WoW

After 10GBs worth of downloads, patches, and installations, and also countless hours of waiting, I was finally able to start my World of Warcraft trial account. It was well worth the wait. I then had first-hand experience to the addiction that has captured the souls of millions. I remember playing the day right before my CSE midterm, which Wanda warned us about happening. My actual time in the game is definitely not what I would normally consider "hardcore," as I only have a level 8 Priest, but I thought I was still able to get a good experience. A lot of my time also went into researching stats, skills, and guides before actually starting the game. One significant thing I noticed that was different among most of the MMORPGs I have played is that the consequences for dying is not very severe. I lost no experience, and floating as a wisp to find and resurrect my body was actually quite enojoyable. I think this minimal penalty for death feature is what entices many new MMORPG players to keep playing WoW. I am unsure if I personally like it or not, but I'm sure that the other 12 million or so players find no problem to it. I think there should be at least some sort of penalty (I guess traveling back to your body is not fun), but having too harsh of a penalty can really kill a game. This comes frmo my horrid experience in FFXI, where it was possible to level down if you died. It was already hard enough to gain your level, as by level 10 you were unable to earn any decent experience without finding a party of 6 to take down a single monster. I would probably earn about 10% of experience per hour, and dying (which I did often as I was the tank for the party) would result in losing 25%! This was defintely the big turn off which led me to discontinue my account after two months. Although 

Although I am sad to know that my trial account ends this Saturday, I am glad that I didn't regret the choice I made in high school when I sold my brand new copy of WoW because I didn't want to get sucked into another MMORPG (and I know it would have sucked me in!).