You know that song “Piano Man” by Billy Joel?

It’s 9 o’clock on a Saturday,
The regular crowd shuffles in.
There’s an old man, sitting next to me,
Makin’ love to his tonic and gin.

My intent in mentioning it here is twofold: stick with me now.

When I was growing up in Middle America, my mother forced piano lessons on all us kids … several years of piano lessons … until she let us throw off the shackles of piano slavery and take up the instruments we really wanted to learn, like electric guitar and drums.

Weren’t we glad then that she made us stick with lessons so long? (Not really, but hell if I’m gonna say that now.)

Anyways, every holiday season, each of us are pressured in turn to play the piano (not having a drum set handy), and the first request is always “Piano Man.” Because it’s so Christmas-y. Or something.

So, on the plane home, it occurs to me that MMOGs are very similar to the regular crowd in that odious song: almost everyone is on their way to somewhere else.

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