Part 7 of the Summer of Warcraft series.

“I am so disappointed that you are playing Warcraft,” said a co-worker this evening, without a mitigating preface or punchline.

I didn’t take this personally. In my line of work, this was a mild jab in our ongoing game of good-natured shit slinging. I responded with something self-effacing. I was ready for it. I was prepared to bear the burden of the World of Warcraft Stigma.

But it got me thinking. Silicon Valley, Blizzard Entertainment included, has a long way to go to convince the increasingly influential Xer chattering classes of the Right Coast that virtual worlds are a potentially life-enriching entertainment and communication experience. I bravely endured the slings and arrows from friends and the media (including The Office’s brilliant skewering) during my yearlong odyssey through Second Life. I, like many others, concluded that SL was a convoluted hassle. Those who aren’t into Tolkien-style fantasy concluded that about Warcraft as well.

But Warcraft’s growth rate is now tapering, and Blizzard needs to entice affluent Xers into its colorful world if, like Nintendo, it ever wants to break out of the geek set. Unfortunately, those Xers are still having trouble fully accepting Facebook and understanding Twitter, much less adapting to a fully 3D environment that has far less integration with their normal, fleshbag lives.

Scoff if you will at my comparison of Warcraft to web-based social networking tools, but what exactly is the core appeal of the game? It certainly isn’t the game itself. No, seriously, this is a terrible game. The overwrought, tissue-thin storylines are not sufficient to inspire lasting interest in Warcraft’s core mechanic, which is classic, dungeon-crawling grindcore of the most nerdy, repetitive and boring kind. I have started five different characters of different classes, races and alignments, because, after about level 15 or so, playing the game solo gets to be a chore of laundry list checking, rather than a learning and exploration experience. It’s like the game purposely runs you in circles in the same patch of land you’ve gotten to know intimately by level 5.

The real appeal, or revulsion, of Warcraft lies in its social component. Go raiding with buddies! Explore Azeroth as a swashbuckling party of hearty adventurers! That’s all fine and good, but how many working adult people who have access to disposable income and regular sex know more than two real life friends who play Warcraft? How often are those friends on Warcraft at the same time? This presents a problem. Whereas social networking can be done asynchronously, Warcraft requires a simultaneous time commitment. It must be scheduled.

And this is where Warcraft, for most of the population, becomes less like a game and more like work. I don’t want to come home from my scheduled workday to organize for a scheduled raid or instance. I like randomly finding friends online and cooperatively kicking the crap out of a few baddies while trash talking on the chat box, but I’m not going to bother making virtual friends and joining virtual fraternal organizations full of strange people who make demands on my time … just to play a bad roll-playing game. If I’m going to schedule anything with friends, it’s going to be in the real world, and it’s going to involve wine.

So what is the solution? Can Blizzard broaden the appeal of Warcraft without alienating its grindcore fan base? Or should the game’s core technology be reworked into a more palatable virtual world for The Rest of Us? Do we want a market full of MMOs using the “Warcraft Engine?”

We certainly don’t want them using Second Life’s.