I played from 2005 to 2009 and it was my first MMO. I learned a lot about my own addictive nature with WoW and MMOs in general.

I got lost in the minutiae of theorycrafting out builds and because of being in one of the more hardcore raid guilds during vanilla (5 raid nights a week), basically every raising resto druid on the server knew me and would cross faction just to hang out and talk builds and strategy. Was a ton of fun, but kept me so invested beyond even my raid schedule and when I quit, my druid alone had 1 year of in-game time.

Quitting WoW was easily the best decision I could have made (during WotLK) for my own mental health and for my (at the time) young professional career. I learned that of all the “close friends” didn’t actually give a damn when the game was removed from conversations. I had a lot of fun while playing but I allowed it to take over my social life to the point I didn’t realize I no longer had one.

It’s funny, the game that got me over WoW was Dragon Age: Origins which dropped within a few weeks of quitting. It felt and played kind of like a single player WoW in a weird way, and I just never felt like picking it back up.

I don’t really think about my time with WoW much and usually think about all the great moments, but then if I really think about it, I can remember all the incredibly toxic moments too and that keeps me away even though I’m sure 90% of all those people have moved on by now too.