The WoW Effect

With so many things going on in the gaming world, its hard to keep track of them all. Between the PS3, Jack Thompson's latest escapades, or the latest fad video, there is just so much to keep track of. However, there is one disturbing trend that has been taking the gaming world by storm that we need to take note of and put to an end. This trend is what I like to call the 'WoW Effect'. Now you're probably asking "Well, what the heck is the WoW Effect Newman?" Good question, so let me break it down for you.

With so many subscribers (somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 million) no one can deny that Blizzard has a hit on their hands. World of Warcraft is inescapable. Its in the news, its on the toy store shelves, it's even at your comic stores. There are roughly 2.5 million subscribers in North America, so there a good chance that you have several friends in your circle that are Wowheads.
Good for them, it's a fun game, and it offers a good chance for you and your buds to get together and grind mobs for exp using teamspeak (kudos to you who gets the reference).

I do play, and its a great time waster. However, that is the problem. World of Warcraft is designed to be a time waster. WoW is built from the ground up to entice players to spend hours and hours of their free time grinding for levels, getting new gear, etc. This cycle alone can take anywhere from 3 weeks to 6 months, and can be repeated as many times on as many characters as the player wishes. Don't get me started on dailys and instances either, whoo boy.

'So what?' you may say 'It's not like it's that big a deal' Ah, but that's where you'd be wrong. For those who don't know Xfire is an instant messaging client for PC gamers that tracks the number of hours spent playing PC games. According to the xfire website: Gamers who use xfire have totaled a whopping 300,423 hours logged playing Wow. This equates to over 12,517 days spent in game per day. That alone gives me the shakes.

"Okay, so a bunch of people play WoW for hours at a time daily. So what?"

I'm glad you asked. Please, follow me with this hypothetical situation. So 'Frank' decides to get a bunch of his friends over to play Halo3/Rock Band/CoD 4, which he knows his friends will like. 'Frank' tells all his buddies, and can't wait. However, it gets to be 9, and no one's there. Why? BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL PLAYING WOW!!! Frank fires up xfire, to meet something like this:

This is precisely the problem. There is naught a person out there to play games with. No body to co-op Army of Two with. No buddies to matchmake with in Halo 3. You start getting a little lonely. And not only that, but all your buddies are constantly chiding you to join them. "Dude, when you getting back into WoW?" It never ends.

I don't care if you play it. I don't care that you have 5 lvl 70's with epic everything. That's not the probem. It's when you spend every free bit of time doing that. For those out there who can relate to me, I feel your pain. For those who can relate to my example, please just log out of the world of Azeroth, and pick up a controller. Master Chief and all your buds are waiting.