#1 - Dec. 18, 2015, 8:05 p.m.
Time lost proto drake, Blue proto drake and ashes of al'ar to happen to drop on my next farming runs, Thank you! Just kidding of course.
I would rather give you something this year and that is my gratitude and thanks.
This whole game is just a "game" to some but for me this is a game that didn't just turn my life around but changed the way i live and see life today.
Before i started this game just little over 8-9 years ago I had serve lack of social skills, I was petrified about the not knowing, wondering if people just think I'm an idiot a waste of space heck even someone who shouldn't even be on this planet, my legs would quiver in fear just thinking about going to a family party and that's meant to be blood. bare in mind i was only 11 / 12 years of age at the time but this followed me right up until 19/20. School was a nightmare and i was over the moon to be out of there.
But that changed soon as i heard about "this" world, after some days of finally plucking up the courage to get on a bus(with my sister) and head to my local town to go buy the game, Soon as i saw the cover of the game in the window it instantly drew me straight in the store and I knew I wanted to be playing this, Without even thinking about what I was doing I was making the purchases of the game and the next thing I know I'm walking out of the store with the Game and the guide book, the journey home on the bus I was in my own world reading about the class abilities and what you get at each level trying to figure out what i wanted to be.
So even before installing this game without my knowledge it had already helped me because for the brief moment i didn't care about what the store assistant thought of me or what anyone on the bus and to say about me I just wanted to get home and roll that gnome Mage for my blizzard ability.
At first my parents didn't like the idea of me spending all this time on a game as they thought it would make matters worse, I know in some cases it does but for me thankfully it certainly didn't , I was in heaven i could speak to anyone and everyone and they couldn't even see me or judge me i couldn't get enough of it, sometimes i would just spend hours in gold shire just chatting to players and finally feeling accepted ( I was always accepted but it was just thoughts going through my weird little confused head).
Few months went by and i was still keeping to myself at school just looking forward to getting home and turning on my computer and becoming alive again. This would become a routine of mine, keeping my head down only having to speak when needed to then running home to get on the computer as soon as school was over, this happened for the rest of my school life no interaction with other kids in the real world only in the world I learned to love and adore.
So i have been playing wow for a few years just being a social and doing casual things like leveling a lot of alts, doing heroics and going through guilds to find the perfect one for me. That would be one without vent and asking me to join them on it, to be exact.
I spent an extremely long time avoiding the come join us on vent thing, even though i felt more alive and normal in this world joining a vent and actually using my voice and communicating with out a keyboard got me petrified, this is why i joined this game, because i can be me without anyone getting to know me fully just enough so i feel safe and that no one is judging me.
I jumped between a lot of guilds until i found one where they didn't have any form of communication apart from msn chat, Until that day came the guild message of the day when i logged on was along the lines of "COME JOIN OUR VENT IP:magicalnumbers. But this time I really didn't want to leave the guild, I was in the guild for 6 months plus just as a social so i avoided the question for a few weeks and hoping they would just drop it but these guys/girls where very persistent, even though my headphones had a microphone i unplugged the headphones just in case and said, sure i will join but i don't have a mic.
For about 1 and a half months i would join vent being a creep and listening to them all laugh and joke and i would respond in guild chat and i would hear them laugh to what i said, this was one of the best feelings i have ever felt i made 13 people laugh and they didn't just laugh you had some of them choking due to them taking a sip of their drink.
after a few more weeks of pestering they got me to finally say something on the microphone it was scary i began to sweat vigorously my hands began to shake as i held down that CTRL button my mouth opened and i said "Hello" vent erupted everyone was chanting holy heck he talks the questions got fired my way left right and center, But of course my "microphone started to glitch" truth be told even though i got such an amazing reaction I was still scared and extremely nervous. After 5 or so minutes of pretending my microphone was glitched i finally said again "Hello" after more chanting and cheering I finally held a conversation and the sweat eased off and my shaking hands stopped.
a lot of months went by of me acting like my microphone was playing up and then other days it was fine, My confidence started to go up and up until I became Raid leader and was actually calling out stuff and telling other players what to do without even sweating or worrying what they thought of me, I even started playing arena and looking for random players in Trade chat who would want to play some 2v2 with voice chat and even sitting chatting to two random strangers for 3v3. My confidence kept climbing and climbing.
I'm now working in a store as a manager and being face to face with over 100 customers a day all completely random strangers without a single quiver in my leg, I got a lady who i can call mine and things are going better than ever, I got the job because i used this as a personal achievement of over coming my socially awkwardness. I would never of dreamed of working in a store and being face to face with hundreds of customers a day
So Thank you to Blizzard, The community and the old players of kilrogg. I'm for ever grateful for what this game has done for me and will continue to love blizzard to the grave.
