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Max Staples

Ashley Humphries

ENC 1101-0001

3 February 2015

Digital History Narrative

I hit the power button and hear the gentle hummmm of my computer. The monitor turns

on and I log in, seeing all of my applications. But, there is one that has more meaning than all of

the others. World of Warcraft it says with the yellow “W” surrounded by a sea of blue. This may

just be a game to some people but to me it is more than that. I have played World of Warcraft for

the past 8 years of my life and I have learned valuable leadership, personal, and social skills

throughout my experiences with this truly amazing “game.”

My long, winding journey in the world of Warcraft began when my parents gifted my

brother and me the game for Christmas when I was about 9 or 10 years old. I remember waking

up early to get a sneak peak of what was in my stocking. In between my brothers and my

stocking was World of Warcraft. My brother and I had been playing a lot of other Warcraft

related games so my parents purchased the game hoping to please us and it certainly did. The

two of us were so excited to experience the game, it was going to be awesome. Seeing the

characters we had played as in other Warcraft games basically come to life and to have complete

control over one character seemed too good to be true. We started installing the game

immediately. It took about a day or so to finally get the game downloaded and when we finally

finished we were able to make our character and then we hit the “Enter World” button.

We were so excited to finally get to play, the blue loading screen bar was nearly full and

we were literally jumping in our seats in anticipation. Finally it was complete. The screen flashed

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and we saw our character standing in the camp. We started running around killing boars and

basically anything else that had a red name. We played for about an hour or two and then logged

off for the day. We continued with the game for a few days and then Winter Break was over and

school started up again. My brother stopped playing but I tried to keep playing although I was

not very good. I played for a few weeks and then cancelled the account because the $15

subscription fee didn’t make sense at the time. So the hard copy of the game went into the back

of my bookcase and it was uninstalled from the computer, never to be played again, or so I

thought.

I was 13, I had just started high school and I hadn’t even thought about WoW for a few

years. I was playing with some of my neighbors outside and one of the kids had a shirt on that

said “Green Linen Vest, Chest, Cloth, 3 Armor, Requires Level 5.” I asked him what the shirt

meant and he said it was a WoW t-shirt. He said he sometimes played on his older brother’s

account. Over the next couple of days we started talking about playing and I eventually asked my

mom if I could renew my account, I told her at the time that I only wanted to play for a couple of

months near the time of winter break before the new Call of Duty game came out and she agreed

to pay the subscription fee for a little while. I was ecstatic. I was using my mom’s hand-me-

down computer at the time which was a step up from the laptop that I had used to play

previously. My neighbor and I started playing and we were having a lot of fun, we made all

kinds of new characters together and explored all of the zones and continents and got a basic

understanding of the game.

During this time I was extremely self-conscious. I wasn’t very popular and was actually

being bullied quite a bit by some other high school kids and the game was a great way for me to

get away from all of the negative things going on in my life. It actually became the only way for

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me to get away. I would come home from school, get my homework done and then log on and

play online for a few hours with my friend then go to bed. I had never talked to anyone besides

my immediately family and my one friend about the game before so one day at the lunch table I

asked if anyone played WoW and everyone just turned and looked at me. They didn’t even say

that they didn’t play, they just looked at me oddly then continued on with their conversations like

I hadn’t even spoken. I told myself that day that I would never tell anyone that I played. I

actually quit for a few weeks after that happened because I wanted to fit in so bad, then I realized

that I should not let a group of kids define what I find to be entertaining.

I eventually joined a raiding guild (basically a group of people that get together and go

kill stuff), we raided Friday and Saturday from 8-11 pm. I was in this guild for about 2 years and

I missed a terribly large amount of social events because I was raiding. I blew off going to the

movies with friends countless times and I never told anyone why. I became too attached and

addicted to the game. I was still being bullied in my sophomore and junior years of high school

so it was my crutch. The game was something that I needed and if I wasn’t getting good grades

at the time I know for a fact that my parents would have definitely cancelled my account because

I was spending all of my free time on the game.

Fast-forward a year. I am now the leader of the guild that I am in. I was leading nine

other people and honestly it is the most responsibility I’ve ever had in my life and that might

sound weird because it’s a video game but I was in charge of other people, I was basically the

team leader of a business and I had to manage my workers. I’m really glad that my first

“leadership” role outside of a sport came in this game because I had plenty of opportunities to

mess up and it was a real learning process for me. I had to come up with strategies for boss

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fights, tell people what to do and if they did it wrong I had to correct them, while still making

sure that I was performing to the highest level possible.

Fast-forward another year, I’m a senior now and I still had not told anyone that I played

this game. My neighbor had stopped playing long ago and it seemed to me like I was pretty alone

in my interest. The bullying from the kids in high school had finally stopped and I had a

consistent group of friends that I was able to hang out with on weekends because of my new

week-night raid schedule. One night I had a few friends over and we were playing pool and

hanging out and one of my friends said out of nowhere, “Hey you play WoW?” I didn’t know

how he could have known until I saw my laptop sitting out. Shown blatantly on the screen was

the WoW launch client. I denied at first and said that my brother must have been playing but

they all saw right through that lie. Initially I thought that I was going to be made fun of just like I

had my whole life about the game. I was wrong. They all thought it was quirky but cool at the

same time. I had something I really enjoyed and they respected that. I felt excited and thrilled

that I no longer had to hide my secret from anyone anymore, a huge weight was lifted off of my

shoulders.

This one discovery ended up leading to some pretty cool things. I learned that some of

my other friends actually play League of Legends so I started playing too. This was near the end

of senior year and into summer. I felt like I was a part of a group outside of my raid for the first

time in years. I had a group of friends that liked me for me and I didn’t have to hide my “true”

self anymore. I say true in quotations because I still acted the same for the most part around them

but I felt freer than I had before.

The game is more than just a game to me. To me it’s was a way to get away and forget

about my worldly problems. It trained me as a leader and a team worker. The game taught me so

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many things and it’s odd to think that I could learn so many leadership, teamwork, social, and

even monetary lessons (playing the auction house) for the low price of $15 a month. In short, I’m

saddened by the fact that I missed so many social events throughout my high school life but if I

had to do it all over again I would probably choose the same path. I feel that I learned more skills

from the game than I would have learned if I had just had a normal soul-sucking high school life.

I regret missing some things (Homecoming dance my first three years and some other things) but

I believe that I am a better person overall because of my involvement in World of Warcraft.