Day 3: First Day of Playing WoW

I'll be frank:  I don't remember it very well.  It was a long time ago.

My first day of playing WoW was about 2 days after Vanilla came out.  I was a little leery about starting another MMO, but my husband really wanted us to be able to play together, along with his brother and sister-in-law.

Previously, we had played Dark Age of Camelot, and I had discovered I had a strong tendency to become addicted.  When my youngest daughter was born, we quit playing, because I would be busy with the baby, and it seemed a good time to be able to just quit with less trouble.  I was, therefore, concerned about addiction when my husband wanted us to start WoW some 20 months later.  Despite my concerns, my husband installed WoW on my computer and set up my account.

I had not read anything about the available classes, but my husband had.  We knew we would be playing Alliance, because his brother had already decided to play Alliance.  I knew I wanted some sort of healing ability, because my DAOC character had not had any healing, and I had realized what an advantage it would be to have it.  My husband suggested playing a Druid, which could turn into different animals.  ("They what?  Why?")  Well, he showed me the trailer, and there was something rather fascinating about the Druid there (and they had healing abilities), so I figured I would give it a try.

I chose the name Anachan because it had been my long-time web name, and why not?  My husband helped me understand how the abilities went together (pulling with a long cast time spell, then tossing on a DoT, then maybe a root, then the general damage spell, using a heal when necessary (or even stacking heals before a pull)).  At least he had the good sense to teach me the principles behind it, so I didn't need him to teach me when I finally did roll another class later on.

My game play was nothing remarkable, as I recall it now.  I was happy that WoW had a lot of quests, unlike DAOC, which could start to feel like you were out killing things for no reason.  And I liked Teldrassil; it was pretty and peaceful.  I played for a while, then logged off.  I was in no hurry.

And that was Day 1.

I had another Day 1, in a manner of speaking, some time later.  I really didn't play very long before we decided to just quit playing.  We had a lot of other things to do (kids, house, homeschooling, horses, SCA, church) so we figured we didn't need to spend the time on WoW.

A few months later, we moved from what I thought was a rural area to a really, really rural area.  There were no homeschooling groups to break the routine for my daughters or myself.  There were very few opportunities for me to socialize at all.  I was living across the street in these isolated conditions from my parents-in-law.  I didn't like the landscape.  It was 50 miles to go grocery shopping.  There was a certain amount of danger in the air, because of the illegal drug-runners crossing the border and passing through our pastures.  (And lest you think I am exaggerating, yes, we saw them passing through our pastures or found the empty burlap packs under our bushes.  I learned to shoot a gun, just in case.)  And it seemed half my day was taken up in watering trees planted around the house so they wouldn't just die--an arduous process which involved moving three hoses to wells beneath trees over about an acre. (Carrying my gun.)

I started sinking into a mild depression.  And it was in this circumstance that my husband said, "Why don't we reactivate your WoW account?"  Again, I worried about the addiction issue, but he insisted that it would give me something to look forward to and enjoy.  And so I sat back down to the computer to reacquaint myself with my Druidic abilities.

It felt something like meeting up again with an old friend.