The BIG leap

This week, I made a decision. A difficult decision. I've thought about it for the last 5 years. But I've finally taken a bold step and plunged right in.

This week, I purchase World of Warcraft.

When I was staying in RI Boarding, I couldn't play online games as my internet connection was via the school's server and the school had many firewalls. Now that I'm back home, and on broadband, there's nothing to hold me back. I don't really know if I'm into online games, but WoW has received excellent reviews. So, of all the MMORPGs, I decided to try WoW.

The experience has not been good so far. Not because of the game, but installing the game! On Tuesday, I bought the game. I started installing it on Wednesday night. Disc one... Disc two... Disc three... almost 45 mins long.. then I inserted Disc 4. Nothing happened. Opened drive, closed it... still nothing. Took out the disc and realized the disc had a huge crack. Manufacturing error. Fed up. So I cancelled the installation. On Thursday, I went down to the shop to get a replacement. They replaced Disc 4 with another open set they had. I noticed it was from a 2004 copyright version. I guessed it wouldn't be much of a prob so I went home and tried installing it.

Disc one.. Disc two... Disc three... then I carefully inserted disc 4. The disc looked fine. The drive spun. I looked at the installation bar, it started moving... YAY. But a minute later, an error message came out. And the installation aborted. AAAARRRGGGHHH!

So today, I went down to the shop again, told them to PLEASE replace the whole set. They agreed and I happily took the new discs home.

Disc one... Disc two... Disc three.. ok.. moment of reckoning again... disc 4... insert disc. Wait with bated breath. NOTHING HAPPENED! AAAARRRRGGGHHHH! Open drive, close drive... NOTHING HAPPENED! AAAARRRRGGGHHHH!

I was starting to think it must have been some act of God.... He'd probably known how addicted I would be and prevented the installation. Sigh.. might as well give in to divine intervention.

Then, I decided to try one last time. This time, deactivate Norton Antivirus (remembered having to do that for another game previously). So... disc one.. disc two.. disc three... disc four... Installation bar comes out... installation bar continues to grow... I wait.... wait.... wait... NO ERROR MESSAGE! YAY!

So finally, I got it installed. But as many of you WoW users noe, I was in for more surprises. I thought I could start trying it out, only to find that I had to install patch after patch after patch. The first one was 183Mb! sigh.

Well, after much patching, I finally created my character and got started.

Had to create a character. Heh.. so funny, it was like some life choice lor. Had to think about what I want to be, what I hoped to be, etc, etc. I wonder how many of you (esp students) spend so much effort thinking about your own futures. Lolz.

Ok, so I decided to go with Dwarves. For those who noe me.. it's quite a contradiction. But it was either Dwarves or Humans and i thot humans was a boring choice. Night elves just felt a little wimpy (though I like using them in Warcraft III).

So now, I'm pretty much at the 'collect wolf meat' stage. I must say I am impressed so far. Nice-looking game. So the question remains.... am I gonna get uncontrollably hooked. You'll find out in a couple of days.

Back to WoW...