After hours of playing World of Warcraft this weekend WoWFest 2007 is now officially over! The plan was to play the entire weekend, from Friday through Sunday, but after a woke up this morning I realized something utterly terrible: I didn’t feel like playing anymore.

To this news I guess some of you reacted in the same way Chris does after he has performed an excellent cover of an Eighties song by Wham! and is told that he is now married. Skip to around 54 seconds if you actually like “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” and don’t want to have it ruined for the rest of your life. I feel sorry for you if you do. I don’t feel sorry for you that the song is ruined, I feel sorry for you that you’re a Wham! fan.

Priceless. Anyway. After a bit of pondering I think I have figured out how this highly unlikely thing happened. My first error was to start with a character that was a carbon copy of the Gnome i played with my trial account on the US servers. He was the same race and class and looked exactly the same, down to the Don King hairdo. Since I chose the same race, I also started at the same location as last time - which resulted in completing exactly the same quests all over again. WoW was quite fascinating the first time around, but not so great that it was fascinating doing exactly the same all over again.

Also, I think I overestimated the social aspect of the game, at least when the character is in his salad days. The majority of the quests, if not all, can be completed alone with some trial and error and with a little bit of tactics. It was exciting to play with Roar as Adwen, but I think it in a way slowed down my character’s progress since he did most of the work, thus bringing in most of the XP. I’m not really sure when WoW turns social, but I’ve got a feeling it’s far down the road. I also realized that it’s virtually impossible (pun intended) to hook up with friends that have been playing for a while because it’s very likely that they are playing in other realms (on other servers) than you. You can move your character from one real to another, but that’s a service you have to pay for if you want to control in which realm your character actually ends up.

All that said, I’ve still got my trial account and I might return to World of Warcraft on a rainy day. Unless I spend my money on Dirt or GTA IV instead.