(AKA How I became Addicted to World of Warcraft)

For the longest time I turned my nose up at World of Warcraft, and at MMOs in general because I wasn't at all interested in paying a monthly fee to play a game. I couldn't understand how people could keep forking out money for a game while there are a multitude of single player games out there where you can slap down your hard earned cash once and then play them as long as you like.

This changed just after Christmas last year. My son gave me a World of Warcraft 10 day trial game card for Christmas. I figured "oh well, this is free, I'll give it a go". After almost being turned off playing it at all because I had to download multiple gigabytes of patches, I finally jumped into Azeroth as a Human Mage.

I was aware, of course, of the other people playing around me as I started out, but I very rarely interacted with them. A quest might send me out to a farm patch to kill some particular mobs, and there'd be a bunch of people milling around also doing the same thing. I would try to keep out of their way for the most part. If someone was looking like they were in trouble then I'd help them, but not much was said in chat. I learned how to buff people with Arcane Intellect because others would buff me with other spells.

It wasn't until I hit level 15ish doing some of the later quests in Westfall that I started joining groups to combine my might with others for some of the more difficult fights. Prior to this most of these fights were fairly frantic affairs and I died often. Then I was someone suggested that we group up to kill a bunch of mobs required for a quest. "Sure" I said. Suddenly these battles with harder mobs, and with multiple mobs at the same time were infinitely easier.

Then came the moment which everything suddenly clicked for me. I was doing some of the mid level quests in Redridge Mountains, and I'd grouped up with another guy. We'd been picking up a bit of loot and my bags were full. I only had some small bags that I had bought at the Stormwind vendors (I hadn't been brave enough to try the Auction House yet). So I said to this guy "I've gotta go back to town to sell some of this stuff", and he says "How big are your bags? I can make some 12 slot bags if you've got some wool".

That was my first ever trade with someone. It was absolute magic. There we were out in the field, and I gave him some wool cloth that I'd picked up of dead mobs, and he rattles away for a few seconds and hands back some much larger bags than I already had.

I slipped them in and instantly had a bunch more space, so we could head on questing even more. Absolute magic. I suddenly got what this whole MMO thing was all about.

It was just random strangers helping each other out; I got a couple of (basically) free bags, and he probably increased his Tailoring skill a couple of points.

I still mostly an antisocial solo player. Occasionally I'll join a PUG when I see other players who are obviously working on the same quest as me.

I'm not ready to join a guild; I feel like most guilds are built around being committed to the group. I don't want to be letting a group down in the middle of an instance, or even just running through questing when I have to nip away from the computer to deal with helping my kids with cleaning up a mess, or getting one of my kids into bed, or other any other mini emergencies.

I've been playing for about 3 months now. I've just hit level 59 with my Mage, and haven't yet dipped my foot into the PvP battlegrounds and raids etc, but that'll be my next foray into social play.