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    After a long day at school I'm attempting to catch a few quick Zs before dinner. Suddenly, my brother opens the door and asks me what my World of Warcraft password is. I inform him that it hasn't changed since I last told him, and yet he continues to interrupt my attempt at a quick nap. I haven't played World of Warcraft in a few months so I'm a bit curious as to why my password would not be working, as well as cranky since I haven't been successful with my nap. I try to retrieve my password numerous times, by entering my secret answer and email, but nothing would work. The secret answer is case sensetive so I decided I must've entered a typo or something and would just call Blizzard the next day.

    I get home from school today and call the the billing/account info help line. I spam 0 a few times to skip the automated help tips and begin to wait on the line. Instead of playing some classic rock or elevator music while on hold, Blizzard plays a select few songs from it's games. I instantly recognized the music from Diablo. This really took me back, although I started the series with Diablo 2.  I used to love playing D2, it's in my personal top 10 of all time best games. The music also reminded me of Blizzard's talent to create games whose addictiveness could be compared to crack. 

    The first time I ever played Diablo 2 was at a friend's house. He had just bought it a few days before. I had never played the original Diablo, so he showed me what was what and I created my first character, a paladin. I began hacking my way through dungeons by killing zombies, fallens, and spike fiends, with hopes of one of them dropping a new pair of gloves, boots or a stylish hat. I continued to play until I was interrupted by my friend who suggested that we call it a night, to which I replied, "Why? It's only like elev-oh...wow." I stared at the clock which read 5:00 AM.

    The next week I had my brother buy Diablo 2, after I thoroughly hyped it up so he would spend the money and I wouldn't have to. This was the beginning of my long relationship with Diablo 2. I played it probably everyday since the day we installed the game, and even more after the highly anticipated expansion released. This was the first game I ever pulled all-nighters for, and even occasionally invited a few friends over to set up their computers to LAN. After I beat the game on Nightmare and Hell I continued to play, doing Cow runs, Mephisto runs and later running Pindlebot (a program that would auto-run to a boss, kill him, and loot the sweet stuff). I even went back and played the original Diablo, along with an expansion that Sierra put out. These were mostly good times me and Satan shared. But with all games, things eventually became stale.

I can still hear the mooing deaths in my nightmares.

    After logging countless hours the question occured to me: Why was I still playing this game? The game stopped being fun and yet I was still playing. I could get to the top level, have all the best items, and yet still never really be the best there is. New patches would come out, game specifics would change, and new items would appear to be collected all over again. I never aimed to become the best, but that's the only logical excuse I could come up with as to why I was still playing. So after long contemplation, I decided to stop.

    I've shared identical experiences with other Blizzard games such as Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft. I've even been yelled at by my guild leader in WoW (some guy I didnt really know) just to continue playing with the best (I eventually quit the guild he was in. Just the other day I found out he's in jail for rape). I almost had a WoW relapse while listening to some of the songs provided on the Blizzard hold line, but my self control saved me.

    How is it that Blizzard can have such success with creating addictive games? A lot of people still play Starcraft, and some people even die from playing too long! World of Warcraft has been known as a relationship destroyer, and most recently was cited as the main reason for divorce in one case. What is it that Blizzard does so right?

    I believe the secret lies in the theme of constant competition that runs through the veins of each of their titles. Everyone of Blizzard's highly successful games puts players against players. Each of these games have frequent updates and new content patches, in attempt to keep things from getting old (even if they do for some of us). Not to mention that the writing is always great, the humor is always on, and the lore occassionally overlaps in fun cameo appearences.

The Lost Vikings make an appearence in WoW

    Whatever Blizzard is doing I'm sure they'll follow suit with the upcoming release of Starcraft 2...whenever that is. If there's another thing you can always be sure of with Blizzard, is that their release dates are never written in stone. As for my account, I apparently was using the wrong email address. Everything's ok now and I'm still done with WoW.

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