Early group shot taken after completing the Deadmines as a five piece. No one knows what happened to the mysterious female Night Elf druid in the back row.

Over the past year and a half, I played World of Warcraft with some old friends from University. It started out as a twosome , turned into a threesome, and then a foursome with a person who had no idea what an MMORPG was. So we rolled back to a threesome again, because it’s no fun playing with someone who uses garbage drops as gear and doesn’t upgrade their skills. And so Hykrion the Night Elf Rogue, Firestars the Night Elf Warrior, and Beto the Dwarven Priest sought out the many trials of Azeroth.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I still think we could have made it to the endgame with these characters.

Getting back into World of Warcraft was like slipping into a pair of my favorite pants. Except the pants were stained with Dr. Pepper and greasy Doritos cheese. I have to admit that at first my reaction was revulsion after the first of many (very) late night gaming sessions. Why was I playing this again? It felt so pointless, the incessant mouseclicks echoing off of the barren walls of our home office. As if to defy me once again, the clicking had become hypnotic. I was levelling up. I was gaining mad skills. I was exploring more of the realm than I ever had before. I was a night elf rogue named Hykrion, and I did ridiculous amounts of damage. Sinister Strike. Backstab. Eviscerate. Loot corpse. High fives all around.

At first, our group’s primary function was to quest together. We weren’t used to each other’s playing style, and were not confident enough as a team to take on an instance – our group wiped too much just taking on a mob two or three levels above us. We stole item rolls from each other, not paying attention to what was best for the group. In long treks between towns Hykrion would always run ahead of the group, blissfully ignorant of his low armour class and natural magnetism for Horde NPCs or high-level monsters. We frequently let Beto run out of mana, then complained about dying all the time. And we died a lot. For a while, this was fun. Each group massacre was more entertaining than the last. But then we realized that if we were going to get anywhere in this game, we needed a strategy. We needed to start acting like a group.

In effect, our group was the Holy Trinity of classes in World of Warcraft. A Warrior to tank mobs and collect aggro, a Rogue to do massive damage quickly, and a Priest as healing battery to support these life-threatening activities. We had intended to build level 60 characters, to gallop through Ironforge on our Elite Mounts and adorned in nothing but Purple and Blue items. One of us even bought the first expansion, expecting to jump into The Burning Crusade once we reached 60. Once we hit level 40 and got our mounts, we were going to widen the range of exploration and grind experience to level up for an instance every other week, which would be done to collect better items. For a while, this was happening. We were excited about playing a great game with people we knew.

The emails started as they always did, on Friday mornings. Working stiffs like us needed something to look forward to at the end of the week, and in this case it was World of Warcraft. At first we were constantly trying to control each other’s impulses to keep playing, so that nobody raced ahead of the group. This would ensure a balanced party and maxium experience points for the group. The conversations would be about how we wiped too much the instance before, how someone needed to upgrade their weapons for maximum damage or strategic Talent expenditures to benefit the group. We planned the assignment of rare loot drops before we even had them. We talked about the best routes to get there, and which quests we could obtain on the way. We read about the boss monsters and how best to beat them.

We tackled all of the low level instances like The Deadmines, The Scarlet Monastery, Blackfathom Deeps, and Razorfen Kraul. We got our asses handed to us in the first attempt at Razorfen Downs, after Blizzard had readjusted the level requirements for all instances. By the time we reached Uldaman we were handling instances like professionals. Needless to say we went back to Razorfen downs to finish the job. It was fucking glorious.

But for some reason, we could never get ourselves organized to complete The Sunken Temple, which seemed like the natural next steps for our group by the time we reached the mid-40s. The fabric of our group was starting to unravel. Firestars was too busy at work. Beto and Hykrion had to put their kids to bed later. Hykrion started passing out on the couch at 8:30 pm every night after “bed time”. Firestars fell asleep while waiting for Beto and Hykrion to show up for games. Firestars fell asleep during a game when Beto and Hykrion were disconnected from an instance.

For the last few months of the summer, interest in the game from all three of us was at an all time low. Nobody was talking about what items they wanted from the next instance. Or even scheduling the next instance. Now the challenge was getting all three of us online at the same time to just grind some experience for a while and polish our skills.

By the time we all got back from our holidays in September, I had to make a call as the unofficial group leader: we were done. All three of us cancelled our accounts shortly after, and while none of us expressed our true feelings about this transaction, we were all disappointed that it had come to this. Our group had died most uncerimoniously.

And yet my final thoughts on the game weren’t as bitter as the last time. I don’t regret having played the game for as long I did, because this time it genuinely taught me to appreciate it even more.

Playing World of Warcraft with real-life friends is a lot different than playing regularly with Guildmates. We would see each other outside of the game, and it would eventually come up in conversation. I felt myself talking about our adventures as if they had really happened, convinced that this was not the same game I played a year ago by myself or with hastily assembled pick-up groups. We talked about my insatiable need to explore areas beyond our level, only to bring back Skull-levelled creatures to wipe the group. About how Firestars somehow felt his Shadowmeld was equivalent to my Stealth mode, often ending in a massacre in some dungeon corridor. Our characters had become a part of us; we had no concept that the things we talked about meant nothing when measured against the metrics of normal society.

We also made a point of insulating ourselves from the game world at large, so we didn’t have to deal with middle-school griefers that insisted on challenging our low level characters. We all agreed to reject all guild invites, to avoid having to commit to raids and instances with complete strangers. We had complete control over the experience, and it was good.

Had this game truly evolved since I last played it? Exploring the meticulously crafted areas of this game seemed to take on new meaning when it was shared with others. The “Kill X Monsters” quests became genuine adventures. And if we failed, it was never a big deal. We didn’t have to hear the endless rantings of a Guild officer who clearly invested too much time into the game. It was a game after all; this was supposed to be fun.

So when it was time to say goodbye to Hykrion, I wasn’t leaving because I came face to face again with the game’s shortcomings. Rather, it was because our game group had disbanded, and there was no hope for recapturing the dynamic that allowed me to appreciate the game’s most basic elements: playing and cooperating with others. World of Warcraft did its best to make us feel a part of the universe, but for me the time had come to say goodbye again.

Wrath of the Lich King comes out in a week, but I won’t be experiencing any of the content. We only made it to level 48.