Oh, WoW

Or, a brief note on Playing the Games You Want to Play

When I was in middle school, I was having a lot of fun playing World of Warcraft. In fact, too much fun. I remember thinking, if Thomas Jefferson had access to the Internet, would he really be putting this many hours into World of Warcraft?

It’s harder for me to say now…oh TJ, who knows what you would do if you, too, had access to the Almighty Algorithm. Would you be able to resist?

But really, I was just addicted to World of Warcraft. I was vaguely aware that I was spending way too much time on WoW, moreso than any other hobby or spending time with friends.

So I needed a way to justify my time playing World of Warcraft. That’s when I discovered “farming,” a.k.a grinding characters or acquiring in-game gold to sell on the open market. Did I understand the secondary market of WoW characters whatsoever? No. Did I understand that my belief in the viability of a secondary market was largely the result of ploys to sell me gold farming courses? No. But it did not matter.

I did not actually want to sell WoW characters. I was trying to figure out how I could automate combat in the game.

One day I asked someone in the raid chat if they knew a way to accomplish this so that you just had to click a button and procedurally victory would come out. They said it was technically possible, but it would require a separate program I could make with python that would simulate the required keystrokes.

Right before I could close the game to get to work, he said something that I will never forget. “I mean you could....but don’t you want to play the game?”

Oh, wait, yeah man. I really do.