Absolutely everyone was stirring, and it’s pretty great.
The Warlods of Draenor hype train has almost arrived at the station and even though I’ve been mostly busy lately with a mix of coursework and with practicing for the League of Legends tournament that my school is holding this weekend, I’ve still been keenly keeping my finger on the Blizzard pulse, especially with Blizzcon having been this past weekend.
With how easy it is to drop in and out of one’s online presence it’s a little stunning how long friendships that are formed over games can be. I had a tight-nit guild near the beginning of MoP that slowly broke apart a month or so into Siege or Orgrimmar as everyone’s real life began to get in the way of our shared hobby. Our main tank’s wife (and our Death Knight DPS) became pregnant with their third child. The off-tank was about to graduate high school and was going to pick up a second job to help support his family. Our Druid healer had to take the time off of the game in order to work on his doctorate and his Warlock roomate went with him. Our Shaman moved from Canada to Sweden because of a new job and no longer wanted to play on NA servers. One by one our small group disbanded.
This afternoon when I returned home from class I received a text from my former GM telling me that not only was everyone planning on playing again tonight and that they were all on TeamSpeak again for the first time in over a year. As toxic as many gaming communities are most of the time, there’s no doubt that every now and then they bring people together.
On a related note, I declined the opportunity to go on an optional field trip on Friday because of the expansions release the day before. In response to my reasoning, my Biology professor giggled a little and noted that “[she] knew [she] would have had at least one”.