I’m not a huge gamer. I do go through phases of playing games like Angry Birds, Words with Friends, and other free Internet games such as Bejewled and Snood. I usually play for a while–then play for hours and hours–then realize just how much time I’m gaming. Then I stop for several months.
I have heard of World of Warcraft and was really not interested at all in playing. After reading Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal my interest was piqued. I should know what millions of others are doing when they spend millions of hours online playing this game. I was excited that many other MALTers were also going to play WOW. Figured I’d have a good support network.
I downloaded the game (took many hours) and started playing. I read a few websites about WOW to get an idea about how the game worked. I started the game and created my character. I created a dwarf priest with green spiky hair who looked pretty cool. I tried to get my challenge but it was unclear so I didn’t know what to do.
I figured out how to move my character and how to jump using the space bar (which is similar to many online website games my students play). I spent my time walking around and exploring the area. Other people where talking to me on the chat screen — not sure which characters they were–or what I actually needed to do or if they were really talked to me. One of them asked me to heal them. (I think a priest has healing power–but I didn’t figure out how to heal someone). I think I may have died or was injured at point, but I’m not really sure. There were a lot of flashing lights.
It took me a little while to get used to the graphics and 3-D view of this game. Growing up (in the 90’s) I played games such as Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog. They were pretty much only 2-D–so this 3-D view was a change. (My Gameboy was a green/gray color screen.) The graphics in WOW are great though!
I was uncomfortable while trying to figure out this new game and I found myself wanting to go check my iPhone to see if my friends had submitted a new word on Words with Friends–a game that is very comforting for me.
Adventures in Education 