just typed that. It's out there now for all the world to see.


World of Warcraft wasn't that bad.


I found myself not minding the low polygon models. Sometimes being amazed at just how good the game could look. Then, sometime later, as I was attending one of the many in game events that occur each month. Someone rode by me on a Gnomish Motorbike. Now, I remembered reading about that addition to the game long before I decided to give it a try. I also remember professing aloud how stupid I thought it was.

But after seeing one ride by me in game....I had to have it. I could not explain it, I just "needed" that Motorbike as my mount. When I noticed it had a side car in which your friends could ride as well. At that point, I REALLY needed that mount!

So here I am. A few months later, looking forward to patch 3.3, and practically feinding for the day I'm waiting outside Gamestop in the cold of an Ohio November, teeth chattering, getting ready to grab my Collector's Edition box of Cataclysm. I'm sure Jared will be there with me as well. I'm still trying to decide if I should be thanking him, or cursing him.

Family Problems & Game Playing: Is There a Problem Here?

This is a post I have thought long and hard about writing. Mainly because I know many friends, both men & women whose relationships seemed to be adversely affected by their hobby of playing video games. Now I am sure there is more to it than that, but It seems like our hobby can be a major factor in parental and spouse conflict. And I don't mean the "You play too much!" argument. I have no education in such matters. All I can tell you is what I have seen. And after many years enjoying this hobby I've seen a lot.

Child development in a world where video games are the standard entertainment model is a double-edged sword. For one games today some game today have an edutainment quality, granted not of the Carmen Sandiego old school quality, but it is there if you are looking for it. Games like the Civilization series and Sim City always had a more education focused agenda. Actually, I wish that more mayors would play Sim City so they can figure out how to run a budget. But as children play their games more and more, they disconnect from the world they live in. Now sometimes this isn't a bad thing, when you have a particular bad day at school, it is nice to lose yourself to a fantasy world or play some Burnout to get all your aggression out of your system. But the more they play without the guidance of their parents the more trouble down the road the child has pulling themselves away from their games. Parents are to blame for most of this, or at least that is what I think of myself when I tell my boy he can play his Wii while I'm mowing the lawn or doing house work. Because my son would rather play games than do his homework, or study, or spend time with his family, we have a new set of rules when it comes to games. No playing through the week. If his grades start going down he will banned from playing till I see improvement. When he does get to play it has to be as a family with all of us playing. This has helped him and us to deal with the behavioral problems that could be a result of unsupervised gaming.

Adult issues that are a result of interactive entertainment is harder to define. Mostly because games are still considered childish. I can't count how many times my mother has told me to grow up when I talked about video games . She just can't get it. Games are today viewed by the younger generation the same way that movies were viewed in the 1930's, 40's, 50's. We are not talking Pong here. We are talking about sweeping stories that engage the senses with rich storytelling, beautiful graphics, and just so happens to be playable. No, the biggest issue adults face when it comes to gaming is social interaction.

It is a problem I am having right now as I write this. My wife wants me to spend time with her constantly and I love writing on this blog. So I keep on writing while she gets mad threatens to smash my computer. I keep writing because I know it makes her mad and I'm a jerk, hey at least I admit it. When it comes to World of Warcraft it swings the other way. She is totally committed and I'm left out in the cold.She wants me to play but she levels so fast that I can't keep up. So I go play another game. She gets mad that I'm not playing with her and the cycle repeats. But you see the relationship had nothing to do with the games or the pc. If we didn't have that form of entertainment she would still pester me to spend every waking hour with her 100% of the time and I would still try to annoy her because it seems fun.

Relationships are fickle creatures. How about a father that spends more time playing videogames than spending time with his kids. How about a wife who no longer loves her husband and spends all her time hiding inside a virtual world talking about her marital problems with people she has never met instead of talking to the man that said "I do!" to her. What about the dad who beat his son because he interrupted him while playing Madden because he was hungry and daddy hadn't watched him all day. These are real cases I've personally seen. Now the question I purpose to you is this. Do videogames enable these situations? Or are they just a by-product of an overactive blame game?

I would, in my personal opinion aim for the overactive blame game. Some men are lousy fathers, some women get married for the wrong reasons, and some people will always be of a violent nature. Gaming has nothing to do with it. Nope the issues were their before they brought home their first videogame. Can playing video games have a negative effect on relationships? Yes in so much as to put icing on the cake. The relationships were bad before but playing games instead of facing the problems and paying attention to what is truly important is a recipe for disaster. What do you think?