when my friends played wow...

So if you didn't know, I am a nerd of uncomprable versity and unabashed admission. That established, I play W.O.W. (world of warcraft).

there are roughly 10 million players worldwide so I don't know why anyone should feel pushed into a corner, but regardless they sometimes do. Since the game was released in November or 2004 its always been about, existing around the game, a social enviornment.

When it was released it was the most in demand item you've read about. Issel and I went to the mall, actually 2 of them, and between the 4 stores there we only found one copy. I offered it to him, and he passed saying "we should buy it together."

"What if the next store only has one copy?"

He bought it. The next store had none.

I think it was released on a tuesday. I searched every day that week for a copy, but to no avail. On saturday I'd got out of bed at an unprecedented 7 am and drove to a Target in Seakonk, about a 30 minute drive on the hopes that they had one.

When i'd arrived I walked as fast as I could without drawing attention to myself to the videogame section. The games were stacked out from the back of the shelf and there between two games I can no longer recall was a gap. I peered down the hole to find one lone copy of WOW there in the back, hiding from public awareness.

It was all I could do to not sprint down the aisle, when I put it on the counter I crowded around it, to the confusion of the old woman buying sucks behind me in her fur coat. The cashier asked if i'd like anything else.

"no." I can still remember thinking I was snappy, but I could care less. I raced home, shot issel a text and spent the next few weeks addicted.

Somewhere in there, later on Marshall came hom from Officer Training with a broken leg and, unable to do much of anything, we got him into the game. We all kept in touch, we all made plans through the game. We talked on vent, and shot the shit while trying to take down any number of celebrated computer-drive adverseries.

We waited outside of January-cold buildings in strip malls, all lifeless except for the massing of nerd sitting outside and talking about the game, for one event steve and I ate wendys, for the other jon and I got drunk. Times been passing, friends have been dropping out. In the fall I left the group of guys I'd played with for close to two or three years.

In short its just a game, and the day will come where I put it down for good. Life is temporal and things fall by the wayside, but more than just a game, WOW served as electronic watering hole, the proverbial office water cooler for friends I'd grown up with and some I'd never met. And now it too has run its course.

For its detractors, wow was a nerd heaven that only the slovenly and the fat engaged in. Children that never grew up, who only had friends on the internet. But despite the way many would intentionally and ignorantly spin it, it was the same as walking around the mall, or sitting in the backyard throwing back beers, just in computer form.

And now, barreling down on its 5 year dominance of the video game industry, wow is becoming more and more unappealing, because while the game is basically the same, the friends have all taken off for greener pastures. In many ways, its no different than real life, except out here, I'm not forced to look at a list of guy and their non-deplumes that never light up...

Happy Raiding.