Goodbye Azeroth

For those not in the know, Azeroth is the fantasy world used by the game World of Warcraft (often called WoW). If you don't know what the game WoW is, be thankful. Anyways, I just quit playing WoW, for good. Which is something many WoW players say, many times. It's a game that easy to reminisce over and go back to, which I've seen happen more times than I can remember and am even guilty of doing myself.

Before I say anything else, let me just say that I know WoW is just a game and for a majority of the people that play, it remains so. They have no problem picking it up and putting it down whenever the call for either arises, which is good for them. Sadly, for me, it was not a game that was so easy for me to put down. I haven't the time nor the desire to go into the reasons why, so let's just leave it at that.

Before I ever played WoW, I knew I was likely to get addicted to it. An online role-playing game was right up my nerd ally. So for many years I avoided it like the plague. But then I met a girl, a cute one at that. And she wanted to play. And she wanted us to play together. And I had no way of saying no to her at the time. So began my obsession with this game I knew I should have avoided. 

She eventually quit on her own, not remaining entertained by the game. I however, was hooked. So in the past four years, I have sunk hundreds (probably over a thousand) of dollars into this game living an imaginary life in an imaginary world. A world I have used all too often to escape my life in the real world. 

I've known I've been using the game for escapism for awhile, but like anyone in denial, I've also been trying to convince myself it wasn't that bad; I could quit whenever I want, I just didn't want to. Or I'd quit after this or that happened. 

Anyways, recent events have shown me how bad it is. Not just the game, but a lot of shit in my life. However, WoW is definitely a part of it. It's also a part I can (somewhat) easily do something about. So I quit.

And when I say I quit, I don't just mean I cancelled my account and won't be able to play for awhile. Anyone that's played WoW for any lengthy amount of time can tell you all it takes is a few drinks and before you know it you're back playing again. Nor do I mean I cancelled my account and deleted the game from my computer. While more annoying, it's still easy to end up playing again this way. Instead, I've deleted every character on my account, which included multiple max level characters, in addition to canceling my account and deleting the files from my computer. People that have played the game (or nearly any other MMO) will understand the significance of deleting all max level characters (or all characters for that matter). 

It's not a guarantee I can never go back, but it is a huge deterrent. Hopefully, even should I try to start playing again, the hassle of creating a new character and leveling it (in any MMORPG) will serve as a reminder that they're not worth my time. While games such as those are perfectly fine for a lot of people, they're not for me. My time is meant for other things in life.