Behold! The culmination of 3 hours of work (plus whatever TW put in):

So after I saw the finish production, I thought it might be neat to break it up into the individual parts and show people how Myst is put together and why it took 3 hours to put the video together. Basically, Myst (and Riven) is put together with a massive collection of still images, videos, and sounds, and the videos are placed on the still images wherever they're needed. Very rarely is there a full movie playing. It's mostly little windows playing in certain areas of the screen. Wanna see?! I know you do:

So there you are, folks! Be sure to rate them both! And, dare I say? Watch for more of these videos in the future! (That is, if TW keeps on making the music. Otherwise it's just a video everyone's already seen a hundred times.)

So I'm a healer in WoW. There's certainly a market for them... My server (Sentinels RP), as well as every other realm I've been on, seems to have a consistent shortage of healers. Everyone likes to DPS. That is to say, they like playing someone who deals out massive damage. I admit, it's fun! I prefer the Feral Combat specialization. I can solo the entire game that way (sans the instances, of course). But when I hit maximum level, I always seem to gravitate toward healing. Sit in the back, watch everyone's health meters, and give everyone a boost when they need it. What are the cons? They're big ones...

As a healer, all you do is click when the numbers say to click. When you're actually in the fight, you have special moves and the monsters have special moves and you need to be aware of what works when. As a healer, you have special moves, too, but it's more like "regular heal" versus "emergency heal" versus "oh-my-gosh-we're-going-to-die heal". I have a fancy little add on that lists the entire raid group on the left and I can mouseover and click a certain button for a certain heal. Really handy, I love it. Saves some mouse movement and down time between heals. (And adds to the sense of panic when you see all 10 people's health bars crash.)

People argue that a healer is boring because all you do is wait calmly in the background and do reactive moves. When you're fighting, you're leading the combat and taking proactive moves. All the DPS does is hit as hard as they can while not getting the monster's attention for being the most dangerous. From an outside perspective, both healing and DPSing are just mindless clicking, but being up in the fight and being directly affected by the monster you're fighting really changes the feel of the clicking! And then there's the Tank. The one guy with the massive armor and hit points who takes the beating from the monster. If the Tank dies, the group dies, period. There are usually multiple Tanks, but there's always a far stronger Primary Tank. There is a massive shortage of Tanks on my realm, too. Probably because Tanks are widely considered to be the leaders and are thought to always have the answer to every problem that arrives. It's a somewhat accurate picture, because the Tank needs to know what the monster is going to be capable of. The DPS need to know this, too, but since the monster isn't actively hurting them, it's less of an issue for them.

So, where does that leave us? Sentinels has an incredibly high number of DPS; people who want to walk in and hurt something without thinking about tactics. Nobody wants to lead. My brother (who was given the nickname BroBro by Edrick, TW and Nomad, and so will be referred to by that name from this point on) adopted the role of Tank. A freakin' huge Dire Bear Form Druid (aka big bear butt). The latest expansion pack really buffed the Druid's tanking ability. I've healed just about every tank out there... Warriors. Paladins. Death Knights. Druids. Of them all, I far prefer Druid tanks now. Death Knights are a close second. Paladins are a distant third, and Warriors trail far behind them. I don't like Warrior tanks at all.

So BroBro is a Tank and a danged fine Tank. We rarely lose a battle when we're paired up, no matter who else we have with us. Since I'm a Healer, we've got the two most important and rare roles already! DPS signing up is only a matter of time with no work involved. Just spam "looking for DPS" a few times and you're filled!

