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Have a Nice Day and Watch out for the Big Yellow Chicken.

Well, you asked for it, so here it is–Ten reasons I need to keep playing WoW.

10. It’s something to do in my free time.

Sometimes you just want something mindless and fun to do, warcraft is exactly that. There isn’t a whole lot of thinking behind mindless daily quests and raids you’ve done before–so it’s nice to have a qay for the brain to totally veg out that isn’t television.

9. It isn’t Televison!

Yes! Hello! I hardly watch any television at all. I watch a couple of shows with my husband, but mostly I play video games or write in my free time. Before WoW I watched a lot more TV.

8. You meet people from all around the globe.

Okay, so you don’t ever actually meet them, but you do hang out with them and talk to them, and get to listen to their awesome accents. I love this part, because you learn really cool things, like that pop tarts cost 8 bucks a box in Austrailia.

7. I don’t go Stay At Home Mom Stir Crazy.

Oh this is a good one. I know so many SAHM’s that talk about how little contact with the outside world they have, and if you are playing WoW, it totally eliminates that.

6. What better place to brush up on my teen dialogue?

I am writing a young adult novel, and guess what–I’m 30. That means I don’t exactly know how the kiddies talk these days. But, if I just watch them in trade chat, then I get a feel for the things they say on a daily basis. For instance did you know that a Randy is a Random person. Who knew?

5. Minipets!

I bloody love minipets! I think they are one of the coolest in game things ever!

4. I have made friends from all walks of life…

Seriously, from the budding scientist to the old dude that just sits around all day playing WoW and getting high–I’ve met them all, and it’s neat. In real life you meet people that are a lot like you because, let’s face it… we stick to our kind, but in the game you never know who you will meet, and that makes things way more fun!

3. It gives me something that is my own.

When I first started playing WoW, my husband played with me and that was really nice because I got to spend all this time with him, but then he stopped playing, and I realized that I could have alone time right in my very own house. That’s nice when you’re at home with each other every day all day.

2. Mini goals are smackin’ fun to accomplish.

Seriously, it’s really fun to get a super cool rare recipe or beat a big raid boss with a team. I love that. There’s really nothing like it.

1. I like it.

I’ve never been the kind of person to not do the things I like, and I like playing World of Warcraft, that’s a good enough reason all on its pwn.
photo credit: juanpol

Have a Nice Day and Watch out for the Big Yellow Chicken.

Seriously, I am obsessed with all things Joss Whedon, I played Mario Kart on a Super Nintendo. I once got a job at a video game store because I pre-ordered a copy of Zelda, I know how wtfpwn a raid boss, I can quote movies that most of you haven’t seen, and I’ve had a blog since before most people knew what blogs were. (Seriously, somewhere out there in cyberspace, there’s a blog from my college years, complete with dancing beany babies.)

But, until I started twittering, and announcing my complete geekness to all of my friends and former friends from high school and college, I felt like that was something I could keep kind of quiet.

Now they know everything.

I’m not going to lie… I am a little uncomfortable with that, because people get to find out just what a geek I really am, and I am sure they say things like, “Man, I knew she was a huge dork back in the eighth grade, but I figured she’d grow out of it.” But, I’m grown now, and I would like to think I care less now than I did then about what people think about me. I hope so at least.

Maybe I should be less of a geek? Maybe I shouldn’t live twitter my night out, or maybe I shouldn’t check my facebook page from my phone, but I can’t help it. I love being connected to the internet, and it’s who I am.

I also wonder if the internet will help me or hurt me later when I go to look for a job.

I mean, if this whole book thing works out, and people out there are looking for someone quirky… then I think I have a nice little platform going for myself, right? But… if I try to get a job where I am supposed to be poised and professional, and they google Jamie Harrington and my twitter stream pops up… I’m probably screwed.

So, I plan to continue my queen geekness, and hope that it’s cool with everyone.

photo credit: MuLaN™

Have a Nice Day and Watch out for the Big Yellow Chicken.

I am not very good at resisting temptation. In fact, I suck at it. I don’t want to say I was addicted to the World of Warcraft, because that sounds really sad… but if I told you the number of hours I played each day–well, you’d probably call some sort of video gamers anonymous hotline for me.

I haven’t been playing for a few months, and crazy things happened in my life, like I wrote a book, made some new friends, g0t a tan. Well, there’s a new content patch… and I am like dying to play it!  It’s so hard to avoid this game. Why is it so much fun? I really don’t know, but what I do know is that I have a lot of fun when I am playing… and can kill five hours without blinking.

So, I need to avoid this game… I need to avoid this content patch… oh I wonder if there’s new minipets?

Have a Nice Day and Watch out for the Big Yellow Chicken.

Recently a Twitter friend asked about how video games should use social networking… and I decided I should write a blog post about it, because I have been thinking about this very thing. They say write what you know, so for my example I will use the World of Warcraft.

Warcraft is all about the guild, right? And that is a social network if I ever saw one. I have a group of friends that I play warcraft so much with I actually talk to them more frequently than my real life friends. (Sad, I know, but after a couple of years of playing together I consider them very close friends of mine!) But, in order for us to be able to communicate, etc. We all had to build a forum, run a calendar, and all that other stuff that makes a guild tick.

What the games SHOULD do is provide you with all this, because as long as I am interested in the people playing the game, I am interested in playing the game. The content could be CRAP, and it wouldn’t matter to me at all because I would be able to go in and night after my kid is in bed and chill with my friends, and THAT is why I play the game.

Now, warcraft tried to make an in game voice chat, but failed miserably… and they are coming out with a calendar soon… and thank goodnes… because we NEED that! But, what they need is a forum system. They need a forum with every guild able to have a home page and a place to post their screen shots! They need to make their forum pages so awesomely awesome that I never want to quit playing just because I love the forum capabilities so much. When people join the guild, it auto adds you to the forum page… when you promote users, it gives them different access to different parts of the forums. It could be awesome, and it make warcraft THAT much sweeter.

The other thing… friggin myspace/facebook for my characters! People should be able to come in, leave a comment, write on my wall… grafitti my favorite screen shot. Make it so that people are involved in the game when they aren’t in the game… bring them game to THEM while they are at work! Seriously… this would make a video game be the king of social networks!

And that, my friends, is how I would involve social networking in a video game.

Though all the hype so far has been for Super Mario Galaxy, there’s a new traditional Super Mario platformer destined for the Gamecube coming out this fall! It uses Paper Mario for its look, but it plays like the classics… can’t wait!

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Have a Nice Day and Watch out for the Big Yellow Chicken.