Introduction
The purpose of this story is to outline the journey I personally took, starting from just before I was introduced to the World of Warcraft game, following through each expansion as I grew to become a man, and the current state as I write, several months to a year after the launch of the sixth expansion, Legion. You will be taken on an a trip through time back to 2004 when I was 15 years old, and how my real life world related with my experiences in the gaming scene. You will learn what it meant to create a new identity for myself; that I could truly be whoever I wanted to be, and I could be damn good at it.
The Beginning of a New Era
My journey began a few months after the official North American release of World of Warcraft (aka WoW) in 2004. I was in the 9th grade in high school. I had a lot of experience with gaming for back then – with my favourite MMO’s (Massive Multiplayer Online) being Helbreath, Ragnarok Online, and MU Online. Other than maybe Ragnarok, these were not very well known games, so if you remember these, kudos to you! At this time, I had no clue World of Warcraft existed.
Two of my friends were talking during lunch about some game, it sounded pretty lame to me. “Man, I played forever last night. I had so many quests to do in the Barrens and I’m still level 16!” The other replied, “All my gear was broken from some Alliance piece of shit who camped me for like 2 hours”. They turned to me to ask me if I was going to get the game. Even though they were complaining about their misfortunes, they absolutely loved this game. I’ll be honest, their enthusiasm about the game intrigued me..
At this time in my life I was 15 years old, I was a very skinny, awkward teen, with confidence issues. These confidence issues began in the 7th grade when my best friend, Matt, moved to the USA – his father was relocated to Kansas for work. I remember shortly after he left, I was really interested in this girl at school. I still remember it as if it were yesterday; standing in front of her locker, talking to her before class started. After months of deliberating, I had finally mustered the courage to tell her that I “liked” her. Her reply was, “You mean like, as friends?”. I probably blushed, embarrassed, but I was committed at this point and had to power through it. “No… I… like, like you”, I said with every morsel of strength I could muster. The next four words out of her mouth would devastate me and scar my confidence for the rest of my adolescence.
“But, aren’t you gay?” she said. “I heard you were gay”.
As I am writing this in 2016, I hope kids these days don’t have to go through the same feelings that I had experienced after this moment. Most of us can agree that there is nothing wrong with being gay, straight, or any other orientation for that matter. Just be yourself, because that is the best “you”. The world has changed a lot since 2002 and hopefully those things are more accepted these days, but I am probably a little naive to think it still wouldn’t affect a kid like me the same way. I didn’t know what to say to her other than, “Of course i’m not… what are you talking about?”. It turns out, a kid in my grade had been spreading a rumor that because I used to spend so much time with my friend, Matt, it meant I was gay.
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