WoW is like High School

Two posts within a month of each other...I hope I don't break the internet. Also a quick note for anyone who may be reading this that doesn't already know. When I say "WoW" it is short for World of Warcraft. I know Charleen has linked to this blog from her facebook page, but I have no idea if anyone has actually followed that link here.

Anyway, let me explain about the title of the post. I loved High School. It didn't require a lot of responsibility on my part, it was fun, and I had a lot of great friends. WoW was much the same for me, and lately I've been missing it. I apologize for the random rambling that this post will likely have. Charleen is the writer, not me.

Especially right now, that lack of responsibility part is something I miss. Charleen and I are 26. We (or at least I am) are still in that phase where High School and College don't feel like they happened all that long ago and real life and responsibility suck. The current economy isn't helping that last part. While I really look forward to owning a house and working on projects and the yard on my free time, right now real life responsibility is pretty sucky. As Charleen mentioned, we're going to be moving in with her parents. Since currently I'm supposed to be the primary bread winner, the feeling of failure is weighing down on me pretty hard. (ok, I could go on, but I'm cutting this rant off right now) Back to what I was originally talking about. WoW was nice. You didn't have any more responsibility than you decided to take on. The biggest responsibility that you really should have in WoW personal courtesy. If you start an instance run, make sure that you have the time to do so with the exception of stuff that comes up out of the blue. High school was pretty much the same. There was homework of course, but the only extra responsibility that you had was extra curricular activities that you decided to take on.

Kind of going along with the responsibility thing is just how much fun WoW was for me. Right now I could really use that kind of escape. I loved running instances or doing quests. Heck, even fishing grew on me. (and that was before they made all the big changes to it) But I think the biggest fun aspect for me was the fact that you could make yourself goals and always be working towards something (also one of Blizzard's biggest hooks for a subscription based game). I loved the long term project of it. As far as console games go, RPGs like Final Fantasy or Zelda have always been my favorite, but as much fun as they are, there's always that part of me that was sad when a great game came to an end. WoW didn't have that downside. Right now I'm getting my game fix with a couple of facebook games and by replaying some console games that I have, but they'll never be as complete a game as WoW.

Finally the thing I miss the most about WoW (and high school) is talking almost every day to those great friends that I made. I'm terrible at keeping in touch with people that I don't see every day. The original point of this blog was as a way to keep in touch and keep those friends up to date on what was going on in our lives. It's nice that some of them like Wulfa and Dammerung have a blog that they post on all the time. I especially love seeing pictures of their kids 'cause they're so darn cute. :) But reading about someone's life and talking with them about it is very different and I miss that. I miss hanging out online and just chatting with folks like Wulfa, Dammerung, Shrinn, Fal, and Ishvi to name just a few. I don't know, when I get back into an Engineering job again, I may start playing WoW again, but right now I just feel...I don't know if it's the right word or not but...nostalgic. (ok, just looked up the definition:a yearning for the past, often in idealized form. It's exactly the right word)

And since I was just taken away from my computer for a bit, my train of thought has been completely derailed. Something about feeling the same kind of nostalgia for WoW as I do for High School for a lot of the same reasons. At least I'm posting again, right? Lets see if I can aim for a second post inside of a week next time.