People Outside WoW

If you have played World of Warcraft and have played in a raiding guild you understand that its more then just a game. It's a second life with a second set of friends. The people that you are constantly playing with have their own unique personalities and you look forward to "hanging out" with them in game. Whenever these players have hardships in their real life you feel bad for them. You rely on these people to be there and have your back in a dungeon and they expect the same from you. It fosters a different relationship then in real life because you are friends because not only personalities but a level of trust to perform.

How do you explain this to someone who doesn't play World of Warcraft? When you are tired but its time for raid you still show up. Even if you are not in line to get a piece of loot you still will feel obligated to show up because you have built these friendships. Sometimes you stay on a little longer to help get a new boss down even though you know you should get to bed.

Sometimes you live a double life. You have your standard day job, your friends and family that you spend time with and you have all the responsibilities that you routinely take care of. After all that real life stuff is taken care of you have your free time and you decide to play World of Warcraft. People wonder why you spend most of your time playing 1 single game when you can be outside playing sports, hanging out with people, or do normal stuff like watch TV. When you tell them that you are gonna be online playing a virtual game they wonder if you should seek professional help.

Then you have the people who understand gaming. You'll go play Halo together or talk about the new features this years madden game has. They understand why you choose to play video games and how good they are at passing time and relieving stress. But sometimes they can't understand the idea behind a raiding schedule. They can't understand needing 25 dedicated people every week to make a raid happen. They don't understand the concept of going through a dungeon, then coming back the next week and doing the same dungeon again and what you fight doesn't change.

So what is a WoW player to do. We do what we always have done. We live our 2 lives. We go on and act as we always do because we are just like everyone else. We have our lives that we live and we do it just like everyone else does. We will continue to go out and watch movies like Watchmen with our friends. We will continue to have Sunday dinner with our family. We will still go out and have fun with our girlfriend. We just hope that when we do decide to go play Warcraft the people that we care about don't look down on us and allow us to be ourselves and enjoy what it is in life that we enjoy.