Computer blue light is known for causing eye strain and sleeping problems. I had a big problem with this, and I don’t regret it today. All because of World of Warcraft.
World of Warcraft for those who might not know about it is a massively multiplayer online game in which you join a server and only are able to the interact with those in who is a part of your server. (With the current changes of the game this is less the case however, WoW Classic brings back the original style of the game that I would be talking about in this article.) World of Warcraft isn’t everyone’s game, this is because of its heavily reliance of social interactions to complete a lot of content in the game. Unlike what is popular today in which you mainly play with people you know or only go up against everyone in a very singleplayer way. WoW requires you to seek out connections and forces a dependency on other people. To complete “Instances or Raids” in which provides the player with quest completion, a good amount of XP and better gear requires a group of 5 people of similar levels. To find people to do this content you must find people in the location. This is the reason people join Guilds in which is a collection of people on a server. This wasn’t a game you could clear out in a couple minutes or hours. Thus you would sometimes find yourself up at 5am.
I was never good at the beginning of my start with WoW. Doing dungeons, I would just grab gear that I didn’t need which caused people in the group to argue with me about how I stole the gear from them. Looking back its comical just how little I knew compared to day. With my search of knowledge, I started to look at YouTube which was still in its early stages. This was when there wasn’t any sponsorships or big companies on the platform. I discovered a very popular WoW YouTuber by the name of WoWHobbs. I thought he was the coolest person in the game. This eventually made him restart my character to be able to play on the same server as him. I was officially a fanboy on the server and I wasn’t alone because the server was overrun by fans of him. Other players who were always on the server had a poor taste to the people that joined just to be on the same server as him. However, for me I never publicly stated I was a huge fan of his and kept it to myself. The best part about playing a game that requires a lot of social interaction I eventually found myself making friends with someone who was in the Guild that WoWHobbs was in. I couldn’t believe it when I found myself in the same guild as Hobbs. This eventually lead me into raiding with him and evening being a small background character in some of his videos.
Prior to World of Warcraft I wouldn’t have been called a gamer. Bionicle was the main substance of my life and hanging out with local neighborhood kids. It wasn’t until I found myself switching to a (literally) new school that had opened up, starting six grade and had just moved into a new house. This was a recipe to hide in and bunker down. Discovering World of Warcraft was something that I never knew would be a big part into how I developed better communication and social skills. I even made friends at school because of WoW and still friends with some to this day.
Some people believe that staying up late is a waste of time ,but to me it was literally my middle school life and I really happy I got to experience that.
