Warcraft

Although I've worked in the videogame business, I'm not a hardcore player. Nor am I a casual player, except with a terrific pick-up-and-play option racing game like Gran Turismo. I'm really a binge player.

Binge players don't have a need to play every hot new game out there. We're more selective. Trouble is, when we hook into a game we love -- or, rather, it sinks its hooks into us -- the behavior becomes that of a hardcore player. All. The. Time.

With World of Warcraft, the phenomenally successful (over 6 million players worldwide), apogee-esque massive multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG, folks), it's had it's hooks into me on and off for almost a year. I've never played a game that long (periodic returns to whatever new version of Tetris do not count), certainly never a continuous game. Unlike previous binges, with Bruce Shelley's brilliant Age of Empires and previous Blizzard blockbusters Starcraft and Diablo 2, this is one long continuous game with one long character, because it is the game that never sleeps.

MMORPGs are persistent worlds. That means, except for the weekly server upgrades in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, it is always on. There are lots of mini-goals along the way, but the main drive is to take your character from level 1 to level 60, and then at level 60 into greater adventures, earning greater gear, playing in the larger and larger groups you need to form to fight, say, big huge astonishing dragons.

What is most striking to me is the sense of time passing, the sense of -- dare I say -- nostalgia I got recently upon visiting a place in the game that I had not been to in at least six months.

You play the game over two huge continents, each with over a dozen zones that you get strong enough to access as you rank up. Go to a higher level zone too early in your "life" and a monster will kill you in seconds. In this way, the game designers exert control over your experience, gating it for greater gameplay effect. (For those still just watching linear entertainment, think dramatic effect.) So as you rank up in the game you stop frequenting most of the low level areas. Too much to do in the areas at your level or, for the bold, slightly above.

I'm level 55 now but the last time I visited the town of Lakeshire in the Redridge Mountain zone must have been when I was, like, level 15 or 20, and that's around six months ago. Then, the other night, I had a chain of quests (attuned to my current level) that required several visits to Lakeshire.

When I arrived there (flow in by gryphon) and mounted my steed to ride into town, I was hit with an overwhelming feeling that I've never had playing a game before. I've had it in movies when in the final act the hero returns to a place he hasn't seen since the early reels, maybe his hometown, maybe another peaceful place for him. Lakeshire is most similar to the Shire of The Lord of the Rings but without those furry hobbits; very English countryside, bucolic, ye olde. So it was nice to ride into town and feel this strange new game feeling. A nostalgia for an electronic life lived O So Long Ago.

I remember being a lowly 15 level Mage, confined to run on foot, while being passed by swift high level players (you can buy your mount to vastly accelerate your travel time starting at level 40). Only now I was the higher level player, the veteran. Those high level players who rode past me back then must have been on the same quest I was doing now. Only this time it was me passing the 15 to 20 level players.

And what it really made me feel was similar to visiting my hometown back in upstate New York, passing my old Middle School, checking out the changes at the town's main shopping center, seeing the new houses that have come up and the familiar older houses showing signs of wear, while all my friends from childhood are scattered around the nation like dandelion seeds.

It made me feel like a, well, a ghost. A living, breathing ghost.

A ghost in my own land.