Wednesday – Purplez versus Poon

At some point in my life, I had to make a solemn pledge to myself. There came a time when I had to hold myself to a certain promise, no matter how painful it became. You see, there was a time when I said:

Ian William Drinkwater, you will not, I repeat WILL NOT play World of Warcraft instead of hanging out with your friends, or your girlfriend, and so help me God, if you turn down sex to make a raid on time, I will kill you. Which is sort of like killing yourself.

That I even had to have this conversation with myself is indicative of how addicted a player can become to World of Warcraft. If you don’t play the game, you won’t understand it. And if you do play the game, you’re probably thinking: No way bro, no way you’ll hold yourself to that standard.

And sometimes, sometimes it gets hard.

All of this is rummaging through my head as news trickles out that Blizzard’s COO wants us idiots to play their new MMO on top of WoW. The delicate balance that socially functioning nerds have between their crack and their lives always threatens to tilt and sway towards the darkness of empty soda cans and baggy eyelids.

There’s been this shitty fake bow that I had been sweating forever in Ulduar, the latest virtual weapon that means nothing in real life that has no impact on my existence. And yet it does. Week after week it eluded me.   I swore and swore and found new exciting ways to chain together vulgar words like a fucking Ultra Combo in Killer Instinct.

And that’s what kept me coming back. Despite the monotony of the same fucking dungeon every week, despite the knowledge that I was squandering my life not writing, sitting in front of a computer screen, eating too much and staying up too late.

I needed that fucking bow. So I could shoot bad guys bigger, faster, more pwningly.

I had always defended my raiding life through various skillful rationalizations. You see, my guild raids at 10 p.m. It is the blessing/curse of my friend Brian choosing a West Coast server four years ago. So my rationalization always went like this:

Well, it’s a week night. And my girlfriend, being a functioning human being, who contributes to society, has to go to bed. She must sleep, because she isn’t a worthless parasite like myself. And so if she has to sleep, then I’ll be fine.

And to an extent, that’s true. If I lived on the West Coast, I couldn’t be raiding. In some ways, having to raid into the early morning is the only way it could work for me. There’s no way that I could spend every night from 7 p.m. until 10 p.m. in front of a computer. I’d miss dinner; I’d miss quality time with my girlfriend and friends.

In essence, I’d be sacrificing my life for dungeons and dragons. More than I already do. I don’t know how my guildies do it. Maybe when I’m a married dude, or I’m single, it’ll be possible. I’ll be tired of my fat wife, or I’ll be alone and miserable. But right now, I can’t fathom it.

So I clutched to that excuse. She’s going to be sleeping anyways. But this summer, I found that excuse eroding before my very eyes. I was confronted with the fact that even if I had the evening free, I had to restructure my life to fit this 10 p.m deadline.

Every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday.

I know, it’s madness.

And so Sam (my beautiful understanding lady) and myself would be looking at evenings like this:

Well, what time are we eating? And then what time would the movie be? Well, we can’t go to that time movie because if we want to have sex, then well, we won’t have time, so we can’t go eat dinner there, or maybe we’ll stay home and then if we want to go for a walk there and on and on and on and on…

Even though I wouldn’t have to play WoW until 10, the entire night was becoming structured to fit that time. And it came to a point, actually this summer, where I was like, what the good fuck am I doing? I shouldn’t be asking myself if I have time to watch a movie with my girlfriend, and I should be asking myself do I have time to raid, after doing all of that?

But like I said, sometimes it gets hard.

A couple of weeks ago I got home late from hanging out with the wife. I was about thirty minutes past the beginning of the raid. I logged onto Vent just as my second family was dropping a boss.

The boss.

The boss with my fucking bow.

I heard my good friend Dirty chuckling:

Oh man, his bow dropped.

And he laughed and laughed not knowing I was on Vent until I said with my soul dying:

Dude, I’m on Vent. Fuck!

And then I unleashed a torrent of expletives that would have curdled Mother Theresa’s unbroken hymen.

I didn’t really regret it though. Once the blanket of red dropped from my vision and my blind rage subsided, I realized the truth. It would drop again, and it did like two weeks later.

And it felt good. Because even though I missed that stupid insignificant weapon becoming mine, I had a great evening because I didn’t say,

Well, while I’d love to hang out and watch the Red Sox and possibly make beautiful theoretical love, which we wouldn’t, because of course of course we’re waiting until marriage, I can’t. I have to go shoot polygonal dwarves.

I made a god damn promise.

But sometimes it gets just a bit hard to keep.