I mentioned two posts ago that I was feeling a bit left out with the current expansion of World of Warcraft (WOW), or maybe more that I was getting that itch to play again.

Today, I’m just randomly going through some YouTube Shorts, and this video pops up:

Short, sweet, and to the point. However, I started playing WOW when I was 25, so I definitely wasn’t a kid at the time, but this short got me a little emotional because it is right. I can’t go back to the first time I played WOW and the feeling I got of this massive world and me running around in it. I remember being super amazed at everything and feeling like it looked so good.

I was introduced to WOW by a co-worker. At the time, I was working the graveyard shifts at convenience store in a town in Southeastern Idaho. I worked with two other people on a rotation. There were always two of us at night, and we would rotate on who would be there. Two nights on and one night off.

The one that introduced me to the game was a guy named Tim. He loved video games. I hadn’t played a video game since high school. I had gone away from playing them and primarily did coding stuff because at the time, I liked tinkering with writing small scripts or programs to that could make a computer do stuff, and it fascianted me.

Tim started talking about the game one night and how much work he put into it. I found it weird that you could get so much out of a game. I wasn’t a big fan of Warcraft because I remember a high school friend of mine would play Warcraft, and it never looked fun. So, I was thinking it was still the top-down looking style game, and when Tim said I should give World of Warcraft a try, I said that I wasn’t interested.

A few months later, he invites me over to his how, and he shows me the game. I was blown away seeing him run around and basically doing whatever he wanted. That idea blew my mind. I decided to take him up on his offer. He purchased a copy of the game for me and gave me money to pay for my first month of gameplay.

I was hooked pretty quick. He invited me into his guild. Introduced me to a bunch of people, and we played whenever we could since both of us worked at the same place, it was very common that we didn’t have a ton of time together. I moved on to another location within the company, but he and I kept in touch and we kept playing for a few more years as guildmates before I moved on to playing more with my brothers and cousins.

I kept in Touch with Tim after that, and he would always reach out and see if I was going to play the next expansion that was coming out. Sadly, he passed away from a heart attack about 8 years ago. Losing one of my WOW buddies really hit me hard especially since he was my original WOW buddy. Every so often I will see something WOW related, and it will bring back those memories of playing with him again.

That YouTube Short did just that. I know I’ll never be able to jump into the game again with him and run around doing silly stuff. It still hurts sometimes, but I am happy for the memories we created. WOW is a part of who I am even if I don’t play anymore. That doesn’t mean I won’t. I’ll probably jump back in when the newest expansion goes on sale because I always love the stories it tells, and I’ve invested a lot of time over the years to be a part of those stories.

I wasn’t expecting to have the WOW feels today, but I did, and I wanted to share.