Shared Topic: How has WoW changed your life?

The guild that started this adventure….

This week’s Shared Topic from Blog Azeroth comes again from Effraeti who simply asks:

How has WoW changed your life?

Like I mentioned way back on my second post, I was a big console player.  Everything was played on some sort of Playstation, Nintendo or Xbox system.  My first online experience came on Xbox Live where I would spend hours and hours in Halo Deathmatches with my local RL friends.  I would get the occasional random West Coast/Central players in some of my groups, but these games would go by so quick that I wouldn’t really remember them.

Then Chewy introduced me to WoW, my first MMO, and everything changed.  I had never experienced a game so epic in scale.  And I was hooked.  This vast new world, filled with literally hundreds, thousands of people.  So many things to do, leveling, questing, instances, professions, PvP, etc.  And then the one thing that really captured my interest, the concept of a guild.  An internet family, if you could call it that.  A unified group under one banner, working towards a common goal.  People helping one another, whether it would be on quests, running through dungeons, crafting weapons/armor or even coming to someone’s aid as they were being ganked/camped by the opposite faction.

Raiding, my favorite part of the game, is another aspect of WoW that gave me a different perspective on gaming.  The emotions involved can get pretty crazy whether you share it with 9 or 24 other people.  The excitement that everyone feels when you first step into a new raid.  Squeeing as you equip that brand new epic that dropped for you.  The frustration and multiple /facedesks when you hit that wall after wiping on the same boss for the hundredth time.  The utter joy and elation and screams on vent when that end boss finally goes down and that achievement pops across the screen.  I don’t think I could get that same experience anywhere else in a game that I enjoy but WoW, nor would I want to, lol.

WoW also introduced me to the world of blogging.  I was never one to read forums or even post on one.  But blogs provided a different avenue of communication, almost like an extension of the game outside the game, lol.  I started by reading my fellow guildies’ blogs, then paladin blogs to get tips for my class, and then it just kind of exploded from there and I was reading everything.  Reading other player’s blogs and just being able to relate and share experiences is an amazing thing.  I used to be a strictly avid commenter, mainly on Van’s, Lyssi’s, Slice’s and Zari’s blogs and now I’ve been eaten by the blogger-bug and have one of my own, lol.  I think blogging, especially about WoW, has helped me in gathering all those thoughts I would have outside the game and finally put them into a medium where I can express my enjoyment (or frustration) of WoW with others.

The social aspect of WoW is a big part of what makes this game.  Sure, you could play this game by yourself, but where’s the fun in that?  Never did I think I could make friends with people across the country, let alone across the world, through an online game.  WoW definitely helped me accomplish that.