A Long Road.

It's been a month past my year anniversary of starting up a World of Warcraft subscription. Fifteen dollars a month and all of my spare time was all it cost me. It feels somewhat inconsequential to be nostalgic about something that only happened thirteen months and several days ago, but the realization prompted something great that I didn't think was possible, or even needed. After a long conversation with my two longtime friends who introduced me to the game, then became fellow officers in our guild, two of us realized we just had to quit it as if it were a bad habit to shake.

The story's so common that its gravity to me might not be fully apparent. I was in the role of the outsider for years and years. Ater all, the massively popular game was around for about six years when I gave Blizzard my five dollars for the original, newly changed, level 1-60 content. That was plenty of time for me to hear horror stories of people getting addicted and whittling away their entire life while their life was stagnant and depressing in every other place other than the computer monitor. The idea was ridiculous, that those sad weirdos could become addicted to a video game. How could that even happen? Do they not have self control? Their lives must be truly sad to fall into this as an escape. 

I knew what it was doing to me for the first portion of time. A game with that much content absorbed me for a while. I had time in the holidays and I spent 100% of it in the newly revamped game. I probably played at least eight hours every single day, sometimes up to fourteen hours, and that didnt get old for months. Even after that, I played every day, joining a raid team and being there every day. I knew I was putting too much time in the game, but it felt so good that it didn't matter, so I just kept going.

The phase that was most amusing to me was the phase around spring and summer time of this year when my interest was kind of declining. I still stayed on always, but I was not as into it as before. Even as I spent every day playing, it was maybe three or four hours and not double that, so I had reasoned that I was perfectly fine and I could stop whenever I wanted. Even with people making jokes about the WoW addiction, comparing it to alcohol or hard drugs, I insisted that I just used it to pass time in between when I played games before. As if comparing my new obsessive behavior to my old obsessive behavior made everyone totally believe I was healthy. As if.

More recently, our guild ran into troubles. Our raids had attendance issues all the time, and we were left with few people who were reliable. Those of us who stayed floated up to high positions in the guild. Being somewhat ambitious and wanting to play the leader somewhat, I was positioned as the second in command of the guild once the guild leader took a sudden vacation and our raid team fell apart. He returned only a week later and after a hard week of hard work for me and several other members, we continued on raiding. I had many more responsibilities, and while my interest had declined in raiding and the game in general by that time, I enjoyed being a leader, so that kept me in the game. The friendships I had forged in the process also kept me there, as well. After all, one of my three best friends had thrown himself into this game so hard that it was the only thing he thought about and the only thing he really was interested in doing any more. Raids were what kept him going, and I didn't want them to fail, so I kept going as well. 

In the past weeks, I began noticing that my opinion of the game changed drastically. All the things I'd built that fortified my love of the game had become walls that were keeping me playing the game. It turned into a job. I was paying to play a job. I then realized when I thought of it as a job that I had come to resent and hate it, and my walls were keeping me in a miserable place that I hated.

A couple of days ago, I had a long, existential conversation with these three friends about the nature of life and our places in it. I also had a conversation with my parents, who reminded me of something important that I forgot. What I had to do was simple - you have to decide what the thing is that you want to do, and do that. Will I never see my friends at the guild again if I quit the game? Will I lose something I love doing? What do I know that I really need to do in my life? 

That's why I no longer play the game. Even ignoring the massive amount of my life it had taken over, I didn't even like it any more. I hated it. I only did it because I'd forgotten how to do anything else. 

It feels pretty cheesy to say this, but when I gave my items and gold away, giving me little reason to return, I felt a weight off my shoulders. I feel like I can see a path now and I'm no longer lost in woods.

Who knows, maybe I'll write more. Maybe I'll do my album. Maybe I'll get my driver's license and a steady job. I could do any of them now.