World of Warcrack

See snow-covered mountain peaks... visit massive, ancient castles... explore monstrous caves and dungeons... fight wolves, bears, thugs and dozens of other enemies... watch looters picking over your decaying corpse and stealing all your stuff... decline offers to duel with hundreds of other players... laugh at people dancing in skimpy clothes... avoid crowds of kiddies hanging out outside an inn (at least they're not hanging out around a real inn)... Welcome to World of Warcraft!

Okay, I took a few liberties with the blurb inside the box. Yes, we finally joined the World of World of Warcraft. I have to say this wasn't something I'd really anticipated doing; I've been wary of getting into any MMO games because of some of the stories I'd heard about game addiction and what's happened in some (admittedly very extreme) cases. But one of Kate's friends is a WoW player and has been pushing her to give it a try, so we bit the bullet and installed it.

I don't need to tell anyone who plays how much fun it is, and how fast the time passes without you realizing. A couple of nights ago we were playing and I was thinking it was probably about 2am. When I looked at the clock, it was 5:30am. Yeesh. In future I'm keeping a clock or something on my desk so I don't lose track.

We haven't got especially far yet - only as far as Goldshire, the second major settlement you reach. We don't have very strong characters either - we're both level 8, which caused a certain amount of trouble exploring one area where there were a lot of level-9 and level-10 Murlocs; we both got killed at least three or four times before we were able to get to a safe area again.

But, it's fun exploring this huge virtual world... I suspect we'll be doing this at least an hour or two most nights for some time to come.