To jump right in, or wait it out? Wrath of the Lich King dilemma

The long-awaited expansion to World of Warcaft is due out tonight. Wrath of the Lich King players will be standing in lines at local Gamestops or Best Buys waiting for the midnight release of the game so that they can run home and install it. Should I? Do I really want to play that badly?

The short answer is "probably not." The longer answer is I have to work in the morning, and while I know there will be a lot of mystery illnesses going around the gaming community on Thursday, I doubt I'll join the bandwagon. I get paid by the hour, after all. I don't work - I don't get paid.

Money's not the only thing standing in the way of an all-night gaming session. If I really wanted to take the day off, I would. But my interest in WoW has wained over the last few months, helped along by the release of Warhammer Online, and by the fact that gaming time is at a premium. The recent Zombie and Invasion events did peak my interest and got me back into the game a few times. And I do enjoy exploring new areas, checking out the new quests and rewards, and all the little things Blizzard puts into their world to make it fun. But I don't think it's worth loosing sleep over.

Are you ready for WotLK? I am as ready as I want to be. I read that having the 3.0.2 and 3.0.3 patch files on my machine will help make the WotLK installation go faster, so I made sure not to delete those. I've sent out a request for help gathering reputation items for my Death Knight to my guild-mates (most of whom will not be buying the expansion for a few months) and I've done SOME reading up of what to expect when I get there. But I like discovering the new area myself, and really, isn't that part of the fun?

As a casual player, I don't plan on making a bee-line straight for the nearest quest giver, then rushing around just to get it done. I'd like to take a moment to admire the surroundings, see what's what. This approach did get me into a tiny bit of trouble with The Burning Crusade came out. Once I made it to Outland, marvelled at the planets hanging over my head, watched the battle raging on the steps of the Dark Portal, then flew to Honor Hold. Standing outside the Hold, I wondered to myself "Gee, I wonder what those moving rocks are? Aww, isn't that cute, they're moving towards me." only to scream like a girl when the Big Worm jumped out at ate me.

Then there's the flood of players to the new zones, causing a huge Lag-O-Rama. I hate Lag. I have the fastest Internet connection I can get into my house to avoid as much lag as possible. Not that it will help come release day. That's another reason why I'm willing to wait a bit to get into WotLK. If I log in at non-peak time, I'm hoping to be able to move around with relative ease. This coming weekend's going to be a killer. Lag City. Lag fest. Lag-apaloosa. Major Lag. Epic Lag. Laggy McLagpants. Gee, maybe I'll spend my lag-time thinking of more lag terms.