Once Upon a Time in Azeroth…
I don’t remember very well the order of events, but I remember that one day we were talking about MMORPG and how there was always a friend of a friend of a friend who knew about World of Warcraft (WOW).
One fine day, I visited Edson César and to my surprise, the game was installed there. It was the end of 2005 and the end of nights without anything to do. I didn’t even need a guest account, I bought the game’s serial key, because in some jungle store, they sold such a wonder.
The game is extremely easy to install, and it doesn’t have any protection at all. Innocently, I installed a copy with the CD-KEY bought on Mercado Livre. And there I was in Azeroth.
I was never a great player at anything. I don’t play basketball, volleyball, or soccer well. I was never the best player in any game. I don’t know what I was thinking when I started playing WOW.
A dwarf hunter, of course, named Minguado (what other name to give to a poor dwarf…). And thus began the addiction. Everything revolved around WOW and how much time was left to play again. Every day for several hours, including my entire vacation, all to “level up” the dwarf.
I joined a Guild (a group of WOW players) called “Kings under the Mountain,” of course, only dwarves could participate. By the way, for those who play WOW: have you noticed the right foot of Iron Forge? I think it’s one of the largest in the entire game… and in a city of dwarves, large columns come to compensate for something.
The game is extremely addictive, and you end up doing one of two things: either you invite your friends to play or you throw your friends away and dedicate yourself to the guild. I ended up getting other friends addicted, since Azeroth is a dangerous place for a small dwarf to walk alone.
Minguado began to fight with Quidor (César) and Festrati, also dwarves. Level after level, millions (~4,000,000) of experience points later, we reached level 60, the limit at the time.
The funny thing about this was the effect on our lives. Suddenly, those who didn’t play WOW were completely alienated, out of the loop. WOW was the preferred topic at parties, lunches, and dinners. Our wives even formed the club of the “WOW Widows”…
This all got worse when at some point we found the “Southern Cruzaders”. Just imagine, a guild only of Brazilians or people who speak Portuguese. No need to say that now we had a complete army in Azeroth. A guild to do the fearsome “dungeons” of the game. Every night was filled with endless battles in Zul´Gurub. Boss after boss, we were there. I recommend the guild to anyone who wants to avoid soap operas and completely alienate themselves from this world :-)
I think it’s important to highlight the WOW moment, since I’ve been playing for almost two years. The tremendous effort of playing an MMORPG in the forest. Manaus didn’t have fiber optics, it seems that it has it now. I had a powerful 600 Kb link at home (via satellite), with no less than 1600 ms latency to the WOW servers. It was like playing by mail. Perfect for my stone-like reflexes, but terrible for the poor souls who did missions with me. PvP? No way. I spotted the Horde people, in seconds they were hitting very close, in the next slide I was already dead… but it seems that now it’s much better. Even in the age of the Internet, we continue to be hindered by this kind of thing. How can we feed our electronic addictions without a fast network? Did I mention that the internet here in Belgium is very good? No? Of course, I didn’t come here for the Internet, or did I…
The addiction continued until I moved to Belgium. The time zone prevented me from contacting the Guild members, and I ended up being unable to play with my friends in Brazil. I need to say that now I play on European servers? Cured of my inferiority complex, or not, I created another hunter, a night elf, on Spine Breaker. But I don’t play more than about 4 hours a month. I now have time to mow the lawn and give attention to my family.
Well, all I know is that by playing less, I managed to find time for many other things. WOW is very good, but like everything, it has to have limits. At the beginning of this year, an expansion for the game was released… and now everyone has gone to level 70 in search of their dragons and flying mounts…
If you still haven’t realized how addictive it is, visit WOWDetox. And remember, the best way to stop is to never start :-)
LSK Ex-Minguado, Predak