Nifty Stopwatch

Yes I am going to be talking about World of Warcraft but I ask that if you are going to read this to please read the entire story.

It all started about a few weeks before the release of the retail game when I started playing open beta. When I first started playing I had no idea what to do. I actually ran around the starting zone killing rabbits, this was the first game of its kind that I had ever played. After doing some research and talking to some friends at school I figured out how to play the game, at least the part where you do quests and kill other creeps besides rabbits. By the end of open beta, which was about a week or so later, I was a level 12 human paladin.

The actual retail game was released a few days after open beta ended and the day it came out I went up to frys electronics and purchased the collectors edition. I did not create my account that night, I did it on November 25th 2004. After I created my account i made a human warlock on the realm Dragonblight and played all night until I reached level 12. The next day I was talking to one of my friends and he said that he played and all of us friends from school should play on the same server. So I decided to go over to Shadowsong and start a new character, I was only level 12 so it was not hard to re level. I opted to create a human warrior as two on my friends were paladins and one was a warlock. I played almost every day with my friends from school, but since i worked they were always a few levels higher than i was.

Around the new year, possibly a month or two in, I reached level 60 on my warrior and started a gnome mage as my second character. I actually was able to get some really good items on my warrior, some of the best blues you could get from non raid zones. I remember trying to get into the guild threshold, I had really good defense items and made all their requirements but it did not work out. So after threshold a new guild formed called coup and I knew some people in there so I applied on my warrior and was able to do some raids with them, Onyxia where I got helm of wrath and a few bosses in Molten Core. But the guild leader had some real life friends start playing so they were able to fill the warrior spot. From this point on I kept playing on my warrior and leveling my mage. My friends from school were in a guild called SPAM and it turned out that they needed a mage, mine was 57 at the time. I applied and tried to level asap, I ended up getting from 57-60 in two days. I ended up getting into SPAM and did my first fill molten core clear on October 29th 2005, about eleven months after starting to play.

Now if we go back a few months from this point I had met a girl from my physics class and we began dating. She was a fan on Starcraft, one of blizzards other games so naturally I introduced her to World of Warcraft. She began to play and I would help her with playing, all this on top of us dating. She only played the game for fun, she did not play for items or for popularity within the game. When her character reached 60 I encouraged her to apply for SPAM and she was able to get in. At this point there were 5 of us from the same school all in the same guild.

By this point SPAM was in Blackwing Lair and all of us from the same school had really good gear, I had obtained full tier 1 gear from molten core and various pieces of tier 2 / spell damage gear. The girl I was dating, as I said earlier, did not play the game for items, just for fun. I would tell her some of the items that she should get because they were good for her character. She liked the ones that looked cool, Finkle’s Lava Dredger was one of them. All of us were with spam through most of 2006, we even had a few more friends who were able to join the guild we were in. The AQ gates were opened, the event was awesome, and we charged into the two new instances. We were able to even get some server firsts in the 20 man aq instance. In april blizzard announced that they were allowing free transfers from Shadowsong (PvE) to a new server Black Dragonflight (PvP) that was running new hardware. Almost all of the guild decided to transfer to the new server.

Everything in the guild kept progressing quickly on the new server. Most of Ahn’Qiraj had been cleared and we were still doing all the major instances, mc/bwl/zg/aq20/aq40. At the time everything was going great but blizzard decided to allow cross server transfers. This is where things went down hill. The new instance Naxxramas had recently come out and we had some new people on our server who wanted to “take control” of our guild. They ended up becoming our raid leader and pushed the guild to a 5-6 night a week raiding guild. At this point I left the guild as it was not something for fun anymore. I ended up leaving the server shortly after and played on Malorne. I tried to join some of the guilds there, I had the gear to do it, but it was not as fun as things had been with SPAM. I spent most of my time from this point playing on low level characters on different servers.

The Burning Crusade was released on January 16th 2007. I received my collectors edition the day after the release date. From there I played my mage and reached level 70 about two week’s after the expansion came out. I had my epic flying mount about three to four week’s later. I was not in a raiding guild at this point, I did not really have the time as my classes and my relationship took up the rest of my free time. Once the summer came I played a lot, I spent some time leveling up my warrior and a new character. When school started up again I took some time off to focus on that more, I think I took a little over a month off. I came back and started playing towards the end of the semester and I played all the time. Because I had taken some time off in the beginning of the semester I had done really well in school. Around the new year, 2008 I decided that since the game was pretty boring I should stop and focus on my major in school, computer science. My account was set to expire on January 11th. As it turns out a few days before this my girlfriend, the one whom I introduced to the game, ended our relationship. It was NOT because I stopped playing, she had not been playing the game for quite a long time by then.

What do i think of the game now?

From a game standpoint the game is really good. I do prefer how it was before The Burning Crusade but that could be because I had really good gear. Although I had fun in TBC, it just was not the same as before. The game is really addicting :(

What did i learn from all of this?

Do not put a video game before your life. When I look back on some of the decisions I made it makes me wonder what I was thinking. I feel bad for what I put my ex through, with me playing a lot and actually introducing her to the game. Now that I have stopped playing I am putting my life first, where it should be. One thing I still do is watch WoW machinima, it is usually more exploration videos like Wandering Dreamscape. More of my focus is being put on school and friends (I have not seen a lot of them for a while). Hopefully I can have everything back on track pretty soon.

So did WoW ruin my life?

I am not sure but I know that it has not helped my life. Somethings that it has given me was meeting some new people, but thats about it. What would be interesting would be to go back and see how everything would have turned out if I did not play. It lowered my toleration of annoying things. Ex. I sometimes got mad at people for little things that did not matter. I am just sorry that some people thought that I was not putting them first. I am truly sorry that I made them feel that way / yelled at them for stupid things and I hope that they can accept that. At least now I am not playing the game and I have time to focus on school and work on projects, just like this website.

What has happened since i stopped?

I started new semester at school, am learning Java, started this website, am planning out some parts of my life, been lonely. Overall, change is happening. While i hoped one thing would be different I cant make other peoples minds up for them.

But what if you play again?

I do not know, I have been trying not to play so I most likely wont be playing when Wrath of the Lich King comes out. There are still times where I want to play again but I tell myself is it really going to be fun in a week? no it wont.

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