This post is going to divide people who read it into two groups: one will roll their eyes and say OMG, and the other group will laugh out loud and say OMG! The first group will have no clue what the hell I’m talking about, and the second group will know exactly what I’m talking about.
When you travel, especially traveling alone, you often have lots of time on your hands. You can’t always just being running around visiting things non-stop. That might work when you are on a brief vacation, but when you are doing long term travel, you can burn out really quick.
Before I started my trip I was an pretty avid World of Warcraft player. I was the leader of a raiding guild on Dark Iron (Djork) and was one of the first level 60 and 70 characters on my server.
When my trip started, I never canceled my WoW account. While I can’t really play seriously anymore, I have been able to log on every so often from different places. I can’t say I’ve spent much time playing and I wouldn’t even call what I do “playing”. I usually just log on and say hello to my friends in the guild for a few minutes. I’m basically using it as a glorified chat client. I have done some daily quests and simple things, but that is about it. Playing on satellite connections in the middle of the ocean doesn’t really make for an awesome playing experience. (Please, spare me the comments about how traveling and playing video games is a waste of time. I don’t play much and after you have traveled solo for a year, you can preach to me.)
To date, I have logged on from 23 different countries and territories. The only reason I am writing about this is that I think it is some sort of record. I have no clue and I am sure no one keeps track of these sort of things, but I don’t think the average WoW player does much international travel, let alone try to log on while they are overseas.
Here is the complete list:
- USA
- French Polynesia (a cafe in Papeete)
- Cook Islands (a cafe in Rarotonga)
- New Zealand (a Starbucks in Auckland)
- Fiji (an internet cafe in Suva)
- Samoa (with great difficulty from an internet cafe in Apia)
- American Samoa (Tradewinds Hotel)
- New Caledonia (Le Meridian Hotel. Very slow)
- Vanuatu (hotel in Port Vila)
- Solomon Islands (King Solomon Hotel)
- Guam (Days Inn near the airport)
- CNMI (hotel in Saipan)
- Palau (motel in Korror)
- Philippines (internet cafe in Makati)
- Taiwan (hostel in Taipei)
- Japan (several places)
- South Korea (hostel in Busan)
- Hong Kong (Chungking Mansion)
- Macau (McDonald’s)
- Brunei (internet cafe in BSB)
- Malaysia (hostel in Kota Kinabalu)
- Indonesia (restaurant in Bali)
- Australia (Hostel in Melbourne)
If I had been trying, I could have logged on in a few more locations. Easter Island and the Marshall Islands would have been possible if I made the effort.