Who says WoW friends aren't real friends?

As if love in WoW wasn't enough to get me all warm and fuzzy, reading things my blog friends write is also enough to do the same.

I can't help but laugh today, as Tome, in her usual hilarious and charming way, has described her... hmm, TERROR is not quite the word, but she asks for forgiveness beforehand because our friend JD of Amateur Azerothian is having a raid party as a final farewell to him stopping playing this addictive game.  He says he'll still write though, which is a good.  JD really wants Tome to go: he said this and I was all "OMG that's so nice!!"
We could wipe for an hour on the first pull and I wouldn’t care so long as you come with us.
Tome says she wants to, but she feels like she'd be a dead weight.  Well, dead, literally!  I have to quote what she said in her excuses because it's so funny:

1. My performance would be strictly bush league, if that. I have never raided and I’m easily distracted by pretty colors and effects. I’ve noticed when I watch videos of raids I rarely notice bosses or anything, I’m just kinda groovin’ on the light show and sounds and the pretty colored puddles on the floor. Just saying.
2. I fall off things … a lot. From viewing a video this looks like a potential problem in this fight.
3. I run off things a lot. Yes, there’s a theme emerging here, I’ll get to it.
4. I get lost ALL THE TIME. Don’t know if that’d be an issue here but if I die the likelihood of you ever seeing me again is pretty low cause I’ll never be able to find you.
5. I only kitty Druid moderately well. As I’m usually alone, I tend to forget I can heal or bring the dead back to life, you have to poke me and yell at me to remind me, and then I think I only have about 52 mana.
6. At some point in the evening I can no longer SEE. This is part of why I fall and run off things, that and being a nitwit. I have very bad allergies so certain times of the year my contacts become unbearably painful to keep in. This can happen anytime between 5:00 and 8:00pm eastern depending on pollen count. And then you’ll be stuck with a blind raid noob Druid probably running about willy nilly, bumping into everything in there shouting, “Yay! Am I helping guys, huh, am I, is this the waaaaaaayyyyy … oops.”
Gosh, that woman had me in stitches.  Good old Tome.  If Faith was reading this she could empathise, I'm sure!  But I just wanted to say it was nice to read about good friendships forged online, it makes me feel happy.

It's funny, I think, how you meet people.  The people whose blogs I read and follow and comment on the most are those that I met in Blog Azeroth shared topics.  Thanksgiving was the big one.  And the 15 days of Screenshots.  And somehow those whose writing seems to grab you seem to be the ones who respond best to your own comments.  Isn't that funny?  I think that all the people I like best seem to also be some of the most frequent visitors to my blog.

Which comes to the point about online friends not being real friends.  I get told that a lot by people who don't do online socialising.  People think that people on the other end of a computer screen are somehow fake, or not real, or pretending.  "How do you know they're not an axe murderer? A paedophile?"  I get asked a lot.  How do you know anyone is or isn't something terrible?  You just have to know them for a while, and if they had any sinister machinations towards you, it should have shown up after a few months if not a year.  Well, that's what I think.

With the younger generations, socialising online may be changing with the whole Facebook and friends thing.  I'm not on Facebook, but I compare it to the social part of WoW.  It's not that I don't have real friend in the real world, but when you have an interest, you tend to gravitate towards those with the same interest.  So of course, my WoW friends, become my real friends.  After all, you spend 12 hours a week with them online playing a game - do you not think that if you spent 12 hours playing Bridge or Tennis or Rugby with the same people every week, you wouldn't become friends with them?  Of course you would!  Even now, if I had to name 5 people I would like to talk to, 3 of them would be WoW friends.

I did try to Twitter for the longest while, I think I made an account to participate in that Thanksgiving event I mentioned earlier, and I found it was a good way to promote my blog.  However, it got a bit too much for me, I coudn't keep up with all the tweets, and for a few months I was addicted to looking at it every few minutes!  I have since stopped using it, and I haven't missed it that much.  I have gone back to good old email when I want to tell people something.

Somehow I seem to have veered from what I really wanted to talk about.  And that was friends online.  Relationships and friendships online can sometimes feel more profound than real ones.  Why is that?  Because you rely on your written word to convey your friendship.  There's no distractions with looks, it's merely your mind, your words, your behaviour.  And what is friendship if not the meeting of two minds?

"Your greatest fortune is in the friends you have.  Especially tanks."

Comments

  1. It always annoys me when people make out that the internet is some weird alien planet. A dangerous and dark place, full of monsters and murderers who want to steal your soul and trap you in some strange afterlife where youtube videos of pets doing crazy things run on a continuous loop.

    The guy you sit next on the train to work could be an axe murderer (and looking at him, that's more likely than someone you play WoW with). Your boss could drown kittens in his spare time and that nice tea lady could have poisoned seven husbands with almond cake and cyanide icing. Yet when that turns out to be true, everyone acts all so surprised and shocked.

    On the other hand, playing on-line games automatically makes you dangerous, dubious and dodgy. You're judged and found wanting before you do anything.

    People you connect with are people you connect with. As Gertrude Stein said "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose". You don't have to meet them in person to know you have things in common.

    I just wish that those who don't play on-line games or hang out in on-line communities could be a little more tolerant of those that do (and yes, that was partly aimed at my Mother who thinks the internet should be destroyed before it goes all Skynet on us!).

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    1. @Erinys - that is exactly what I mean! When I talk about my gaming friends, people say that "They can't be real friends," and you just feel like saying... well, they're as real as anyone you spend time with, right? Are penfriends (way back before internet) any different to online friends you meet on a website when you look for people who have similar interests? Your mum makes me laugh Erinys, but lots of parents are like that sometimes! :)

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  2. Gravitating towards those with shared interests - exactly! I have been profoundly changed by these friendships, for the better, all 'round! Very grateful--more than I can say.

    Note to self: don't forget the almond paste and kitty litter at the grocery store...

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  3. @Matty - I think your friends would say the feeling was mutual :)

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  4. OMG! See what I mean, I totally missed this post yesterday!

    I can never understand that attitude, it seems it's like saying blind people can't judge someone's character without seeing them, which is so silly and online there are no distractions like race, weight, gender.

    And I remember back in the day when I frequented establishments where drink was served I met an awful lot of gentlemen who said their profession was "fighter pilot" and since it was in person I of course believed them, lol!

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