Ohhhh, look over there!

One of the greatest things (and sometimes most horrible things) about playing a ten-year old game is the shocking amount of content that is available for me to play.

As someone that suffers from an incredibly short attention span, it can be a difficult task logging into WoW to accomplish some kind of goal.

For example, last night I wanted to get my tailoring skills up, but then I saw the holiday achievements were available. From there I spent an hour or two on that, easily.

Slowly the list forms in my head:

• Wasn’t I working on fishing?
• Is my gear score high enough?
• What levels are my battle pets?
• Am I Loremaster yet?

There are definitely times that playing World of Warcraft feels like a major time sink. I don’t think it’s the game’s fault, of course. This stuff is readily available for me to do whenever I want, aside from the holiday stuff, but that comes around each year, and it’s really on me to decide when and how I want to play.

Of course, life dictates that I only get to play it on weekends or late evenings after I’ve spent my day working in the office. By then the sun has gone down and I’ve only got a few hours to really sit and enjoy myself before it’s off to bed to repeat the cycle.

That in itself wouldn’t be so bad, but we all know there are more layers to deal with before we can relax.

Slowly the list forms in my head:

• Did I eat dinner?
• Did I clean the house?
• Is the laundry done?

All these things add up and reduce the amount of time I can spend playing silly games in my day.

Now, this all sounds very complaint-like, but I assure you I couldn’t be happier.

When a game takes my attention and holds onto it so well, I feel like I’m really invested in what I’m doing. In the same way someone that likes working on old cars can spend their evenings under the hood, so too can I spend my time flying around the fictional world of Azeroth.

I also know very well, that once the holiday months have passed, I will be joining up with new projects and new tasking at work. This means I’ll be more engaged and probably less available to sit at my computer when I get back home. The time to be fully immersed in something like WoW is now.

So did I spend two hours making bolts of cloth to craft so that I could become a master tailor in a game last night? Yes.

Did I have a blast doing it? Yes.

Do I want to go home and do it again? Absolutely.

The real question is… how can I make laundry at home this engaging?