There are pros to being a Healer, too. Namely the fact that since you're such a rare role, you are pretty much guaranteed a spot in anything you want to do. (Unless your guild is a dumbface.) I've been out of Militis Noctis for a grand total of 2 days and I was invited to run one of the larger instances by one of the largest Alliance guilds on our realm! I performed admirably, if I do say so myself, and they took notice and I had a couple of them tell me I should apply to their guild... So I did! That was my ideal plan to looking for a guild, actually. My idea was to run instances guildless for a while, and then someone notices how good I am and then pursues me. I think it's best for a guild to come to you than for you to hunt down a guild. If they want you, they'll ask you. I think I was in my former guild for long enough for people to take me for granted. They had their own high ranking healers that everyone wanted to do stuff with, and they conveniently forgot that I was a healer, too, and was supposed to be doing things with them. But anyway! If you're a Healer, the single greatest pro is that you will never have a shortage for work. People will hunt you down.

But why am I a Healer? I admit, it can get boring. That, and I tend to assume that if the group fails, it's my fault (as do others). It's a little stressful, especially when you're trying something new and everyone's depending on you to know what's going to happen with a fight. But when it comes down to it, a Healer will usually have free reign over healing gear, since you're so rare, and if you're a good Healer, people will love you forever and you'll get invitations to all kinds of things! But personally, I love Feral Combat, as I said before. Nothing is quite like a Feral Druid on a roll... You can do anything by yourself. I love that feeling of independence. When you're a Healer, you will usually need someone else to do the fighting for you. Since they're being healed, you'll still be able to take everything and more, but you still need a partner. That part I don't enjoy a whole lot... I like doing quests at random times and I can't do that when I'm a Healer.

Then there's the battlegrounds. I never thought there was a place for Healers in PVP. Dumb idea? Maybe. The fights are so chaotic that it's almost impossible to make a difference. Right? I mean, sure, Arena 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5 need healers, but those are small enough to manage. Almost like an instance. But battlegrounds? I always thought that if I wanted to progress through battlegrounds, I'd need to be a kick butt soloing Feral Druid. Well... BroBro was playing battlegrounds with his new Druid Tank and he kept telling me how many people it took to kill him. (He could hold off 3, but any more than that and he would lose.) I decided to give battleground healing a chance. I paired myself with BroBro and we TORE THEM APART!

As long as I was there healing, BroBro would never fall. The Horde would throw themselves at him, making the deadly mistake of ignoring the healing Druid in the background, and they would dash themselves to pieces. I am completely serious. And whoever he killed, I would get credit for, too. That's how scorekeeping works with healers in the battleground. Whoever you helped, you'll get credit for their kill. (They will, too, so don't worry about steals.) Even after the Horde got smart and took me out, BroBro would still be there, alive and kicking, by the time I showed up again, and it was back to being an unstoppable force!

There was a Death Knight I took a liking to during the fight, too. She managed to swipe their flag and head into our base. The Horde had our flag, so we were both sitting there, waiting for someone's flag carrier to die. It was me and two Death Knights defending our flag. (Me, the flag carrier, and another one.) At one point, easily half of the opposing team (I swear it was at least 5 Horde, if not more) dropped in on the three of us, looking for an easy kill. No such luck. For 5 minutes we fought... The three of us versus a huge crowd of Horde. A few times I thought we might lose, but slowly... Ever so slowly... Their numbers dwindled as the DKs took them out, one by one. Eventually, we were left standing victorious as the last Horde fell (and our team came to help). It was that way the entire game... At one point, the flag carrying Death Knight got fed up with how slow our team was working, so she trusted me to keep her healed as she ran into the Horde base (WHILE CARRYING A FLAG) to get our own flag back so we could then run all the way back and score.

That's what I call putting trust in a healer. We didn't lose, either. We managed to get our flag back and we ran all the way back home and scored. Because our flag carrier trusted me enough to keep her healed so she wouldn't die, lose the flag, and the allow the Horde a score. I mean, she was very well armored to begin with, much like BroBro, but when you add my heals to the mix, they're invincible, period. In fact, I was standing alone in the field, healing whoever needed it, and a smart Orc Hunter showed up and tried to take me out. I threw up the standard heals and waited for my team to get to him. He couldn't hurt me at all... As soon as he hit me, my heals took over and I was back to 100% health. Sometimes I amaze myself... And I don't mean that in the haughty sense, either. I didn't realize I was that good at healing.

