Hey Dan

What is your gateway game? Everyone has one. For some people it is Tetris for others it is Sims or Age of King or Halo or even driving games. For me it was Civ. Civilization is a turned based world building game. You are the leader of a tribe of people who have just invented fire and you goal is to land on another planet. Alone the way you have technologies to research, cities to build and of course other civilizations to destroy.

I remember one night playing a whole game in one sitting. At the end of the game it announced, “You have defeated the world in just 19 hour and 36 minutes.” Many nights I would sit down to play for a couple of minutes and end up watching the sun come up. I know the deep dread of knowing that you have to be to work in 2 hours and have not yet destroyed the Mongols.

If play online games, no doubt you have heard of Worlds of Warcraft. This game shared game of the year honors with Microsoft’s Halo 2, this despite being out only a month before the end of the year voting. Now, before you say well it is just a computer game, you should know computer games have been out selling movie tickets for several years. Electronic Arts is a bigger entertainment company then Disney.

The game was release November 23rd. Within the first day, over 200,000 players created World of Warcraft accounts. By 5:00 p.m. that day, over 100,000 were playing the game concurrently. That was 8 hours after it became available. Around December 8th I bought my copy.

… what follows is just one of the experiences…

So, I on the realm one night… My 17th level dwarven hunter is in Darkshore completing quests and leveling. I have just trained a new pet, a saber toothed cat, and I have named Sammy. The quest I on has me looking for some ruins south of Auberdine. I had been walking along the hills, mining copper as I searched, when I spotted something strange. I saw players with red names running across the road. I had never seen player names in red. Green names meant one thing and blue meant something, but red names?

So head down to see what they were. Then it hit me. I had been watching my combat log while playing with the new pet. Any messages from other players would come though on my command log. I switch over to the command log and found it was full of players yelling we are under attack! These where HORDE! The area of Darkshore was under attack! I am standing in the middle of a war.

Running down the hill I spotted about 4 dark elves facing off this huge towering figure. It was a Tauren Druid and he was flattening them with this mace as big as I am. The 4 dark elves were not doing well. I had no options to heal them so I did what hunters do. As I raised my blunderbuss to target him, he turned and ran away at a speed that left us standing there watching him run. In the time it took for me to raise my gun the 4 elves had died.

Someone shouted to lay a hunters mark their healer, this would allow everyone to see where he was. If they could kill the healer the raiders would have to retreat. Just then, I saw a Troll Shaman hiding, yes he was hiding, behind a tree. I targeted him and placed a Hunters mark on him. Off went my cat to get his attention. Checking his level it showed up as ??, that meant he was high enough that I had no chance to defeat him, oh no. As I pondered what I just got my self into I saw a flash of light! With one strike the Shaman had hit me for most of my health. I turned to run… too late...

As I released my spirit to return to the land of the living, I saw a thank you from the chat channel for the brave little Dwarf who spotted their healer.

I must have danced around the room for 15 minutes. There have been many night of staying up past my bed time exploring a world of things that go bump in the night. Before you laugh at me remember, there is a gateway game out there for everyone. First one is free.