WTB Mana!

Hello, loyal readers of Aunaka Heals!

My name is Félicité, and I’ve hijacked Aunaka’s blog today. She asked me to write a bit about how gaming has changed my life. So if you have any complaints you know who to talk to. It’s an easy topic for me to discuss, but this is my first time writing a blog entry, so be kind.

 

What it really means to me

Gaming, for me, has always been about the social aspects. Do I enjoy the personal satisfaction that comes from downing a raid boss after approximately 10,000 wipes? (I may be exaggerating just a tad there…).

Do I relish those rare occasions when I actually manage to kill someone in PvP? Hell yes, especially since I’m not kidding about the rarity of those events.

I play clothies.

I squish easily.

I even have a certain fondness for the mind-numbing repetitive farming required for professions.

As a night shift worker in a high stress job, sometimes spending an hour in the morning throwing a fishing line into a lake of lava is just what I need to come down from my adrenaline high so I can sleep.

But in the end, it’s my friends who make the game for me.

 

Gaming is about your friends

I’ve been very lucky in my gaming life. I got into MMOs in high school, and yes, I’m one of those female gamers who was first introduced to the world by a boyfriend.

The boyfriend didn’t last. The gaming addiction did.

But I don’t particularly enjoy playing by myself, so I rotated through whichever games my friends were playing at the time.

• Everquest
• Guild Wars
• Aion
• World of Warcraft
• Star Wars: The Old Republic

It was in WoW that I first took a chance on a group of complete strangers and joined a guild. It could have been a complete disaster, but instead I met a whole lot of wonderful people (and the occasional asshole, but what can you do?).

They guided me on my first forays into raiding and taught me important things like how not to stand in fire.

When that guild eventually crumbled due to real life pressures on the leaders, I decided I’d had so much fun with them that I should seek out another guild. Only this time, I decided to make a fresh start on a different server.

Oh, and I was going to play Horde.

Again, I lucked out.

I picked a guild that was recruiting in Trade Chat just because I liked their guild name. I made friends amongst my guildies. I became part of a core raid group for the first time, since they were casual raiders and very tolerant of my obnoxious work schedule.

And just as Cataclysm came out, I met a new guildmate, a warlock named Raineva (go read her blog when you’re done here!). After we sorted out who was stealing whose quest kills in Mount Hyjal, we got along great.

Raineva would eventually introduce me to her friends Aunaka and Kandosii.

We all raided together, switched over to SWTOR for a while, came back to WoW, formed our own guild, switched servers, joined Aunaka’s former guild, etc, etc.

I didn’t really care what game we were playing, I just enjoyed hanging out with this particular group of people.

 

Present Day Happiness

On the real life side of things, I was having some issues with my job and came to the conclusion that I needed to relocate or completely lose my mind.

I was discussing this with some of my guildies when Aunaka said something along the lines of,

Just move to Florida.

 

To which Raineva immediately replied

Oh my God yes.

 

And I thought

Huh. That might just work.

 

I had friends down there.

There were jobs down there.

There were schools down there with the advanced degree program I was interested in. Why not just move to Florida?

I am delighted to say that in two months I will be doing just that. I’ll actually be living with Aunaka and Kandosii, and not too far from Raineva.

These people I met through gaming have become some of my best friends. They have literally changed my life…because in addition to suggesting the move, Aunaka also introduced me to my future husband.

He’s more a console gaming kind of guy, but everyone has their quirks and he tolerates my MMO addiction. We’ll see how he deals with three people raiding in the same room once Mists of Pandaria is released.

So that’s how gaming changed my life. How about you?

Thanks to Aunaka for letting me steal her space for a day, and thanks to anyone who actually read this far!

Fel