Wow so its been almost 12 years since I started this thread and over 14 years since the original post I referenced in my post. Since my original post I've managed to get my life on track. I'm 32 years old now, I'm currently in graduate school studying for my MBA. I graduated college with an undergrad degree in advertising management, lived and worked in Japan for 15 months, started my own business for over 4 years now and not seriously played world of warcraft for years. Now World of Warcraft classic is out and its amazing how quickly I couldn't wait to jump back in.
For those that don't know World of Warcraft classic is the game almost exactly was it was almost 15 years ago when I first started playing, just a few years before starting this thread. Jumping back in to the original version of the game that I spoke about so many years ago, it's like coming home. I know that I have to quit now before it ruins my life but the attraction is stronger than I could have possibly imagined. Sitting here in the dark, listening to the same soundtrack I did almost 15 years ago playing the same exact version of the game...It made me think of this post that I've not read since writing it.
Recently I've had to deal with all of my friends, mostly from my pokemon and wow days (2005-2011) going in their separate directions. Starting careers, getting married, having children, and no longer having time to hang out. We still manage to meet up for every pokemon pre-release but past that its a challenge. I read the original post I made so many years ago and I remember the emotions I felt at the time. At that time I was at a dead end and had spent over a year and a half dedicating every single day to a video game. I remember how frustrated I felt about the direction of my life and I made changes for the better but looking back now the friends I made and the experiences I had in this video game were some of the best I've had in my life, and I've lived my dreams. I was lucky enough to get to play college hockey, I got to live and worked in Japan, I followed my dream of being a filmmaker for almost 5 years. Yet the times I spent raiding molten core, joining the best raid guild on the server, and achieving the server first C'thun kill with my friends are now locked in my memory as some of the best memories I have. It's honestly amazing how that can happen over the course of time.
So here I sit at another cross road as I did back on September 24th, 2007. After my original post I played World of Warcraft semi seriously for another 3 and a half years with my friends, though on a much smaller scale than before. After my original post I would never return to hardcore raiding and 40 hour a week raid schedules. I would go on to gradually working my way out of academic probation (one term from being kicked out of college) and finishing my college degree. I now face a similar circumstance after just 2 days of logging back in. You have to understand I had a sub-optimal high school experience and World of Warcraft was the first time in my life when I was important, a part of a team, and had real life friends to meet up with online and work towards glory with. It was likely to my own detriment that I was so good at the game and experienced success. It turns out real world success is more difficult and those feelings from being a teenager on top of the world may be impossible to replicate (my WoW experiences are only rivaled by my earning my pokemon TCG world championship invite in 2005).
Thomas Wolfe wrote that "you can't go home again", the idea being that the passage of time naturally changes the world so you can never return to the place you remember so fondly in your memories, be it a physical place, a family home, or in this case a virtual world, but I suppose he never had to deal with a major corporation literally turning back time and restarting a virtual world as it was in 2005.
I suppose I have no real reason for posting all of this other than as some form of self therapy, I hope the mods won't judge me for this but I thought it interesting to post an update to what I'm sure was considered a throw away post so so many years ago. I don't know where I'll go from here. I miss my friends and I miss the days when we could spend everyday hanging out together playing pokemon and video games together. Perhaps 12 years from now when I'm 44 I'll have some further insight. Until then I would love to hear from anyone who can relate at all. Judging by the fact the electronic games forum has not had a post in 15 months I don't think thats likely but if you are reading this I thank you.
Finally even now so many years later I still think of my friend Cason. I originally quit in part due to his passing which I mentioned in my original post and the effect it had on me. I mentioned that I felt the game was a waste of time saying: "When he died I thought a long time about if I was to go tomorrow, would I be happy with how I lived my life. Would he regret all the time he spent playing World of Warcraft when he could have been hanging out and spending that time with his family and friends. I know I would hate myself for wasting years on something so stupid after putting it in that context and I decided I could not play again".
Now all these years later isn't it odd that all I can remember is the positives and how I would go back to those days if I could. It turns out that the time I thought he could have been spending with his friends is the thing that I miss most about those days because all we did was spend time with our friends. It turns out as soon as you get older it becomes increasingly difficult to schedule time with your friends and though World of Warcraft my have been responsible for most all of the major friendships in my life even today, without it they can never be the same as they once were.
