Sisterhood of Warcraft

This post is dedicated to my girl friends on World of Warcraft. To Jojo (the bunny slayer), Amanda (my companion healer), Norice, Canaan, Tonya, Kindall (who we lost this week)...

World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively online role playing game (MMORPG) which was first released in 2004. 11 years and 5 expansions later still active till today. I'm pretty proud to admit I'm a vanilla WoW player. I've seen the glories (and glorious lags) of the 40 man raid and the original Naxxaramas. I've raided in every WoW expansion, killed every raid boss in Burning Crusade. I’ve been decked out in T3 and T6 gear at the end of Vanilla and BC respectively. And till today, I'm a 1-toon player! (Okay, I admit I switched toons in the Burning Crusade expansion).

But today, I'm not going to talk about all the fantastic achievements on WoW I've been a part of, but rather celebrating the friendships I've made over these 11 years.

11 years ago, a female player on a MMORPG was much rarer than it is today. Most girls back then joined the game to play with their brothers, boyfriends, husbands, sons and even dads! My younger brother did entice me to join the game, which he eventually quitted in BC, and I stayed. There are many guys playing female toons, some admittedly to get more help from other guys. Yes, guys online are still today very gentlemanly. They help most of us girls to level our toons, finish a difficult quest, give expert advice on gear or talents or anything! (Thanks to Beeps who taught me how to heal efficiently.)

But, we girls do eventually figure out who's the real girl. Admittedly, it wasn't too difficult especially with voice chat (Mumble, Ventrilo, Teamspeak). In general, girls tend to find map reading harder, which is challenging especially when the map in WoW is huge. Girls are naturally more apt at multi-tasking and most of us love chatting, and somehow the majority of us hate talking over voice chat. So, we type and play. Even when raiding! Most of us will even get a chat addon to help us sort chat windows so we don’t miss a tell (private message). My guild even had a private channel for all the ladies. Also, most of us play healers or tanks – probably coming from mothers being more nurturing and protective. Girls also being very relational, are amongst the best raid organisers – but not the best raid leaders.

Typically in a 3-4 hour raid, plus 1 hour pre-raid time, we would have chatted about everything in our lives from our work or studies, our families, our other hobbies, what other games to play, our beliefs. Most casual raiding guilds would raid anywhere between 2-4 set times a week. This translates to up to 20 hours of chat a week. Of course, outside raiding we will PvP, quest, farm, etc. 20 hours of chat a week is probably much more than any other relationship outside the immediate family.

Indeed with so much time spent together, our lives become so intertwined in a very different way. Outside the immediate family, we are most certainly the first to know about something important in each other’s lives. That could be something small like, they got a new trampoline for their kid, or their kid is having a bad cold, or it could be much bigger like a new job or new pregnancy. It could also be something really bad like someone’s parent passed away or bad weather wrecking their car.

In 11 years, most of us have grown from high school or college kids to young professionals, or from young professionals to mum to 3, or from mum to grandma even! We have indeed shared many transitions of lives together. Unfortunately, we’ve also see how for some of us gradually how our intimate relationships with the men in our lives have disintegrate into divorce.

Most of us WoW players don’t really play the whole year around. We play for 3-6 months at a time and break for the next 3-6 months. For our guy friends, we don’t really keep up with the relationships, but we make sure we have our girl friends on other means of contact. We used to use Instant Messengers (like MSN), then it gradually moved to Facebook. For those who live locally, we even have each other’s mobile (cell) number. We also kept in contact by playing another game together. Some of us have even made the effort of meeting up in-person for either a meal or to game side-by-side. The other thing odd is even in real life (RL), we know each other by screen name. So I do have a whole bunch of friends who still know me as Matty today. (Tip for all those kids who are creating a screen name, pick something more respectable as it will stick!)

For the fortunate some of us, WoW has brought us other RL relationships. We've married people on WoW and seen the relationship blossom to RL marriages. WoW has given us a platform to see how men act among each other and to other women. WoW has also given us a comfortable place to chat and know men and a good physical barrier preventing any unwanted sexual advances. I personally have reported men who have made lewd comments - who have ended up getting banned. Of course we have also seen online relationships which have not worked out well at all, particularly when either party have not been truthful.

This week, the women in our guild learnt of the death of one of our girl friends.  To all those who have told me online relationships aren’t real, I hope my post on her Facebook page will say it all.

“I'm missing you Kindall. I still can hear your voice while we raided together. I enjoyed all our late night chats. Even though we've never met in person, and living thousands of miles away, today I cried because you are no more. I hope you rest in peace. May God comfort your family.  <3 Matty (Mathealer)”

I spoke to another girl in my guild, she cried too.

To all my Sisters in Warcraft, I treasure our friendship way more than all the first kills or achievements or that coveted new mount or pet. I hope even when WoW eventually dies, I hope our friendship will never fade. <3

With love,

Materials (Aka Matty, Mathealer)

Mathealer is a Blood Elf Holy Priest playing in Centuria on Azjol-Nerub. Her player love theory crafting, raiding, questing and farming, and doesn't enjoy role playing or PVP. 

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