World or Warcraft

I sit before you ready to embark on what my gamer mates call "crack for geeks".

This is World of Warcraft.

The Times a couple of weeks ago was giving away a free two week trial of this game. I have now installed the game and am waiting for a small patch (697MB!) to install and update.
A quick sideline on patches. I started off my career as a tester at a games publisher in London. One of the games released, Fallout Tactics, had to be patched almost immediately (not my testing, our sister company). I say "almost immediately". What I actually mean is "on the day of release" (no wonder the company is no longer around). This patch was 80MB, and made industry people nearly pass out when they heard this needed to be downloaded, or requested from customer support.
"80MB on a 56k modem, that could take days!"
If you were paying per minute for your connection, you could end up paying almost as much as the original game. Ludicrous! This wasn't that long ago either, only in 2000.

So now I am sitting here blogging waiting for 697MB of patching goodness to download in "About 2 hours". I'm going to wait for it and play the game because I am curious to see what all the craik is about (see what I did there?).
10% downloaded...
World of Warcraft stormed onto the world stage in 2004 and has since continued to grow into a community of gamers 8 million strong. That's 8 million people paying approximately £8.00 per month subscription! For more information, I recommend you read the Times article. If you choose to give the game a go like I am, you can either request a disk from The Times, or you can download it from the World of Warcraft official site.

You see, I haven't even played the game yet and I am dealing it like an addict!

24% downloaded, still "About 2 hours" to wait...
It's only a game. Plus, it's only a 2 week trial, then I can give it all up.

30% downloaded, "About 75 minutes" to wait...
Tell my mum I love her.

40% downloaded, "About 65 minutes" to wait...
Tell the future Mrs. Mouse that I will see her at the wedding.

50% downloaded, "About 51 minutes" to wait...
Why am I sitting here watching a download?

60% downloaded, "About 42 minutes" to wait...
Bored, hungry, going for breakfast.

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