One of the things I really don't like about World of Warcraft, or any other MMORPG, is the waiting that is involved in getting a group together. This can be a real problem in raid environments, where it often times can take half an hour or more just to get the group set. I've been a raid leader before, so I know that they are busy and there isn't much they can do about the time we all just sit there on vent chatting with each other.

One of things that I've recently came across to help ease the wait is a little in-game game of bricks, a.k.a. breakout. Breakout is the game that I used to play back in elementary and middle school on the old Macs* where you'd bounce a ball around, breaking (you guessed it) bricks. The ball is bounced off a small platform that you move with your mouse. Pretty simple, and mindlessly entertaining.

Lately I've been enjoying a version of this game called WoWonid, which is an Ace2 addon I found via my addon updating with the WoWAceUpdater. It's a good enough implementation of the game (and quite impressive when you consider that it's done in LUA and built using an interface that's designed for game addons). The controls are simple enough, and just like the old Mac controls: move the mouse left or right to move the platform, bounce the ball, pwn.

The ball bounces a little slow – I'm sure there's a way to change this programmatically in the code, but a quick glance at it hasn't reveled anything. I also wonder if the ball bouncing speed is dependent on the computer and/or the amount of addon processing power allocated by the actual WoW code. I've dabbled in programming addons before, and there isn't really a timing mechanism that would allow variable speed to be added in. This might just be a limitation of the application programming interface.

All in all, it's a fun way to pass the time waiting for things to happen. I can sit and move my mouse left and right while waiting for friends to come online or get to the raid instance.

Are there any mini-games that you play? I would love to get my hands on an updated poker mini-game...

*For us computer and gaming nerd type individuals, this game first came out on the Atari. When fact checking the article, I came across the Wikipedia page. Quite an interesting read if you have the time.

Tags: ace2, add, add-on, addon, breakout, bricks, game, games, mini-game, mini-games, on, wowonid

Filed under: Odds and ends, Instances, Raiding