World of Warcraft has announced a new "Recruit-a-Friend" initiative, designed to rope in those few people who still talk to their spouses and significant others after 8 p.m. instead of beating pretend demons with sparkly weapons. The deal is this: If a current player can convince someone to sign on for a two-month tour of fantasy duty, they get a free zhevra mount.

I should explain a couple of those words for the sweet innocents who have managed to avoid the tawdry, painted World of Warcraft.



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First: zhevra. A zhevra is a zebra with a horn. Like a unicorn, but a zebra. That's kind of a theme with Warcraft: Take a normal animal, paste on an extra body part or two, and give it a fantasy name. A zebra with a horn is a zhevra, a crocodile with six legs is a crocolisk, a two-headed buzzard is a bonestripper. There's some fantasy precedent for this, but I'm going to be disappointed if the upcoming Warcraft expansion has me fighting three-eyed yaks (yakaboos) and nine-armed octopi (nonopi, or possibly octoplarghs).

As for the mount part, characters in Warcraft can learn to ride an animal, but not until level 30. Starting characters might be able to conjure fireballs or summon a demon, but put them in front of a horse and it's like integral calculus to a sleepy stoat. "Horse, huh. How does this work? You ... I go on top of it? Like above it? And it moves? I'm not ... screw it, I'll walk."

Once characters reach level 30, though, they're not limited to horses. Depending on your character's race and reputation, you might end up riding a wolf, a ram, a dorky-looking bird, a dorky-looking mechanical bird, an elephant (sorry, elekk) or something even stranger. Get enough Warcraft characters together on their mounts and it's like I Ran the Circus without the Three-Snarper-Harp.

So, to sum up: If you get one of your friends to shell out for two months of Warcraft, your character will get to ride a completely cosmetic zebra with a horn instead of whatever it's riding now. It's a sign of Warcraft's unrelenting brain-grip that this is incredibly compelling.

World of Warcraft's developers have mastered the unholy art of in-game bribery. They have discovered that players will do any number of stupid, tedious things in order to earn perks that have no effect on the game.

Just this week I've been fighting in battlegrounds – special areas where armies clash and 12-year-olds question each other's sexuality – over and over just for a chance to win a tiny little flying dragon. This dragon doesn't fight on my behalf or give me powers or anything. He just follows me around. In real life I try to avoid being tailed by parasitic flying creatures, but in the game I seek it out, even though I hate battlegrounds.

And really, what does my little dragon tell the other people in the game? The same thing it tells you – I spent too much time playing Warcraft.

This isn't so bad, mostly because the other players spend too much time playing Warcraft as well. The zhevra mount, however, tells people: "Not only do I spend too much time playing Warcraft, I hassle those with enough wisdom to avoid it." It's sort of like helping out a drug baron, except at least drug mules generally get some cash out of the deal. This is as if someone said: "Hey, if you board a plane with this condom full of cocaine stashed someplace unmentionable, I'll give you a stylish cravat."

I can only hope that this will serve as a cautionary tale to those who, unlike me, have managed to resist the massively multiplayer siren song that Warcraft continues to sing. But if it doesn't, and you decide to sign up for the game anyway, let me know. Those zhevra mounts are pretty boss.

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Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to be thankful that at least they didn't call it a zebracorn.

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