"I wondered where I was meant go to meet a Real Life friend and instinctively moved my hand into the air to press the M key on an invisible keyboard in front of me."

I've been looking back at the gaming generation gone (the last 8 years give or take) and been trying to nail down what was the most important and memorable game (to me anyway). It was an almost-impossible choice which looked at platform, genre and what it meant to gaming at the time.

And then I remembered a time where a game didn't feel like a game, but a way of life. I had my winner.

It was World of Warcraft.

Without a doubt.

WOW came out a long time ago, and while PC games are kind of not really in a 'generation' it's still my game of the last generation because WOW... was glorious. Most gamers have, or know someone who has, a WOW story. And this is mine. But it's not a sob story, it one of my joyful obliteration.

I LOVED WOW. No no no no... I'm not describing my love for that game right. I needed WOW. From day one of logging in, WOW and I were bonded together for better or for worse. It distracted me, consumed me, destroyed and pulled me back in time and time again over many years. No other game has had such a hold, or been so important that it affected my brain's 'need centre.'

I hadn't even heard of 'this new online Role Playing Game game' until a friend casually showed me this 'online RPG' that he kind-of liked. The actual moment in time of when I began is such a blur to me. I can barely remember what year it even was when I started. Still, I hold very specific memories of moments in that game. WOW had me at "Gnome Warrior" which was the only character I played for about 6 hours a day, for around 2 years (not counting yearly relapses). I hit the level cap of 60, with a mechanical fighting chicken hitting for '1' by my side, fighting a rock elemental of some kind.



Turning 60.

It was the PVP that really mattered to me. I was a little ball of plate in PVP gear, crit-ing like a BOSS through Arathi Basin. Holding flags, countering rogues, and dying horribly from DOTS or anyone with range. The thrill of a good fight was incredible, layered with strategy, and every round felt different. I remember an eight-hour Warsong Gulch capture-the-flag round that I refused to leave until it was over... Alterac Valley wars that would go for days on end... I remember our guild crashing servers with Orgrimmar raids. I was always bait... temping Horde to come around a corner, only to face literally an army of Alliance waiting for blood.

I remember seeing my first Horde... I was around level 12. When the fight was over my hands were shaking, my keyboard was covered in sweat... that kind of thrill is a rare thing. You just don't get it in MMOs anymore. They're mostly all too easy... too focused on 'letting the player have fun, hassle free' without offering a real threat from other players - or even the choice to have that threat. I fear the golden age for MMOs has been and gone, and now we'll only see weird twisted shapes of what once was a vibrant, new, unique and consuming genre. Maybe it's for the best.



Christmas time.

Back in the early days, if you were into PVP, you needed to play eight-hours a day just to keep your rank. I managed to get to the third-highest rank with my PVP guild before I managed to quit. I was rescheduling my life around WOW. I would say to myself, "OK, this weekend, I can get a good 12 hours in on Saturday and a good six on Sunday after work... that's OKAY but not great".

It was a combination of things really that stopped me playing... and letting go of Bajo was not easy. The skin on my fingers had worn away and become sore and tender at points from so much clicking. My eyes were always sore and blurry and I'm surprised I don't need glasses from the years of strain. My character had all the things I didn't - money, friends, a social life, a hobby, food, a stable job (I was leader of PLATE for my guild). He had a place to be, and I loved that.

I loved logging on, hearing my guild mates scream "BAJOOOO!" I loved the late night raids, the constant rewards the game threw at me, the sense of community in a guild and the fierce competition at every turn. I didn't even play with my real life friends that much. They mostly all fell past my obsession within months and the thought of devoting any time to another character besides Gnome Bajo seemed pointless.



Sandy.

When I saw people reach the highest PVP rank and quit the next day it helped me realise there was little point to this grind. I leveraged that and my physical health to stop playing. Also my mental health - I remember walking down the street in RL (real life), wondering where I was meant go to meet a friend, and I instinctively moved my hand into the air to press the M key on an invisible keyboard in front of me. INSANITY. That was the real dealbreaker for me - the worlds were actually blurring.

I played around 2300 hours WOW. I say that figure to people like a badge of honour... but is it? I always get mixed reactions. Some find it impressive and relatable while some find it just plain CRAZY and look at me like I have a problem. And I did.

As negative as all this sounds, I still cherish my time with WOW, and enjoyed nearly every moment of those many, many hours on the keyboard. Perhaps I think or say this to justify that enormous amount of time.

Certainly stopping sooner would of course have been better for my life and health. But I truly miss being lost in a whole other world. Being stuck in an MMO is like the Matrix. Ignorant bliss. To this day, I have yet to rediscover the thrill of a rare purple dropping just for me... of fighting by the side of 39 other competitive-focused gamers... of riding off into a magical, mysterious land, not knowing what adventure lay before me or how big the world really was and who was in it.

I would never recommend the experience of being trapped in an MMO to anyone. But, no game has even come close to what WOW meant to me, and I deeply miss my old collection of rag tag guild friends who fought by my side every day, living in a distant overseas server, who I will never know or meet again.