There's the final numbers from the fight... I'm Kittari, BroBro is Langnet, and the invincible Death Knight was Khaligto. As you can see, my total healing towers over everyone! 815,190 points healed... Far beyond the 300,000 required to get the achievement for heavy healing in a battleground. I only died 5 times, too, and none of those deaths put anyone in danger, either. Most of the times I died it was because someone hit me with some spells that damage over time right before they were taken out. When I died, the enemies were usually gone and my partner survived to kick more butt. Good times... Good times.

So from now on, whenever I think about switching from being a healer, I need to read this!

Okay, saw it? It's really neat, actually... I can't help but think of it in the context of Star Trek. I can imagine a whole lot of human Starfleet personnel singing this about their beloved Federation homeworld. (Yes, I've been obsessed lately.) But anyway! Now, here's one for the "world of gaming". It's from CollegeHumor.com which I do not normally browse and personally avoid, so I feel I must mention that it would be a bad idea to browse the site for yourself unless you have a tolerance for rude, liberal humor. However, I saw this linked to on Kotaku.com (which I would also, sadly, not recommend on visiting because they have an uncanny ability to use an unnatural amount of profanity in an attempt to connect with "modern gamers" or something) and I have to admit that it's really amazing and makes me happy to be a gamer:

Halo... Grand Theft Auto... Warcraft... Team Fortress 2... Hehe, it's so great.

I was listening to the Developer Q&A "podcasts" (although, technically, they're not podcasts, because I can't actually stream them into iTunes with a subscription list) and I've got a better idea for the way the game is being designed... And, to be perfectly honest... I LOVE IT. If you don't want to listen to the audio yourself, I shall give you a quick overview!

First off... Levels. I believe, if I recall correctly, that there are only 50 levels. People have been concerned that this might be a little quick and not provide enough time to experience content and playing habits. Luckily, levels are far different than what we have come to expect from levels in an MMO! Basically, they say, levels are more for giving a general idea on what kind of skills and technology that a player might have access to. It doesn't at all affect how strong a player is... Like, say, with hit points and statistics like that. Strength will be determined solely by equipment! They gave this example: There's a level 50 with some major strong armor and a tricked out Asgard weapon that can seriously hurt some Goa'uld ego. He's chugging along and he meets this little level 10 with a P90 and a flak jacket. Who's going to win? Obviously the level 50... But only because he has superior equipment. If the level 50 put on exactly what the level 10 was wearing? He would be perfectly on par with the strength of the level 10. This completely overthrows the idea of levels as presented by World of Warcraft! In WoW, if a naked (as in, no equipment... Don't get gross, okay?) level 70 player stands in the middle of the street and lets a level 10 pound on him? The level 10 is going to miss well over 90% of the time just because of the level gap. Like the developer of SGW said, there's like some sort of... Aura of fear that the level 70 must give off to make the little guys miss their strikes. But, no! Stargate Worlds isn't going to have that. If a level 50 and a level 10 meet on a deserted planet, and each has naught but a P90 and a flak jacket? They will be perfectly equally matched and the level 10 will have every chance to kill the level 50. That... Is amazing.

Also, the Q&A session on the 28th, which I didn't listen to until today, confirmed my hypothesis about the Goa'uld guarding a Stargate! Say you're returning from a mission and there's a group of three Jaffa walking down the path. They see you and the leader gives the order to fall back and take defensive positions. You then have to use strategies and skills to figure out how to get rid of them, by crawling around... Crouching... Using cover. You can actually reduce damage by taking cover behind, say... A rock. It won't reduce all the damage, but it will reduce a lot. It would be, quite literally, suicide to charge up to a Jaffa in the middle of a road and try to gun him down. He, being much more strictly trained in warfare, will more than likely lay on you a smackdown of epic proportions and present your head to his Goa'uld leader. They even said that they want to design playing fields so that you will soon come to realize what areas would give the best cover, and you'll go "okay, that looks like the best spot, so let's head over there". Anyway! That was a small distraction... You get rid of the Jaffa on the road and you go home. For some reason, say... The server crashed and you have to do the mission all over again and you have to meet the same three Jaffa again. What will happen? Well, in games such as WoW, the same thing will happen... Not the case in Stargate Worlds! What was first a fall back into defensive positions could just as easily be a flanking attack that pins you down and gets you captured. Same scenario... Different approach by the artificial intelligence. This, they say, is what will make SGW never get old and I am inclined to agree.

