Project Lore

A few weeks ago WoW Insider did an article on a pair of users hooking up their treadmills to World of Warcraft.  Yesterday they added to that piece with numerous stories from their readers about how they work out during their WoW playtime.  Apparently a lot of players do the treadmill/walking thing while strolling around Azeroth with some losing 10, 20 even 100 pounds!

The stories got me thinking.  What the hell do I do when I play WoW?  Growing up in the age of multi-tasking causes me to get bored with one thing quickly.  Some would call that ADHD but I just consider it being efficient!

Most of these things I do while just messing around in World of Warcraft or during downtime.  However, there are many that I have done while raiding, for better or worse.  Some of my more common WoW sidebars are:

• Browsing the web/checking e-mail/WoWHead etc (dual screen ftw).


• Writing/researching articles for my various websites.


• Drinking/eating.


• Working at my day job.


• Playing other games – I played Paper Mario (N64) start to finish during Molten Core downtime.


• Playing with my ferrets.


• Watch TV, movies and sports (especially the NFL).


• mIRCing.

I have never done any exercise to speak of while actually playing WoW.  Unlike the people mentioned in the WoW Insider stories, I usually do mine while waiting for something in WoW.  Case in point, I bought a few dozen stacks of neatherweave cloth to transmute into bandages.  I spent the time it take to make 400 bandages jumping rope and doing push-ups.  I think I managed one push-up...

The most fun I ever had with one of these distractions was playing WoW at a party.  And I don't really mean a LAN party, I mean a party with tons of drinking, stupidity and breaking of things.  At this party a few friends and I (okay so we did have some computers hooked up, it was a Guild party after all) managed to raid Molten Core and Onyxia.  What made it fun is that we all switched classes, playing different accounts - after they logged us in of course.  Coincidently, we ended up playing classes we had never raided with before.  We had also been drinking and were distracted by everyone else around.  Hilarity and newfound respect for each other ensued.

What do you guys do outside of WoW to kill the downtime?