Until a few years ago, the last time I had really played videogames was in col­lege, where I lost a cou­ple of months of my life (in a row) to Sim­C­ity on the Super Nin­tendo sys­tem. I learned my les­son from that and since then, I’ve stayed away from games that I know will suck in huge amounts of my time because I’ll prob­a­bly enjoy them so much. So instead, I stick mainly to casual (and usu­ally social) games, although I do keep a list of all of the ones I’m going to play some­day when I have more time, includ­ing The Sims, Myst, and World of Warcraft.

Which is why I love the fact that Michael Porter plays WoW and explains it in his pre­sen­ta­tions and some­times on his blog. He even started a Face­book group just for WoW librar­i­ans, but now he’s gone one bet­ter and cre­ated a WoW Guild just for libraries and librarians.

The Libraries and Librar­i­ans Guild in WoW –the Largest On-line MMORPG Game in the World

“World of War­craft is the largest “Mas­sive Mul­ti­player Online Role Play­ing Game” in the world. It has 10 mil­lion plus sub­scribers and is, in addi­tion to being a blast and a lovely dis­trac­tion, glo­ri­ously fun and addic­tive to many. And now, finally, WE (Libraries and Librar­i­ans) have a guild. If you play WoW and work in, for, or with Library­land, you can now join the Libraries and Librar­i­ans Guild. We are new, but we already have a sub­stan­tial Guild web site com­plete with a forum (very good in Wow-land). And a bank. In fact, we have a bank with three tabs and daily pulls for repairs (that is also quite good in WoW-land). Heck we even have an optional free (to you) Guild tabard (sort of like a t-shirt you wear in the game).…

So join us! We’ll be there wait­ing to show you the ropes…and chat…and kill bad guys! Along the way, you’ll likely grok the whole online community/gaming/libraries thing just a lit­tle bit more, and have a blast while you’re at it. In fact, con­sider this your invi­ta­tion to do exactly that!

Note: If you want to join this guild you must be on the Aerie Peak –US server. If you are a new player be sure to pick that server! Also, if you are cre­at­ing a toon (new char­ac­ter) or trans­fer­ring an exist­ing char­ac­ter to join this guild, be sure you put it on this server (Aerie Peak — US)!!!” [Library­man]

Michael has already cre­ated a par­al­lel com­mu­nity in the new, forth­com­ing ver­sion of Web­Junc­tion, as well, which will make a nice com­ple­ment to the Games and Gam­ing group that will live in ALA­Con­nect. Gam­ing is all around us!