They are Family

... except I was never part of the WoW Family, and I'm okay with that now...

I had a gig on Wednesday, the same night the 30 Years of Warcraft Thing was all over the social medias. My YouTube account was duly linked to the feed (still not seen a mount, no idea what to do now, not that fussed) and literally was out of the door as Ion Hazzikostas told players they’re off to liberate the Undermine in 11.1. Sitting at the venue, I may have squeed out loud at the Player Housing announcement.

However, ever since, there’s been an undertone of discomfort at how the WoW portion of the presentation played out. I know what it is, and exactly which of the celebrity streamers who featured in the segment made me feel… it wasn’t simply uncomfortable. It made me angry. This was neither expected nor appropriate in my mind, and it made me think back to other moments that altered my view of Azeroth.

There’s been a lot of thought of the past in the last few months.

I am in a guild currently where one of Ibelin’s friends (who is featured in the documentary) now plays. It was a reminder of the importance of community in Azeroth that I’ve tried and failed now for several years to crystallise into anything workable using poetry. It occurred to me this morning, after finding someone else online in the Bluesky Migration who’s had a Warcraft poem published, what it is that has been holding me back. I play with my son in-game. He’s the only family I have there.

Because I don’t do family in the same way as most ‘normal’ people do, and because of the peculiarities of my relationship with gaming online over almost three decades, I don’t feel these people ARE my family. I respect the game, its players and those who foster that sense of connection. It’s not me, though. The game is not the be all and end all of my existence any more, and I am better for it.

I know, if it had become my job, I would never have become what I am now.

The characters in this game are my family. Selling the game like that to me was never going to work, and I remember a video by a Scandinavian commentator who pointed out that extrapolating a relationship between that association and getting me to part with cash to fuel it was… well, unhealthy. It still makes me angry too, and that’s an emotion that needs more work to eliminate than is currently taking place.

The characters gave me someone to speak to and become a part of when I was close to losing all hope and ability to be myself in the real world. Now I’ve changed that, and we are in a space where the compulsion to keep playing there and not living for myself first has been addressed, it is probably a good time to place some demons to rest for good. The key in all this is who the work is being written for.

I’m not telling a story. This should be a memoir of a virtual existence.

Knowing all this, it is time to unpick some things and remake others. It’s a project in progress that I don’t want to move over to the poetry Substack for a couple of reasons, mostly because there is only likely to be an interest in the finished product. Now I know what it was that has been making this so hard, why it isn’t simply about writing things down and hoping for the best, we should make some headway.

When we have stuff to say, we will say it here.