And then, the Alliance went through the hills. An association called Serenity Now caught the wind of the event and came into droves. They would shower down arrows and bolts of lightning, hell fire. They knocked down the gravediggers, awaited their resurrection, and again murdered them. The attendees tried to fight back but there were fewer. In an instant, the funeral became a battlefield. And in days, a story about the attack spread all over the world, through hearsay on forums and YouTube clips, even a news article here or there.
This was the first impression that it was a preview, allowed in the Player vs Player limits of the game, but contemptible at heart. But now I wonder if that is what the woman would have wanted. To be part of the oral tradition, myth was debated and debated, remembered and misinterpreted years later. To bring people together, with their love or hardship, somehow. What more could one want from a video game.
But this game has changed. Beyond the floating debris in the Barrens, World of Warcraft redesigned to support less social play. Taking dungeons had meant intense preparation: Kano and I would shout “LFG” (looking for a group) into regional chat forums, repeating over hours until we found others doing the same; traveling together across one or two continents to these forts; and dragging boss after boss, often sweeping out and starting again. The people we found would follow us after that; monsters were difficult to kill and by interrogating together they ensured that there would be fewer deaths. After years of playing, we formed a tight band of friends, all gathered digitally, who would talk about everything from their parents ’divorce to the use of football. When we set up, we congratulated each other as if it were a birthday.
But now, the game is over effective. A dungeon finder takes in a queue of other dungeon visitors, and when enough people queue up, you teleport there together. The monsters die easily. And the points of knowledge come quickly. When I grow up now, I explode with a golden light and it is silent.
I entered Orgrimmar, the capital of the Horde, and saw more Ashes of Al’ar, purple behavior everywhere. I asked one of the riders where they got this, and they told me they bought it in one of the in-game markets for 40,000 gold – or about seven dollars, if you will charge your credit card for in-game vouchers.
I wanted Azeroth as it was, where there was no gold for sale and every accomplishment from climbing to level up was something amazing, coming out over days and months, that required you to sacrifice relationships and build new ones. Something deeper than seven buckets. So I left that world too. I applied World of Warcraft Classic, Blizzard ‘s pixel – for – pixel update to the game as it was in 2006, when gold and XP slowly came, when you died easily, when you had to call for backup, but grind your world and Azeroth was unknown. “Immersion” sells the short experience. As I remember my childhood with Kano, I don’t remember looking at a screen; I remember our avatars as ourselves, traveling the planet.
In Classic, I created a new character, a new level 1 Undead mage. Slinging frostbolts at bats and wolves at night, more memories came back. I found myself slipping into a familiar trance – a fugue state killing one monster after another, releasing my grip in time, walking with a foot from this city to the next, dying and walking like a spirit back to my body, resurrecting resurrection again and again.
I skipped food to play with Kano without a break. It was during these corridors that we spoke most. We forgot what our fingers were doing and talked scratches and unsightly things. We talked about how to show your daughter that she liked her (you make eye contact, and you have to smile). We fell into the traces of the word cum when we tried an abbreviated way of telling each other to come over and enlist help – and the game’s built-in censors turned the verb into series stars. I called my dad over to ask him why that was. He looked at me with eyes, a straight face, and said, “It must be a beast. ”