I’m playing World of Warcraft again for a while, with the aim of getting my characters ready for Cataclysm.  Not all of them, of course.    I have the full compliment of alts, but have only passed level 60 with a small number of characters, and I only have one level 80 character (after playing since just after release!).   My plan is to get one more character to 80, and to level up the 80s characters’ professions so that they’re ready to train up.

Why only two characters?  Simply because they’re the only characters with cold weather flying.   I’m sure the price of flying in Northrend is going to go down when Cataclysm comes out and I don’t want to spend the money on my other characters.   Amazingly, after playing for all those years and spending very little, I don’t have much in game cash.   Pretty much like real life.

Another thing I need to do, is make some bag space.  Those characters banks and bags are pretty full.  Of junk.

The character I’m levelling up at the moment is a druid herbalist/alchemist.   I make some potions, I have some spare herbs, I put them in the bank.  For 70 odd levels.    That’s a lot of “spare” herbs.  I don’t know what use I think I’m going to have for a stack of liferoot, but you never know, do you?  I could send them to my inscription..er (what do they call them?  Scribes?), but they “belong” to my druid.

My druid took a long time to level.  I originally started out in restoration.   I thought it would be useful in groups, but it wasn’t a huge amount of fun to level with.  She got to about 40 and then I more or less abandoned her.   At some point I decided to change to feral and suddenly it became much more fun.   I played in cat form up until I reached the Burning Crusade content.  Suddenly there was a host of new gear and I had to decide if I wanted to stay feral, and at some point I decided to change to balance.

I’ve stuck with balance for oh, about three years or so?  But you never know.   I might want to change to feral again.  Or, since I’m now able to dual spec, I might want to have a feral spec.  What that’s meant is that I’ve had to keep a complete set of feral clothes and equipment in my bags and bank.   It doesn’t sound as if that would take up a lot of space, but I need two lots, a tanking set and a dps set, because I don’t know if I might go bear or cat.  Then within those sets, I find it difficult to decide between items, so I end up keeping several dps shoulders, for instance.   And I’ve been doing that for the last couple of years.

This week, I’ve been trying to clear some of that stuff out.  Instead of spending ages comparing items, I’m going by the item level and the rarity.    I may even just go by the rarity and get rid of my stackload of green items.  Will I really need them, even if I do respec?  Couldn’t I just buy some stuff on the AH?

I may also have a purge on all those “sentimental” items, and the things that I need once, but probably don’t now.  Talvash’s Phial of Scrying that I’ve had since 2006?  Isn’t it time to let it go?

The process reminds me so much of real life.  Every so often I declutter my house and have the same dilemma over clothes that are the wrong size (but which I might wear again!), or items that I must have kept for a reason, so still feel the need to hang on to, even though the reason now eludes me.  Or things that I was given as a present, so don’t like to just throw away.

And that makes me wonder why I am paying to recreate the low level stress of sorting out my affairs, but in a game?  Or is it actually helpful for me to succeed at this task in game? Does it motivate me in real life?  I’m not sure.

It has often struck me that I lot of what I do in MMOs has a real life equivalent, and the real life version is often something I don’t really want to do.  Sometimes I don’t even want to do it in game, but feel the need to for some usually minor reward.  (For instance, fishing repeatedly to get a skill up, or killing multiple boring, samey mobs to complete a quest).  I not only do it, but (in WoW, at least) I pay to do it.   What is it about these games that draws you away from some boring household task, such as cooking, to do some boring in game task, such as cooking?