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;)