SwagVault MMO Blog

Are we swallowing the roast beef too quickly?

From: http://pinkpigtailinn.blogspot.com/2008/11/are-we-swallowing-roast-beef-too.html

Once upon a time I knew a very spoiled Yorkshire terrier called “Pyret”, which roughly translates to “The Creep”. This dog didn’t settle for ordinary dog food. That was way below his dignity. He ate what his masters ate. (Here I want to point out that I wasn’t his master, so don’t blame me for his lack of proper dog training.)

Now there was one dish in the world that the creep loved more than anything else: cold roast beef cut in thin slices. He was treated with this a minimum two times a year: for Christmas and on his birthday. (And sometimes in between as well, his owners felt sorry for him whenever they had a party, why shouldn’t he be treated with goodies when everyone else was?)

I never grew tired of watching him as he was served this roast beef. They never cared about cutting it – they gave whole slices to him, which he somehow managed to swallow in one part, without chewing even once. It was gone quicker than a mage can blink. There’s no way that he could have felt any taste at all from it and many times he ended up coughing, all but choking, since he had eaten it too quickly.

When the meat was gone he always stared at his owners, unhappily, in distrust, as if he couldn’t understand where it had gone.

I can’t help thinking about “The Creep” these days as I read the WoW blogs and forums and listen to the conversation in the guild chat. Many players seem to have managed to make real life arrangements so that they can have a few days off this week. They’re planning to get a kick start levelling their mains and they’re loading up on the three necessary Cs to keep them going non stop: Coffee, Coke and Candy.

Will they enjoy it? Oh yes, definitely. I’m sure they will, in the same way as The Creep enjoyed his roast beef meals in his own peculiar manner. If possible I’d gladly join them in the power levelling instead of chewing the new content more slowly, in small chunks, as I’m forced to do, by circumstances.

But I can’t help smiling a bit at the whole phenomena. We rush like maniacs to get to 80 asap. Then we start conquering the new raid instances the quicker the better. When that is done the game will suddenly feel empty and we’ll start growing bored. Soon we’ll see the whining posts where players accuse Blizzard of not providing enough of new exciting content.

We’ll show the same facial expressions as the spoiled Yorkshire terrier – disapproving and slightly confused, wondering where that yummy roast beef, the new and shiny content, went all in a sudden.