World of Warcraft

Despite my harsh criticisms of Second Life, I admit, there was a game I was addicted to a while back.  However, I treated it all as a game, and a very engaging game at that, and not at all as a escape or replacement for real life.  Click the "read more" or post title to continue reading and see screenshots!

My character in the early days...

...to the last few weeks of his career.

Six years ago, during the summer of 2006, between my sophomore and junior years of high school, I played the MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game), World of Warcraft.  I didn't even play on the paid retail servers (its costs $15/month!), but rather, on a private server (looks like they're very inactive now or more likely, totally dead).  The private server atmosphere was radically different from what the paid experience would have been: many things were bugged, the server often lagged, there was usually less than 100 people online at the same time, and the two major factions (who are at war with each other in the context of the game) can converse with each other.

Opposing factions working together to bring down a huge dragon?  Only on private servers.

Soooo many shenanigans were had on this server.  I played on the Horde faction (as opposed to the prissy Alliance) as an Orc Shaman named "Arkantos".  My brother usually joined me when he could (we pretty much only had one computer during that time that could handle the game) as a Tauren Warrior named "Stormtalon".  We pretty much knew all the members from our faction due to the close knit community.  Offline of the game, we'd post on the forums and share stories of valor, conquest, sorrow, and cheaters.

Friend and foe alike would chill together in designated locations, such as the Alliance town, Goldshire (above), and the neutral Gurubashi Arena (below).

It was hilarious, yet sad, to see that the server admin(s) seemed to favor the Alliance side of the server, often giving them free items and gear, as far as I could tell.  Despite being called "Team Canada", the server was located in New Jersey, but many players were from Canada.  I also noticed that many players were from other parts of the world, including Australia and eastern Europe (some characters had affixed country aliases to their name, ie. "RigorousCZ").  Interesting times indeed.

I have fond memories of my character and the experiences on this server.

He, or rather, I, wasn't the strongest, but certainly, the most outspoken.  Roar.

Although we had to deal with bugs and tons of server lag, it was still a fun and addicting experience building your character.  We also got to see things normal players on the retail servers would not see unless they played a lot.  Namely, the raid dungeons.  With just 5 players, we fought huge monsters that were meant for 40 man raid parties.  That's right, 40 separate players.

An overpowered bug, we used these silly shredder companions to kill boss monsters easier...

Surprisingly, killing huge boss dragons with several other people never did get boring...

In the end, I'm glad to have spent over half my summer on the computer playing WoW.  It was an enlightening experience in a huge virtual world, where I ventured in for the gameplay and character building, and got to see how one of the most successful multiplayer games worked.

This game was so much more better looking and ran so much more better than the Second Life of 2012.  And this was 2006!

Good thing it was a bugged and free server, otherwise, I'd still be addicted... and poor...