Yesterday I dropped on by Gaming Steve to see if he had any news about the upcoming World of Warcraft patch 1.10. He’s usually a pretty reliable source of information. What I found was this poll about how many hours people have put into WoW. If you scroll down and read the comments, you’ll find a lot of animosity towards the game. One guy sums it up pretty concisely,
I hate WoW. Boring. It’s the only thing people talk about.
Is this how all you non-WoW players feel? Is WoW talk driving you mad? I’ve definitely noticed the “watercooler” conversations have drifted firmly into WoW talk. Just the other day, there was an impromptu gathering in the hallway of about five of us talking all about our characters and progress and plans (it doesn’t help that almost all the members of my Crazy Cattle guild are my co-workers).
At lunch, I probably bored another co-worker greatly as I talked all about my plans to respec my Tauren druid and explained what that meant. Is there a point at which enough is enough? I’ve cut back on my actual time playing WoW so that I can fit in more of my other interests. I haven’t really cut back on how much I talk about it, however. Is this a problem?
I’m not sure. World of Warcraft is a truly fantastic game. It is engaging, feature rich, expansive, and ever growing. The world is large and there are still whole areas I haven’t visited. It is possible to exhaust the content, but I haven’t come even close to doing so yet. The game lends itself to anecdotes. Even before WoW, I would frequently have conversations sharing stories of gaming experiences. “I was playing Civ last night, and the Mongols tried to take out my capital but my culture was strong so it converted right back!” We would talk for quite some time about strategies or tell stories of any game we were excited about. We’d contrive anecdotes for games that weren’t really anecdotal. But now we’re playing a game that really is about telling stories. The idiocy of fellow players is a frequent favorite. The new abilities we acquire or the rare drops we receive are all great cause for excitement. Is it any wonder that we can’t stop talking about it?
I understand that there are people out there that love games but don’t play World of Warcraft. Yes, WoW gets a ton of attention from media, from bloggers, from folks at the watercooler. But we’re all willing to talk about something else. It just needs to be really great to pull us away from our regularly scheduled programming.
3 Responses to “Too Much WoW Talk”
This post got me thinking of a great question to send to Exploding Dog.
EQ2 player says to the WoW player at a Gamers Anonymous meeting…
I do find it boring as I can’t afford the fees to check it out, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say I hate the game - it’s not that hard to just skip a WoW post.
It’s a bit like talking to new parents - yes, I’m sure it’s fascinating to you that your baby said “blub” today, but I can’t relate and I don’t need a description of every minute detail.
Hehe. I fear the moment when my friends become parents. I know just what you mean.