I don't have many free hours in the day, and there are a LOT of great games out there... including World of Warcraft. I just don't get about as much as I'd like, and don't get to play all three hundred and twelve of my characters as much as I wished I could.

A number of my guildies (the InnMates) play WoW a lot, and so I decided to hop on last weekend with my level 51 Warlock and join them for a bit, as they were doing Sunken Temple and Zul'Ferrak.

Now, we DID wipe once or twice, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't my fault. By that time I had (mostly) remembered how to play the game, and my class.

However, this meant that I had to log in well in advance and go through every... single.... one.... of my hotkeys and abilities and reread them. Then I had to try to remember how the game mechanic worked. Then I had to practise on some small mobs for a while. Ok, quite a while.

It is quite possible that my patient guildmates in WoW did think I was playing like a PUG (or worse, an ebayed character), but they were kind enough not to let on.

The point is, it is really hard to retain all one's knowledge for the wide number of games now available. You should see me when I fire up a shooter like Planetside, hehe. Oh so laughable.

On a smaller scale, I face the same issue when I change characters. Changing playstyle from priest to fighter to DPS can be challenging enough, thanks! As an avowed alt-o-holic, I have to deal with this a lot, hehe.

For this reason, I pray to the god of game development that each game I try in the future will NOT try to reinvent the wheel with their UI, because let me tell you, I get frustrated trying to memorize yet another different set of controls.

I recall the last time I logged into SWG - and was reminded rather forcefully that they had a completely different MOVEMENT system. Ol' WASD and mouselook were not good enough for them, nope... and this led me, after messing about for about 3 minutes, to shut it down again. See yah. I don't have time for that frustration, never mind what they did in the NGE (New Gimp Experiment).

Still, when someone declares that they will "get their alt" to be the main healer for a really tough run... I get that nervous sensation in the pit of my stomach. We gonna wipe but good.

;-)#

Tell me how much better you are at switching from game to game here.

ps. An extra special thanks to Tyraenna (as Laekori) and Corent for sending me screenies for reference. I was way the hell too busy trying to keep on top of soul shards, soulstones, my pet, spell effects and moving at a decent pace to remember to take any.