I am not weary of warcraft, but having reached the point where every new advance for my toon will take long hours — weeks — to accomplish, I am resetting my bearings and may be posting more here and at Dreaming 5GW.

One could devote an entire blog to the intersections between World of Warcraft and that other discussion of warcraft. For instance, months of playing the game have shown me how so many players, of widely different ages and backgrounds, play WoW for different reasons. It is a challenge; it is a social activity; it is a distraction from mundane living; it is a purely personal quest for fulfillment. Yet the players use the same platform, with variations allowed by various add-ons and even hacks, to create a whole environment that holds together. Is there a lesson here for 5GW? I’ll bet Shlok thinks so. But my message for Shlok: however “empowered” the individual players may think they are, above and beyond other players, the toons’ weaponry and skills and talents are merely abstract, virtual, non-material. In fact, only slight variations in connectivity and computing power may be distinguished between them; in general, they are mostly equally empowered by the same things. (“Connectivity”) However, the human beings behind the toons have very different skill levels and abilities, from maturity levels to intelligence to temperament.

Other lessons abound. But I am WoWoW: Weary of World of Warcraft.