GAMER GIRL

WASILLA — She’s Aly Koechlein, and she’s a Blood Elf paladin.

At least that’s Koechlein’s virtual persona about seven to eight hours a day. She’s one of about 12 million people who play World of Warcraft, an online fantasy role-playing game.

On Saturday, Koechlein is at The Digital Cup, a Wasilla Internet café, to play World of Warcraft, also called WoW. She admits she puts in significant time playing the game, but said there’s more to her gaming than killing things in a virtual world.

“The appeal is that it’s social for me,” she said. “I’m pretty active on my server (a smaller community within the WoW network). Most people know who I am. I like the challenge of raiding (with other players) and the social aspect of it. You have to work with anywhere from 10 to 25 other people.”

Koechlein is a gamer, one of millions who continue to bolster an exploding online gaming industry known as massively multiplayer online role-playing games, also known as MMORPGs. In WoW, she’s part of a guild, which is a group of characters that play together and work toward common goals. The world has its own currency and economy, complete with an auction house and player “professions.”

MMORPGs can also be time-consuming and addictive, Koechlein said.

“It’s very addictive,” she said. “If you don’t have anything else in your life, this game could very well easily take over your real life. One of the people in my guild doesn’t have a job, is the typical live-in-your-basement nerd, and he’s on 24 hours a day. It’s his life.”

Koechlein, a college student, admits she plays “quite a bit,” and that sometimes it’s hard to know when to draw the line between playing in a virtual world and living in the real world.

“It’s hard. I’ll admit it’s hard,” she said. “But I have dinner with my dad, I go to my classes, don’t play when I’m supposed to be doing homework and don’t play during work. I look at it as it’s just a game, it’s a hobby. It’s no more a part of my life than my dad’s boats.”

But that’s not true for others. In 2005, a 28-year-old South Korean man collapsed and died after a 50-hour marathon session of Starcraft, another MMORPG.

“I’m a little horrified about (stories like) that,” Koechlein said. “Even leveling up trying to get to level 80 (the highest level in WoW) as fast as I could, I couldn’t do more than 10 hours. Even popping energy drinks and coffee, I just crashed. There are people who don’t handle it well at all.”

The rush of the game is fueled by caffeine, said Sabrina Kendall, an employee at The Digital Cup. Of the gamers who use the café’s computers, the beverages of choice are Mountain Dew and Rock Star, an energy drink.

“I would say about half the customers who come in here game on our computers or they have their own laptops they game on,” she said. “A lot of them play WoW, and there are a few others I’m not familiar with because I’m not a gamer myself, but there are quite a few.”

And if you thought Koechlein spends a lot of time playing WoW, there are others who spend more time online than they would at a full-time job, Kendall said.

“We usually have a customer who comes in here from 9 a.m. until we close every day,” she said. “I think it’s crazy, but really, if you think about it, I’m on Facebook about six hours a day, so that’s my online game.”

In the back of The Digital Cup, Koechlein’s character is Ixi, a paladin, and she’s progressing through a dungeon of enemies with four other online players. And she uses jargon only seasoned online gamers would understand.

New players are called “newbs,” because they don’t know what they’re doing, she said, and “if you just got your face smashed in” you’ve been “pwned.” If you’re a low-level character and a higher level “pwns” you, you’ve been “ganked.”

“When I first started playing, I was dating someone else,” she said about how online gaming can affect relationships. “We played together, but then we figured out it was getting a little competitive.”

No worries. She met her current boyfriend, who lives in Washington, through her gaming.

“I hate admitting this, but I actually met him through WoW,” she said. “It’s been a fun relationship. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend to people that they date the people they meet in WoW, however.”

On this Saturday afternoon, Koechlein is online with other members of her guild spanning North America. There are players from Ohio, Hawaii, Canada, Florida and another from Alaska, she said.

While the draw is social for Koechlein, it’s big business. World of Warcraft is the largest MMORPG with about 12 million players paying anywhere from $12.99 to $15.99 in monthly fees. That roughly translates to $1.8 billion to $2.3 billion a year for Blizzard Entertainment, which owns WoW and other MMORPGs. Add to that other paid services, like moving characters from one server to another, and the WoW franchise is a multi-billion dollar property.

Koechlein has two accounts and pays about $50 a month. And although she plays World of Warcraft and reads science fiction, don’t call her a nerd.

“I don’t think I’m a nerd,” she said. “Yeah, sure, I play D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) and I watch the SciFi Channel a lot, but I don’t consider myself the traditional view of a nerd.”

And the money isn’t any more than others would spend a month on other hobbies or for television service, she said.

“Considering that the basic cable television package the GCI guy offered me was $20 a month and was about five channels, none of which I really like, I consider it pretty good money spent, actually,” she said.

Koechlein also cautions players to know where to draw the line between living in the real world and the World of Warcraft.

“It was really hard for me to learn to do that,” she said. “I actually used WoW as an escape when my mom died. I would just sit in my room and play. It meant I wouldn’t have to actually deal with what was going on in my life. It’s still a major part of my life, but I don’t view it as the only thing I have going for me.”

She’s Aly Koechlein, and she’s a Blood Elf paladin.

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.