On to Azeroth

     I've been meaning to give World of Warcraft a shot for a long time. I tried playing it on a trial account a few months ago with Matt Winchell. We stopped after about 5 minutes of playing when Matt realized we couldn't team together as freebie players. Matt couldn't wait to jump, as he hates what he sees as grindy quests. The thing is, I see the same kind of quests in LOTRO, City of Heroes, and even Anarchy Online. In most cases, this is because of the popularity of WoW. I want to experience what everyone else seems to be experiencing so that I can talk about it a little more at the MMO Worlds panel I'm running at Geek.Kon this year.
     So why wasn't I playing back when it was newer? I was interested, that's for sure. But I was also hearing very disturbing things about it. Back in 2008, I heard about someone's roommate getting so into it, that they never new they had failed out of college. Horror stories like this kept me away from the game until recently.
     However, I've been playing MMO's for quite some time now, and nothing too serious has happened. My bank is a little more drained, especially on account of all the free-to-play games. I'll let you think about that for a sec. Plus, if I stick to a trial account again, I'll still get a feel for the game that really pushed MMO's into the mainstream, even if it's in a limited way. Wish me luck!