Crafty

So. Even though I quit playing World of Warcraft a while back, I still follow a couple of sites (mostly because they make me laugh). So I knew the Cataclysm expansion was in beta. And I'd been planning on playing it. What I hadn't gotten around to deciding was whether to start back up before the expansion, to re-learn the game and re-train my muscle memory and such, or just wait for the expansion to come out first.

Well, Blizzard made their official announcement recently: Cataclysm will be released in two months, on December 7.

And I started to ponder the decision. Before, or after? Before, or after?

I think what decided me, really, was the world events. Burning Crusade (the 1st expansion) had a few world events that led into it (though I didn't participate much, being a brand-new player at the time). The 2nd expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, had a lot of stuff that happened in-game before it was released, and it was a lot of fun, even just to watch.

And here's a dumb thing that's going to sound like an exceptionally lame rationalization, but it's kind of true anyway: I wrote better when I was playing the game. I was near to tearing my hair out about the amount of my time it sucked up and the general lack of writing time it left me, but when I did write, I wrote. I don't know how that works. Maybe just that the game was enough of a stress-reliever from real life that I stopped blocking myself? I don't know.

But I guess I'll be finding out if it still works, because last night I fired up the Downloader and had it start retrieving patches. And this morning, I created a Battle.Net account and merged my old WoW account into it, and downloaded the authenticator app for my iPhone. And Matt sent me a Scroll of Resurrection.

So tonight or tomorrow, I guess, I'll be back in the game. I'll have to figure out how to avoid dumping all my spare time down the rabbit hole, and I'm still waffling between dusting off my old characters or starting a brand new one. Those of you who play, tell me what server you're on these days and who your current main is, so I can say hi when I get there.