Farewell, Libranzer

I don't wanna go into that whole 'WoW sucks and is full of idiots' kind of garbage all over again. Or how I'm not a fan of pandas. Plenty of blogs about that, really. Done my fair share of bitching about it, as well. Thing is, I have friends who are actually crazy about the whole thing, one of which happens to be a GM and... well, let's just say he seemed awfully hurt when I kept on bitching about the game. I'm a troll at heart (the flaming type, not of the tusked variety), but even I get older, wiser and more mature. At a much slower rate than most people, but there ya have it. Friends working at Blizzard don't enjoy my bitching about WoW. Kinda like a certain friend at Frogster doesn't appreciate it when I crack jokes about Aion or Tera. Fair enough - I don't like any of them making fun of my work or the magazines I write for. Respect and friendship 101. Or something. I dunno... it's not the point of this entry, anyway.

Something has happened today. Something I wasn't expecting to happen in a lifetime. The end of an era. At a very early stage in our relationship, I have introduced my significant other to WoW. Just plain old vanilla, BC wasn't even out. Feels like eons ago now. She never played any computer games before and turned with her arrow keys like the complete noob she was. My old man was there, my brother played it and it all felt unlike anything we had played before. The enchanted teletubbie forests around Darnassus actually still felt magical and wondrous back then, my old man's dwarven hunter, Redbeard, felt so incredibly fitting and my night elf warrior was the biggest asshole on all of Alleria.

I had experimented with Ultima Online before, I used to play Ragnarok Online like crazy, but completely unfamiliar with the holy trinity of MMOs I was entirely oblivious about the concept of tanking or how that was supposed to be my job when I first stepped into the Deadmines. The first cape that actually resembled a, well, cape... the first gold coin in my inventory, the first pair of pauldrons... countless little milestones, everything was all nice and new - one of my friends wrote a rather witty blog about it a while back, comparing these experiences to the first time you ever get laid (and you're in the unlikely and fortunate position of stuff actually going as planned). You never forget these moments and as time goes by, nostalgia will make them even better and more exciting as they ever really were.

I remember our first little guild. 'Die Glücksritter'. Loved the name and the idea behind it, but the whole thing eventually fell apart when our more ambitious members decided to join the bigger, more powerful raid guilds. Nowadays, that's perfectly normal - you join a leveling guild for their bonuses and benefits and as you grow up, you leave them for a raid group, a band of pvp nuts or whatever floats your boat. And then there were the Goatbusters. Fun, tiny guild I had started with Claire after we had infected the entire family with WoW fever.

I don't wanna get too boring with all the details here, but we did have lots of fun, went on some incredibly exciting dungeon runs and even a few raids here and there and we've got quite a few stories to tell. You can probably relate if you've stayed with the same guild for several years. There is something undeniably fun about the whole thing: You know a bunch of regular people in real life, they're average Janes and Joes like everybody else, but on WoW, we've all slipped into our roles, everybody had their one favourite main character. It's a bit like a bunch of people with secret identities, with alter egos, boring office guy turning into a blood-thirsty orc at 8 every night. You get the idea. Like those cheesy super hero families. Everyone had that one silly character that best suited their personality. It was all just fun and games, but it was a neat little escape from real life.

The best part about it all was leading the guild, taking care of things along with Claire's druid: Libranzer. Yeah, I know. And don't ask me. Something about her being a Libra and what have you, I don't know, she's my partner, you don't criticise that kinda stuff, let's move on. And we'd decide where to go, what to do, one of us would do the tanking for the rest of 'em, we'd help with basic gear setup (i.e. what gems, enchantments etc. to use) and show off with 2on2 arena ratings higher than anyone else's - for as meaningless as they most certainly are.

But as time went on, I gradually lost interest in the game until it turned into nothing but a chore. Claire wanted her arena gear, so I'd log on to cap conquest points with her. Raids? Seen 'em all. At least the ones our guild could actually handle. Dungeon runs with the guild? Again? For the 20th time that month? Not in the mood. I really just showed myself to help Claire get her stuff and logged off again right after. At some point, even Claire got bored of the arena, of constantly grinding for stuff that would become obsolete after the next patch. So I stayed away and she only logged on 'for fun' and to chat with the family.

And tonight it finally happened. She mentioned it on several occasions, but I didn't believe she would ever do it: She passed on guild leadership to her sister. She is not going to renew her subscription after it runs out, she's not buying MoP and even though she had beta access for about a month now, she has not actually looked at the beta. Not once. And for reasons I cannot quite explain, I feel rather sad about the whole thing. Not sad enough to be wanting to stop her in any way, of course. But this is it. This is actually it.

You see, I have quit WoW plenty of times. And most of the time I had zero intention of coming back, but it's hard to live in a relationship where your partner spends up to 8 hours a day playing that stupid game. In a way, she was my anchor - she'd discover some cool new features that came with some new update or an expansion or what have you and she'd drag me back. And I won't lie to you: For as much as I hated the farming, the grind, going after some stupid mounts, sets and achievements I never really gave a fuck about, there was something incredibly fun about these days, as well.

Claire and I simply kicked ass. We tackled dungeons together that nobody else in the guild could finish. We were unstoppable in duels, we topped the scoreboards in pvp, we ran a nice little guild and we explored Azeroth side by side. It's one thing doing all of this stuff with friends, with a guild, with people you enjoy hanging out with. It becomes a lot more fun and meaningful if you're doing it with someone you love. I know it's all a bit cheesy, but what's the most heroic thing most of us will do with our partners in real life? File a tax return?
On WoW, we fought side by side, beat countless opponents in the arena, helped each other through the toughest dungeons, saved each other's lives countless times and faced all kinds of crazy challenges together. And eventually, you start caring about your partner's character just as much as you'd care about your own.

Alright, alright. I know there's a whole bunch of people out there, who don't know shit about RPGs and who just play whatever class is considered most OP at the time. People, who change race, gender and faction more often than their own underwear and who don't actually get attached to their toons. I hope you're all gonna die of ass cancer, but that's a different story. But Claire and I (and everyone in the guild, really) love our characters and we hate leaving them, for as much as WoW bores us these days. So seeing her pass on guild leadership, knowing she's gonna park her ass in Moonglade to 'settle down' and end her adventuring days once and for all, watching as Libranzer takes her well-deserved rest... it's sad. It's also incredibly cool, because I don't have to feel guilty about emptying those 40 gigs of space this monster of a game was occupying on my HD, but it's mostly sad. I'm gonna miss her. I'm gonna miss those days where her and I would slay dragons, keep the squishy guild mates out of harm's way and brag about our stupid arena rating and the new gear we'd obtain faster than anybody else.

Those are some of the coolest gaming memories I have. And no matter how much WoW may change, whether it remains the most successful game of all times for another 8 years or whether upcoming new titles will eventually render it outdated and obsolete, no matter how annoyed I am at the bunch of drooling idiots, who call themselves gamers today (did you SEE those mutants at Blizzcon?), I will always treasure those days, those adventures and all the fun and excitement we've had.

And even though Libranzer and Sabreclaw will finally settle down for good, there's already a new, eager young pair of adventurers eager to explore a whole new world. Tyria awaits, Guild Wars 2 is on the horizon and we can't wait to write a whole new story on there, obtain a whole bunch of new fond memories and fight our way through dungeons and legions of foes, which we've never encountered on any other game. And we're bringing a whole lot of friends, who will join us when we create our next little guild...
So fare thee well, Libranzer. Rest well, Sabreclaw. Azeroth is in the hands of a new, more panda-friendly generation of heroes now as our old heroes finally retire. But our next big adventure is only about to begin.

-Cat