No King Rules Forever
Jan. 8th, 2022 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
got_quietToday youtube suggested I watch a two hour long video on the history of World of Warcraft. It seems to hit all of the major points, and watching it brought out some serious nostalgia. And even though WoW still exists and people still play it, the vid basically feels like a postmortem and a moment of closure for me as an ex-player.
Old WoW occupied a unique moment in time and basically defined my life for years. There's still stuff that happened in that game that I think of as some of the most memorable of my young life. It's a world I can never go back to, and it's weird to think about it sometimes as something that loomed so large for so long and then just disappeared for me when I finally quit cold turkey for the last time, something like 5 years ago. People I had spent more time with than anyone else in my life at that point were just gone. I still think about them sometimes and wonder how they're doing. There are moments when I wish I hadn't wasted so much of my life, literally years of /played, on WoW, and in the next second I wish more than anything that I was back then running through Azeroth with old friends on our various hijinks. It makes me tear up a little.
Ahh, I shouldn't have watched that video. I've been clean since Legion and I really can't go back, but I do wish there was somewhere else where I could get that same raw escapism. I know people are getting really into Final Fantasy now, but... It's just not the same.
Old WoW occupied a unique moment in time and basically defined my life for years. There's still stuff that happened in that game that I think of as some of the most memorable of my young life. It's a world I can never go back to, and it's weird to think about it sometimes as something that loomed so large for so long and then just disappeared for me when I finally quit cold turkey for the last time, something like 5 years ago. People I had spent more time with than anyone else in my life at that point were just gone. I still think about them sometimes and wonder how they're doing. There are moments when I wish I hadn't wasted so much of my life, literally years of /played, on WoW, and in the next second I wish more than anything that I was back then running through Azeroth with old friends on our various hijinks. It makes me tear up a little.
Ahh, I shouldn't have watched that video. I've been clean since Legion and I really can't go back, but I do wish there was somewhere else where I could get that same raw escapism. I know people are getting really into Final Fantasy now, but... It's just not the same.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-09 05:18 pm (UTC)I feel so much about how much time I spent on that game. And feeling like it was wasted was a big reason I quit. I just felt... like I wanted other things to do with my time. Dad still plays and he tells me about all the stuff he gets up to and I just... I feel like a bullet dodged, honestly. Sometimes it even sounds interesting, but thankfully the sub fee is keeping me from jumping on it, by and large.
I remember things I did with friends and yeah, it hurts. There's a guy in one of my Discords who reminds me so much of one of the first friends I made in that game and sometimes I'm just like T-T I'm still Steam friends with one of the folks from my old guild but we haven't spoken in years. I did reconnect with an old friend on Facebook and Discord recently, so that's nice. It's funny because every now and then I remember this one dude I met who had a MAJOR meltdown and became this game-wide troll and thief and every time I bring him up people know who he is and it's like... idk the people you meet in that game sometimes lol I did make more good memories than bad ones. I mean I still have a statue of an Onyxian whelpling Dad bought me years ago on my shelf, and a Worgen t-shirt I wear all the time.
I started Horizon Zero Dawn recently and the starting area and music reminded me SO MUCH of Azuremyst/Bloodmyst Isle and the FEELS, man (my favorite starting zone; I started playing near the end of Burning Crusade). I still can't listen to those tracks from the soundtrack without just stopping what it is I'm doing and remembering. T-T
And yeah, FFXIV just isn't the same :/ A friend on a Discord I'm in who's also an ex-WoW player is SUPER into it and the switch worked for her but I'm just like... idk. WoW lore was its own thing in a way Squenix can never imitate, and the gameplay doesn't feel the same at all (and I have yet to see any game properly mimic bear tanking tbh, which is one thing I miss most). They both have their issues and similarities but they're not a 1:1 translation, yanno?
no subject
Date: 2022-01-12 03:30 am (UTC)The WoW music is buried deep in my subconsious. When I hear it or anything like it I'm back there for sure.
Tanking was my favorite PvE role too and I spent a looooot of time in PvP, and that in particular I've found nothing similar for. I tried Guildwars and hated its combat.