I used to have a life, once

The following article is taken from the weekend newspaper.... Parts of it are hilarious.... enjoy!

"I used to have a life, once - but that was before I joined the monster-killing millions in the online game WoW".

"So my gnome rogue, hoping to level up, is grinding his way through some leprous gnome exiles, picking the odd pocket for coppers, and vaguely searching for a dwarf, when he spots an intriguing doorway. He stealths, and starts waddling down the gently sloping stone corridor. A little way ahead, I can see where the passageway makes a right turn. Then this funny little mob shows up, then adds, and barely do I know I'm in combat before I'm toast. Didn't even get a Sinister Strike in. A fast-moving L30 night-elf hunter breezes past my corpse, then stops, and turns round. He notices the dead gnome is level 7. "Dude," he tells my corpse, "This is a level 25 instance!" "I think I have realised my mistake," I tell him, as I zap back to the graveyard and prepare to go and retrieve my corpse.

"If that sounds like gibberish to you, I'm in sympathy. Two weeks ago, I would have read the above anecdote and been defeated by what "grinding", "mobs", "adds", "Sinister Strike" and "instance" meant, still less been able to understand how you use "stealth" as a verb and why gnome exiles have leprosy and why you might be looking for a dwarf. Yet at the last count there were 7.5 million people worldwide who would know just what I was talking about - and would giggle at the image of a half-witted newbie inadvertently picking a fight with an elite monster and duly getting squished.

"This is World of Warcraft - the world's most popular MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) - and it is, God help me, now a substantial portion of what used to pass for my life. It started innoculously enough. My geeky friend K and her even geekier husband Stef started bending my ear. Try World of Warcraft, they said. It's like virtual-reality Dungeons & Dragons, they said. You'll love it, they said. And I explained that, yes, precisely the reason that I was never going to try it was that I knew all of these things, and that I had read reports of Asian teenagers dying - yes, actually dropping dead - in internet cafes after playing WoW for days on end and forgetting to eat, and that I had moved on from the days of being a sebaceously challenged teenager rolling 18-sided dice, and that, dammit, I knew exactly how much I'd like it and that was the very reason I never tried crack cocaine.

"So, here I am, at 3.30am on a working day, red-eyed from bashing up trolls. And, I might add with a twinge of shame, 33 years old. In my other life, I'm a three-foot gnome with a ludicrous blue moustache, a waddling gait that reminds my friends of Super Mario, and a talent for eviscerating giant spiders.".... One night recently, having cried off evening drinks with K and Stef on the grounds of feeling flu-ey and rotten, I logged on to WoW. Seconds later, the message window flashed up; a person-to-person message called a "whisper". It was from Stef: "So, tucked up in bed with our Ovaltine then, are we?" Busted."

Join the dark side! surrender your life muwahahahahaaaaaa

And there begins the story of the FcUK Wowers...

I've seen them online and even spoke to them on vent when i've finished my night shift...

At 4 IN THE MORNING.!!! <!-- s8O --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_eek.gif" alt="8O" title="Shocked" /><!-- s8O --> <!-- s:? --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_confused.gif" alt="" title="Confused" /><!-- s:? --> <!-- s8O --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_eek.gif" alt="8O" title="Shocked" /><!-- s8O --> <!-- s8O --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_eek.gif" alt="8O" title="Shocked" /><!-- s8O -->

And with the exception of K they all had to get up for work the same day.!!!

FcUK will never be a WoW clan, dispite this attraction it has had on a few; we are and will always be a tractical FPS clan, regardless of the ablility to eviscerating giant spiders, or how big and blue your moustache is.

Let it go fella's, if you tendancy is to have an alter ego of Super Mario and prance around buying drugs from gnomes and attacking walking trees furry muff, but Don't go on about, or keep posting bollox of how good it is. What you do in the privacy of your own room is your business not ours.

_J

no1 askin for fcuk to be wow clan, got my guild for that 100+ chars and lots of women to unload our sexual inuendos on jobs a good un <!-- s:twisted: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_twisted.gif" alt="" title="Twisted Evil" /><!-- s:twisted: -->

Trying to broaden yer horizons.
Peeps keep complaining that not enough peeps gaming together, well theres few now gaming n grouping together daily n having bags of fun to boot.
Might not be on an ageing game that people stick to but its doing job.

Lets face it limiting member base to 25 max is minimizing chance of people being on at same time anyway due to other commitments or peeps playing something else.

But back on track, original post was to point out addictivness n peeps that slate it actually get hooked n love it, take _K for instance, can often be found in just a loin cloth dancing with trees <!-- s:lol: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_lol.gif" alt="" title="Laughing" /><!-- s:lol: -->

There is a first time for everything, so I'm with _A. (fcuk me), even if he is a knob jockey