If you have a look at my blog profile, you will see World of Warcraft (WoW) listed as a hobby. I've been into gaming since Pong was first released way back when some of us were still wearing flaired trousers(first time around) and I still had hair down past my shoulders! In the 30 years or so since then I have owned everything from a Spectrum 48k to a Playstation 3. I have played more games than I care to remember, from the Nodes of Yesod to Little Big Planet and I specifically bought my first PC so that I could play Doom, and yes it was worth it! But, one game has stood out head and shoulders above all of the many, many games I have played over the past few decades and that is WoW.The Warcraft series started in 1994 with Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and its mix of real time stragedy and compelling story line proved popular with the game playing public. Blizzard, the company that made the game soon became synonymous with well made and addictive games. Although new releases were few and far between, the likes of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo are amongst the very best games available.
WoW is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG for short). It was released in Europe in 2005 and recieved excellent reviews throughout the gaming community. I had played Ultima Online a few years earlier and found that the format could be addictive and enjoyable and with a review of 95% from a trusted website I felt I should give WoW a go. I installed the game and played for an hour or so before deciding that the game wasn't for me. I un-installed and the game joined a pile of other unplayed games in my loft. At around the same time another MMORPG was released, called Guild Wars, it offered a slightly different playing experience to WoW and demanded no monthly payment to play. I enjoyed Guild Wars to such an extent that it persuaded me to give WoW another go. This time I was hooked, but with reservations. I spent my playing time missing out on a vital aspect of the game, namely communicating with the other people who were also playing. I was sure that everyone playing the game were sure to be sweaty red faced teenagers, pounding on their keyboards and shouting KILL! KILL! KILL! at the top of their voices. But, after a period of time I realized that there was a diverse mixture of age ranges playing the game (pounding on their keyboards, shouting KILL! KILL! KILL!) and as anyone will tell you who played the game in the 'old days', WoW was a lot harder then. So, I eventually reached a point where I could either stop playing because it was too difficult to advance without help or actually start talking to people.
So, I formed my own guild. A virtual guild is no different to a real life (rl) guild. It is basically a number of people who group together for mutual benefit. I gave my guild an epic sounding name and started to recruit like minded people. My criteria for a perfect guild was that the members had to be mature. WoW really is rl in microcosm. There are polite people, rude people, good people and bad people. There are people who just have no idea how to interact with other people in a socially acceptable manner. People who steal, generous people and people who think that the height of humorous sophistication is to write the word anal in general chat and then there are also the people who read it and actually do think it is the height of humorous sophistication!
I wanted people like me, kind-hearted, funny and handsome to join my guild...what I got was not quite what I had wanted but I had a group of people who wanted to help each other and that was a good start.
This post is in danger of becoming an epic saga and so I have decided to split it into 2 parts.
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