Maybe these ideas will get "some people" *coughahem* to play MMOs with me? Oh! Also? Plans right now include the fact that players from one country can easily play on a server with their friends in another country. I don't think there's a realm block like World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online. Frankly? I think that's absolutely amazing. With WoW and LotRO arguing the position of "protecting" their players, I say give them the choice to play on a realm that might lag a little more than others! I have friends in other countries that I can't play with because of this very reason... I say give us the choice and let us deal with the consequences of latency. We don't need a company putting software blocks for our "best interest".

But anyway! There's a thread on the Stargate Worlds forums where two people (myself a third) are in a discussion (that I sense is slowly degenerating into a flame-fest) on the differences in styles people play games in, and how we should treat each other. I will try to keep descriptions civil, but I will be telling it like I see it: One side of the spectrum promotes the use of special flags that will tell people that the player is a roleplayer, meaning that he is playing the game like he is experiencing the content as if he were there. There is no "Internet", there are no "bugs". He "goes through the Stargate to P3R-233" instead of "loading the Goa'uld outpost zone". This first side of the issue wants a flag so other people will know that he's a roleplayer and to conduct themselves accordingly... Meaning, please don't talk about anything that you wouldn't talk about if you were actually living the game. It breaks immersion and the mood of what the roleplayer is trying to accomplish, and it's just plain rude. That's the first side. The other side of the spectrum was incredibly quick to pull out the "I'm paying for my game, so you have absolutely no right to tell me how I should play" and that they can do whatever they want and anyone who doesn't like it can just ignore them, but has no right to complain or voice opinions. And I'm going to say right now that for all the talk about not forcing someone to play the game a certain way, he seems awfully closed to the idea that his is not the only way to approach this matter. That alone makes it hard for me to treat him seriously.

This, I think, personally, is a whole side effect to "relative morality". Where everyone is doing what they think is okay, and nobody can tell them what to do because of it. This, of course, is where I am directly opposed. Being a roleplayer, I naturally side with the first argument. I've played games where people just don't care about the impact they have on other people, and they'll do whatever they want without a care for what happens to other people. This, I have to say, goes both ways. Sometimes, you simply have to go "Out of Character" and talk to someone like you would in real life... Some people just don't understand what you're saying and if you intentionally try to confuse them, then you're no better than they are, and I've witnessed this happen, so I'm not saying one side is particularly better than the other, because each side has their fringe weirdos. As I say, an outspoken minority is heard more than a silent majority. While the majority of people go about their own business, there can always be just one who makes himself seen and some people tend to think that he's the only one out there.

It seems that the running example is that there's a group of roleplayers minding their own business, and then someone comes up and yells "lolz" at them. Obviously not roleplaying and, in my opinion, obviously trying to be obnoxious. Do the roleplayers have a right to complain about this action, or does the "lolz" man have the right to do that without anyone telling him otherwise? As a roleplayer, I think it's painfully obvious when someone is roleplaying. They tend to type better... They tend to use emotes (even custom /me ones)... They just tend to be more reserved and calculating than all the masses of busy hardcore raiders who chug along saying "omg I just pwned that n00b in the BGs and I got this leet chest piece from the honor!" Anyone who honestly hasn't noticed roleplayers, I'm going to say, probably doesn't make a habit of running up to people and yelling "lolz", either. In fact, someone who doesn't see roleplayers probably isn't paying attention to their surroundings enough to even begin to interact... So the entire point is moot.

