by Dominic Wells

Created on: October 11, 2008

Like so many others, I was an avid gamer prior to switching to World of Warcraft, and again like so many others, all other games stopped for me when WoW was installed. I had no time or desire to play anything else. I had sat and watched the great players from my much loved Planetside guild leave the game for WoW and was slightly bitter about this. Soon enough I had allowed my friend to install WoW on my PC and before I knew it, I was doing the same as others had before me.

After that day, nothing else mattered. Some people were disciplined enough to schedule WoW round their real life, playing when they had free time but for me, and so many others I knew, it was now a matter of scheduling my life around WoW. How did it get to this point? and why?

When I first fired up WoW and made my way through the early levels and "noob-quests", it was just a bit of fun, slightly frustrating as my friends were regaling me with stories of level 60 life while I killed my 600th boar and glanced at my experience bar for the 601st time, but as I steadily levelled up I began making more friends, seeing the same names on-line every day, becoming more efficient at the whole questing process, and generally discovering more and more about the game each day. I became awestruck at how deep the game could go. You didn't NEED to explore everywhere, you didn't HAVE to try every aspect available, but if you WANTED to, there was so much that you could do. The professions, the sub-professions, the PVP battles, the endless questing, endless exploration, and as you get to higher levels and therefore a larger friends list, there was also the endless sitting around simply chatting.

At about level 40 I joined my friend's guild. He was the guild master and getting in was fine, I hadn't realised at the time but this guild had requirements of entry. They were ranked about 6th on end-game progress and the majority of the guild were level 60. Another player was the same level as me and as we got to know each other we became great friends. If he was already on-line when I woke up, I would log in to find a group invitation already filling the middle of my screen, I would click accept, and off we went, another day of levelling to get us closer to where the rest of the guild were. Long story short, we became great friends and helped each other to become better players. By the time we reached 60 we were still considered "noobs" in the terms of end-game experience, but whenever we grouped with the veterans of

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