Five hours and counting

Friday, December 21st, 2012.

 

The Mayans were right, the conspiracy theorists were right, The world is coming to an end.

 

 

In a press release this afternoon Blizzard Entertainment inc. announced that they are ending the once tremendously popular game “World of Warcraft” and that all servers would be taken offline at midnight. I glanced at my watch, just a few minutes over 5 hours to go.

The article continued, reasons were given, fingers were pointed. Some blamed the somewhat dated programming, the lack of true 3D imagery that has really taken off with the 2011 release of Hello Kitty World of Adventure, the newest MMO craze. Others point to the controversial use of Murlocs as a playable race in the February release of the Emerald Dream expansion. Personally I lean towards the mass exodus of top end players and guilds to both HKWoA and World of Starcraft. You would think Blizzard would have learned after the Diablo 3 fiasco years ago not to compete with themselves.

What to do…

I log in, for the first time in years I don’t run over to check the auction house, I guess there is no point.

I go down my friends list, one at a time, sending out messages of good will. Notes about good times in the past and finally give out my World of Starcraft character name, those who want to can find me.

There is frantic chat in the general channel. People trying to put together a last minute raid, a last dungeon run, a last battleground.

I ignore it all. I don’t want my memories of the last raid to be of an uncoordinated mess Vainly trying to clear out bosses in the world tree. They will just get frustrated spending their last few hours wiping on trash in an instance they just aren’t ready for. I don’t want to go run a 5 man with strangers just to do it “one last time” and battlegrounds have never really been my thing. If I am not running with friends I don’t want to go.

I was Introduced to World of Warcraft by friends, and made more friends there. They are the real reason I keep coming back. Well that and the murloc hunter I just finished leveling. I will miss Mrrggll, but I will miss my friends more. In the end that’s where I would spend my time, making an effort to stay connected.

I would stay on, just chatting with people until as the countdown finished…….I would finally get to see who had the last word.