At about this time, the arguments start winding up being insults and I make a parting comment based on my observations. The first side was the first to make a post regarding this problem, and the second made a post in response that took issue with things that shouldn't have made an issue. The second side produced the notion that since everyone is a paying subscriber, that they can play however they want. Wrong. We already know that there are game rules; codes of conduct and certain policies that are enforced to give some semblance of sanity to the realm. We can not do whatever we want. We get warnings to harassing people, we get banned for using bots and buying money... There are rules. Just because we pay doesn't mean we can do whatever we want. Now... As for things that aren't spelled out in the rules?

This, I think, is the missing key to this whole argument. Some games provide separate servers specifically designed for roleplayers that sport a set of rules that help prevent the griefing of roleplayers. In World of Warcraft, for example, there is a rule against names that you wouldn't see in the game world itself. Say... A human mage with the name of "PwnerCake". Yeah... See, what kind of parent would name their beloved child PwnerCake? That would clearly be against the rules and should be enforced and... Everyone in the realm would have the right, as dictated by the rules, to complain about it and report it. The person with that name is a paying customer, yes, but he is breaking the rules and does not have the right to do that. The rules just so happen to limit the name he can pick! If he doesn't like the rules, he does not have a right to complain against them, and is free to choose a Normal realm that doesn't have these rules enforced.

I made a couple of posts to try to put a foundation to some of the arguments, but, as you can see, I am completely ignored, and they go on poking at each other with sharp sticks. I contend that if a roleplayer is playing on a normal realm that does not have rules pertaining to names, then he has no right to complain about a name such as "PwnerCake", because it's specifically allowed. Likewise, nobody has the right to complain about the roleplayer for roleplaying, because there are no rules specifically disallowing roleplaying! It's up to you humans to find a way to peacefully coexist... But... Humans can barely do that in real life... How much less so with the anonymity of the internet, eh? However...

I think that running up to random people and yelling "lolz" can and does fall under the rules of harassment. Personally, I subscribe to the one-strike rule. I'll let you make the mistake of running up to me and yelling "lolz" because, frankly, you probably didn't know if I was a roleplayer or that I'd take offense, and, even if you did mean it to be offensive, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. If you were making an honest mistake, you would realize that I don't want to interact that way. If you were being offensive, well... You would probably yell it again, and then you'd be harassing by any definition of the term. But! For something with, say... Names. There are rules against harassing, but there are no rules about names. So if someone in Stargate Worlds runs up to me with the name of MegaBlasterAsgardMan and wants me to do something for him, I wouldn't have the right to say "your name is wrong, you need to change that" because, frankly, the name is okay as far as Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment is concerned. I might not like the name, and I would think that if someone intentionally picked a name like that, they're trying to get attention, but as far as actually ordering them to change it? Yes, I agree... That would make me condescending.

You can read the thread and see if you come to the same conclusions, and I hope that makes my stance a little clearer, in case... You know... You actually found my site from SGW forums and decided to read this... Which I doubt would happen, because I don't advertise my website! But, uhm... Yeah... Once again, my hobby of politics shows itself once again by giving me some incredibly deep insight into what... Could probably have easily done without! (Although it gave me a chance to test WordPress 2.5... That's a plus!)

Anyway, what I want to talk about... is Stargate Worlds. Haven't seen anyone talk about that since its announcement! Personally, I'd completely forgotten about it. I really don't have the time or wish to follow a pre-production MMORPG. I've learned by now that until a game is released, there's a high chance that some shortsighted publisher will waltz along and axe the project in favor of something with a number following the title. But SGW has come a loooong way since I last read the site and forums, and I'd completely forgotten about it until the forums sent me an automated birthday email.

