I’m hanging out in a creepy darkened forest glen with a tall, bearded blue guy, talking about the relative obesity rates in Montana and other states, when a limping, birdlike creature draped in tattered robes scurries toward me, throwing knives. I cock my arm back, pause for a moment, and then hurl two shimmering snowballs at my attacker. It drops dead in its tracks, and I pluck a handful of feathers from its head.
In actuality, I’m sitting at my dining room table, eating popcorn, repeatedly hitting the “2” key on my computer’s keyboard whenever the bird-guys appear on my screen; and otherwise chatting with the blue guy – a fantasy avatar of my brother, Alan, who lives in Austin, Texas — through my computer’s built-in microphone and speakers.
My head is somewhere in between the real space of my dining room and this fantastical imagined realm that gamers know as Azeroth, the imagined world of “World of Warcraft.”
I’m a WoW-head. And I’m not entirely proud of it. [Read More...]
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