Watch as the Happy Pet runs and runs inside his spinning exercise wheel!

The focus of this blog, my fledgling priest Faust, has to be alt character number…what?  I’m going to conservatively guess a number that implies a certain level of fanaticism but falls short of obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Let’s say 14.

When you read any advice about writing anything of enough length that it might register on a bathroom scale, the first thing you invariably hear is that you should just keep writing. The theory is that if you frequently go back and read what you have written, edit a word here or there, add a sentence or two, or polish a descriptive passage, you’re never going to reach the end.  Let’s face it, nothing is ever perfect.  In this case, perfection keeps you from reaching endgame.

Perhaps alt-o-holics are the aspiring novelists of the MMO world.  You create a shiny new avatar, run around thrilling at the fiery death that you can call down on other pixelated blobs and exalt for a short time in your new identity.  Then you start to think that maybe you’re not the fiery death kind of person at all.  Maybe you’re more of a cold steely death kind of person.  Maybe that’s what you’ve been all along!? Pause, re-roll, lather-rinse-repeat.

Am I more of an Orc shaman kind of person?  If I grew a mustache, would it fully qualify for work in the porn industry?  Perhaps if things had went differently in my formative years, I might have stayed in boy scouts and eventually become a paladin!

The answer is more than likely, D: all of the above.  We are, each of us, all of these things on any given day.  Do you always feel like a sneaky rogue or a noble warrior?  Probably not.  The game ebbs and flows, the grass is always greener in Orgrimmar or Stormwind on any given day.

The truth is that MMOs are treadmills by their nature, but some treadmills are of our own making.  Can you ever win at an MMO?  I think so.  I’ve made so many friends in this game and had so many memorable experiences that I think the victory has been the journey.  The thing that continues to elude me, however, is making any significant impact at endgame.

I’m going to take a page from the “How To Write A Damn Good Novel” book that’s sitting on my bookshelf this time around.  I’m just going to keep writing.