But, yeah! I've been reading the Wiki... So far, it seems to be almost perfect for a Stargate game, even if it wasn't MMO. Think of it! The game is going to be balanced, more or less, for squads of four, of course, because that's the standard SG team size. (Seasons 9 and 10 don't count for anything, bleh. Stupid Mitchell. Stupid Vala. Stupid Ori.) Right now, the enemies are going to have elements of random in their actions... They won't do the same thing every time you encounter them like, say, in World of Warcraft dungeons. In WoW, there's a certain way you have to do things, and success is based purely off how well people know the scripted sequence of events for any given boss. It's an okay approach and we all enjoy it, but it does get rather old. Imagine yourself in an SG team of fellow players... You just got done investigating what you thought were some Ancient ruins. (Ancient as in Stargate-Builders, not just old ruins...) You head back to the Stargate and there's a patrol of Jaffa loyal to a Goa'uld who's out to get you. When they see you, they fall back and take defense positions behind the Stargate and fire from cover. You defeat them and leave... Now, say, the mission is repeatable. You go back to the ruins and come back and you know that there's going to be Jaffa there again, but, this time? They see you and they decide you're in a position to be overrun and they charge at you, staff weapons blazing! That's the premise here.

As for players, right now, there are going to be four races to pick from: Jaffa, Goa'uld, Human and Asgard! Jaffa will have two factions: Free and Loyal. Think of Free Jaffa as late-series Teal'c, when his symbiote dies and he needs to use Tretonin. Think of Loyal Jaffa as the good old fashioned snake-in-the-gut armies of the "gods". Goa'uld will simply be Goa'uld. No good, no bad, just Goa'uld. This particular faction is said to have seen how well posing as gods worked out (not very well), so they tend to act more like Ba'al, where they tend to do things on their own. Humans will have two factions, also: SGC and something called OPCORE, which is sorta like a new version of the NID, where they believe that they should acquire technology at all costs. Asgard are like the opposite of Goa'uld where if you pick them, you have no faction choice... You're just an Asgard. Kind of weird, and I wish they didn't let you pick them, but they do, so oh well. You get something called a Drone when you pick Asgard. The Drones seem to be what does all the interacting with things, seeing as how Asgard are pretty... frail and useless without their technology.

As for classes, I'm not sure if there are any classes for Goa'uld, Jaffa and Asgard, but for humans, you get to pick from the familiar abilities! Archaeologist for all you Daniel Jackson buffs, Scientist for those of you who actually understand what Samantha Carter is talking about, and Soldier, for all of you who more closely resemble Jack O'neill's method of approaching things! Archaeologists and Scientists are going to be more suited for analyzing ruins and technology, naturally. There will be puzzle mini-games that you get to work on, and Scientists and Archaeologists will specialize in these. Sometimes there will be technology puzzles that require a Scientist and sometimes there will be a linguistic puzzle or such that will require an Archaeologist, so you'll want to have access to each one, no doubt. Soldiers are, of course, suited more for combat, although each class can fight.

As you go on missions, you'll uncover Gate addresses that you can use to dial up another planet and see what's going on. So far, it doesn't seem that you'll be able to randomly dial addresses and see if a world pops up, and it'll be more that you have to learn addresses to use them. But once you know an address, you can visit the world any time you want. Some will be friendly to your faction, others will be aggressive, and others will be contested, and will serve as a sort of Player vs Player environment. PvP is going to be opt-in, which means that if you don't want to PvP, you don't need to do anything to defend yourself. (Except stay away from contested planets, probably.)

Flying craft will probably be an expansion at this point, as will the Pegasus galaxy and Atlantis. One of the original examples of the game, building a Goa'uld mothership, will probably be introduced in such an expansion, but crafting is going to be a major aspect of the game... More so than WoW's where you simply gather resources and press a button. It will most likely sport some sort of mini-game that will determine the quality outcome of a product, similar to what Vanguard: Saga of Heroes has, but... Of course, nobody's played the game yet, so we don't know!

