I’m a girly girl who loves playing piano, haute couture, reading William Faulkner and drinking fine wine. I was about as far from being a gamer as a girl could be. And then I met World of Warcraft.
I loathed video games with everything that I had in me. Every guy I’d ever been with spent hours every day mindlessly clicking their controllers and swearing at the TV screen, completely oblivious to anything happening outside of their virtual gaming world. I loved Zelda (the original) as a kid and thought that Super Mario for N64 was one of the best games ever made, but watching these men lose days of their lives to Madden and NBA Live was enough to make me want to submerge every gaming system I saw in a vat of acid.
And then came World of Warcraft. My coworkers played and showed me a demo on the computer. The graphics were pretty and since there was a free trial period I thought, what the hell. If I’m going to go home every night to just be ignored because of an X-Box, maybe I should find something to distract myself from the fact that I was being ignored.
I went home that night and logged into my account and created a Night Elf Priestess. I was instantly drawn in by the vivid colors and vast landscape. I spent the first hour just running around the zones that were safe for my very low level character becoming totally immersed in the world of Azeroth.
I loved the rich violet and emerald hues and soaring trees that covered the entire landscape of Kalimdor. I got a kick out of the different gestures and was slightly shocked at the almost scandalous dance that my character would break into when I commanded her to. I loved the shops, the quests, the holidays, the other people, the romantic history of the Kaldorei, everything. When I played I was completely transported into my elf’s world and it was nice to forget about reality for a little while.
The next day I raced home after work, far too eager to continue exploring this vast and sparkling world. One of my coworker, a level 70 human warrior, came to my home town of Darnassus in what looked like a motorcycle with a side car and drove me around. I didn’t even realize that there was more outside of Kalimdor and I simply sat in front of my computer, in absolute awe over the sheer size of this game. We drove around for two hours and I still only had glimpse of the entire landscape of this game.
I played nearly every day, running through dungeons with the other members of my guild (who were very understanding and patient with a newbie like myself) and grew to respect this game and the people who devoted so much time to it.
I finally understood the appeal of games, though I still haven’t found a single game that even comes close to this one on any level. The quests are endless, the stores are too numerous to name, and in this world the possibilities truly do seem endless.
Sadly, I left the man that I was dating when I first met and fell in love with this game, and my computer stayed with him. I haven’t had a decent enough laptop to play it since, though I am saving and pining for the day when I can play again because who doesn’t want to live another life from time to time? Who doesn’t dream of being a hero?
