27.4.11

Back from Azeroth


One year WoW free and I feel it's about time to take a look at my years in Azeroth and set things straight :)
World of Warcraft is perhaps the best and most enthralling game I ever played. It's more than a game. It 's a whole fantasy world, where you don't just watch entertainment, you are a part of it.
You may wonder what a middle-aged lady like me was doing there,chatting with 16 or 20 year old guild mates and studying tactics to kill pixel dragons in pixel instances.
I'm not sure how to answer this :)
It was like I was finally able to "live" and "act" inside all the fairy tales and fantasy fiction I loved to read since I was a child. I was a Night Elf druid who could transform into a bear, a panther,a healing tree and a bird. It doesn't get any better :)
I don't regret it.


 I admire the team who created this world. I have no complains against Blizzard,like "they make huge amounts of money ","they make the game addictive" etc. 
WoW is "dangerous" for people with a lot of fantasy, people like me who can get immersed in another world very very very fast and effortlessly. 
It was my problem that I got hooked for more than three years. It was my tendency to escape a then boring real life and spent countless hours calculating statistics and talent points, changing gems and enchants, glyphs and buffs etc etc 
For those of you who haven't played WoW, the game requires more maths than I did in all my school years put together :)


The catch in WoW is that the game never ends .And if you want to play in high levels (hardcore) you have to invest more and more time in it. That's the pit I fell in, like so many. (Just for the record, I never was a top player, but I was in top guilds all along, raiding at least 4 nights a week).
Then one day it was over.
I've had enough.It was becoming too crazy and sick to feel crushed and lose a good night's sleep because a) the boss was not killed  b) the guild disbanded c) the raid leader blew his top after a wipe d) the Guild Master got "burned" by the stress and quited e) all of the above together.
I felt ridiculous...and I didn't like it.



So,one year later, I'm firmly back into the real world and very happy.I don't feel the slightestneed to log on ever again.
 I don't regret living for 3,5 years in Azeroth. I'll always remember my time there fondly.
 I'm proud I took a trip into something new, I m proud I was accepted by my in game "peers" ,it was interesting, it was fun,it got stressful, it turned depressing...now it is over :)  I should have quited a lot earlier...but no use crying over spilled milk.
Sometimes I feel sad about the young people I met there,who should be out in real life doing things, learning things, gaining real life xp (experience), falling in love, making friends. 
The time spent in an escape world will never come back, guys. And don't try to blame anyone else for it;)

4 comments:

  1. While I agree that there's no use crying over the wasted time, and that everyone does have responsibility for their own actions, MMORPGs are built to be addictive. To keep you coming back to their fantasy world they make the game something hard to step away from. So imo blizzard does have some culpability, as do those that lose themselves in the game. But congrats on the year free :)

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  2. Hey,Heather:)
    yes,i agree that MMO's are built to be addictive, but I don't want to leave myself room for excuses:) Like the excuses I have for not quiting smoking...Cigarettes are made to be addictive too, I know it well as I know the risks to my health and still I smoke (shame one me).
    It doesnt matter how much I blame the tobacco companies,at the end of the daay it's completly up to me to quit it or not.
    I hope one day I'll manage to quit smoking as I did WoW :)
    *hug

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  3. And while she claims that she was not best of the best - readers consider this; she was the premium raid member of the 2nd most elite guild on the server where few mistakes would most defenatly lead you to be exiled out of it!

    /salute Papara

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  4. I loved this post and it was very nice to hear about your life in WoW. My feelings are so much like yours. I don't want to play anymore, though I do miss my characters. I feel like you about the young people, but I feel that way about everyone, actually, and as time went on, I began to put myself in their shoes and think about what it would be like to have their life..."I am a husband who neglects my wife to play this game all the time, even though we have an agreement. But my little baby only gets a bit of attention as I try to balance him on my knee and play WoW at the same time." OR: "I am 22 yrs old and working very hard at school and I am struggling to be one of the best players in WoW. I don't have a job and I'm going to lose my car because I am choosing this game over work and my studies are suffering too. And on top of that, my family is angry with me for playing WoW all the time and not having any friends outside the game." Just two examples and there are so so so many of them.

    When Steve and I finally turned that mirror to look at ourselves...well...it didn't feel very good. It was time to stop. And when the realization hit us that we needed to stop before our Cata team started, suddenly, we had a way out and we HAD to stop too. It was a good thing. We had a lot of fun in our years of play, but like you, it would have been nice to have stopped sooner, but we don't regret it!

    Oh yeah..."DON'T STAND IN THE FIRE!!!" LOL...I'm not at all surprised that you were a top notch player! BRAVO!

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