Speaking of playing... The first release date is set for "Fall 2008", and reports say that the developers have reached every planned milestone on time, so, right now, this release date is viable. But... Knowing the nature of projects of this scale, I'm willing to bet that it's going to be pushed back as least twice. Which I'm okay with, actually. Super Smash Bros. Brawl, for example, was pushed back because they couldn't get done what they wanted... It's when someone comes along and rushes production like Ubisoft with Uru and SOE with Vanguard that you need to start worrying. I also hope that all these plans get implemented! Right now, I think the game is absolutely perfect in every way. As long as they deliver what they promised and don't have to change anything because of some technological problem? This will be a really awesome game.

This time, WoW has "caused" a divorce. No, it's not the husband's fault for playing too much, it's Blizzard's fault. Nobody wants to take responsibility for their actions, and everyone, including "professional" head doctors are quick to blame the addictive properties of a game over the true causes. Don't you think that if World of Warcraft wasn't there, it'd be something else? Heck, let's say it would have been Halo 3, because that's the latest and greatest time sink. It's also a murder simulator! That's bonus points.

And the coup de grace:

“I’m real, and you’re giving me up for a fantasy land. You’re destroying your life, your six-year marriage, and you’re giving it up for something that isn’t even real. [Blizzard] build it in such a way that you have to keep putting more and more time into it to maintain your status. I remember thinking when I was married that it was downright exploitative to people who couldn’t control themselves in that way. It’s set up like a drug.”

Yeah, she started off well enough, but then it degenerated into a "Blizzard did this on purpose, and they're being bad guys by destroying my marriage!" No, ma'am, it's not Blizzard who's destroying your marriage... It's your husband. He's made a choice to ignore you in favor of a game. The game didn't gain sentience and suddenly decide to snare your husband and force him to ignore you. (If it did, it'd be Skynet, and we'd all have far worse troubles to deal with than your husband leaving you.) Also, I might also point out that there are very, very few (if any) parts of WoW that requires you to maintain a status. Sure, there's the ever present quest of collecting more equipment so you can fight in better areas, but if you stop playing for a week, guess what? You're still going to have the same equipment. If someone brings up the fact that a guild will leave you behind if you stop playing for a week? Then that guild is stupid, and you need to find another. There are plenty of casual guilds out there. The only thing I can recall ever being a constant struggle to maintain a status was when you could get military ranks by killing the opposing faction. Back when it was introduced, you had to spend a colossal amount of time just KEEPING your rank, not even considering getting a higher rank. But, you know, they got rid of that, because WoW is designed to be a casual game, meaning it's specifically NOT designed to make you feel you have to keep playing.

Luckily, FileFront seems to know common sense:

... His addiction could as easily have been pot, liquor, porn or meth - if she were to have brought them into the house it would have been a different addiction instead of gaming. You have to go to the underlying source and peel back the layers. Was he unhappy in his marriage to begin with? Was he miserable at his job? Was he highly depressed? Was this form of escape a way to keep from coping with the living hell that his life had become? All of these plus family history can become contributing factors to any sort of addiction.

At least someone realizes that there are underlying faults at play here that nobody is willing to deal with. If it wasn't WoW, it would have been something else, I guarantee it, and there's a very fine chance that it would have been something more destructive. Yes, WoW can be "destructive" in the sense of allowing yourself to neglect daily duties, but if he would have taken up drinking, he would be neglecting daily duties and trashing his body and mind at the same time. It all boils down to why he's addicted, not how, when you want to fix something, and, no, Blizzard is never a proper "why". It's just the tool used to hide from something, if you let it.

Good ol' Digg (which I now use for reading articles, not reading comments, except I had to read the comments for this one) rose up and someone cracked the line "I don't think there's a way to play responsibly in WoW once you hit 60 or 70." What a complete and total lie. I have a level 70 character and I've been in a few raids, but, hey, guess what? I'm also a college student with a 4.0 grade point average. WHILE playing World of Warcraft... If that doesn't shoot your argument out of the sky (and give me a chance to plug my brilliance *coughahem*) then you're just ignorant and closing your mind to the honest facts that just because you can't control yourself and stop playing doesn't mean that WoW is evil and that the rest of us are hopelessly addicted.