Some of my most treasured memories from my teenage years have taken place in a realm outside of our own world and in another - the World of Warcraft.
My virtual experiences in this game world has spanned over five years of my life (2004-2009) and I can honestly say that I do not regret a minute of it! I’m a geek, yes I will admit it but I have learned so much about myself, my values, and my character through this game that I don’t know I would have learned in some other activity. I probably would have but not in the same way. I have so many, SO MANY, incredible memories from playing WoW that I can hardly think of where to begin. This post will be the first of countless recurring recollections that I will post from time to time of my various life moments in the world of Warcraft.
My earliest memory of WoW was sitting at a the lunch table with my friends in the last December days of 2003, where Alex announced that he could not wait for the release of a new mmorpg named World of Warcraft. I had no idea what an mmorpg was seeing as most of my gaming career had revolved around the Navy-tactical, online first person shooter: Socom and Socom II, two games that I owe for the development of my potty mouth and perpetuation of my poor sportsmanship. “It’s just lag!” Oh how immature I was in an online platform of alleged maturity.
Coming back to the story, I remember arguing that I would not dive into this new genre of gaming as the thought of developing a character only to have to continuously develop him ad nauseum sounded pointless to me. However, as the days grew closer to Christmas and the more I researched the new game the more enticing it started to sound. Alex and my friends were giving me almost daily reports of the beta process and I knew that by that time I was trapped. I added the game along with the game card to the top of my Santa list and by Christmas I was unwrapping the box of discs that would later leave me with some of the most priceless memories and life lessons that I had ever experienced!
I remember the tiring process of installing the game, the waiting oh the waiting. The waiting process would be something repeated many times later as I uninstalled and reinstalled the game and its expansions over the years. Anyway, I remember Elywynn Forest and my first character - Eberoth! I thought I was so clever. I came up with the name myself. My brother and I were fairly successful with creating unique and fantastical names, a gift that my best friend, Brandon, envied in the past. He had grown so much in his name creativity over the years I remember. Good job young grasshoper!
The character creation process was exciting! It was something that I had not experienced in any other game before and I loved it. The customization was something entirely new to me but I remember spending around thirty minutes picking my hair and other features before logging in for the first time. Let it be known that I am not too proud of Eberoth’s appearance looking back on him. Come to think of it, I wasn’t very proud of it while playing him. Boy was he ugly! Either way, he was the host and actor for the initial months of my WoW memories. Eberoth created, I typed in my password and entered the gates to the World of Warcraft…
I remember running around Elywynn, killing wolves and doing my best to learn the controls to a whole new type of game. The only computer games that I played before were Battlefield games, i.e. first person shooters. The whole clicking and queuing attacks seemed foreign to a player like me who was so used to the dexterity burst: click-click-click enemy dead. Although the controls came a bit slow to me, I still could not deny that I was captivated by the new-to-me concept of a “quest system,” with tangible, albeit virtual, rewards. Not only was the character development motivating but the world itself, complete with environmental sounds and a pleasant flute-inspired theme song, was nothing short of beautiful. I know it’s weird to say that of a video game but I honestly loved every minute of it.
I want you to know that this game was so influential in my life that my twin brother, Kenny, and I bought a whole new computer together just so that we could play together! It was Kenny’s first computer; then again I am not exactly sure why I assumed ownership of our first one…We were getting tired of having to share our game time and were itching to battle the “mobs” and tackle the quests together. ‘Berethor’ was his character. If you notice the name is cleverly a rearrangement of ‘Eberoth’ so that you knew we were brothers or at least related virtually. Berethor’s story is long in itself and requires its own post so I will leave him for later.
I want to end this post with the fact that I was actually the person who got our other friend Michael involved into the game. He was visiting for Christmas and had made his own character, a female human mage. We all knew after a few minutes that he was hooked! In conclusion, World of Warcraft has been the source of much condemnation by many a popular person but it might surprise you to hear that a lot of those popular people played WoW themselves. It was hard to escape its grasp. WoW was everywhere! At its peak it had almost twelve million people playing it worldwide. It has won many awards over the years and I can wager that I am not the only one left with good memories. I don’t think that my latest login in December will likely be my last as the game is in an odd way calling me back. My next post will most likely not be exactly chronological but tune in next time for a memory of milestones…
Note from the author: This post was written 6 months ago.
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