WoW, just WoW.

I don’t make it a secret that I play World of Warcraft (WoW). I don’t tend to talk about it a lot on my blog, mostly because unless you play the game, you probably really wouldn’t understand the fascination. But, I know everyone who blogs would understand the feeling of becoming friends with someone you met through the internet, whether it be a game or blogging, or what have you.

When you play WoW, there are certain aspects of the game that put you with other people. You are on a server, which there are several, and the people on your server are your community. You form guilds, which is a collaboration of people you enjoy playing with. You may get to know some people better than others. Such is the nature of things. Think of it like being at work, in a sense. You may meet a coworker that you are friends with once they leave the company, and you may leave the guild and never see some of the people in your old guild again. When you get together with people, you start to get to know them. Some people open up more than others. Some stick purely to talking about the game.

Another aspect is that each server is divided into factions. There are two factions: Alliance and Horde. If you play Alliance, you compete against the Horde and vice versa. The only way for cross faction communication is to play both. And some servers don’t allow this, but mine does. You also have races. Alliance races are: human, dwarf, gnome, night elf, and draenai. Horde races are: tauren, undead, orcs, trolls, and blood elves. All I will really say about the races is that taurens look like cattle.

But this story isn’t about my server, or really about the game. It’s about getting to know people. There is a blog I read from a guy who plays a hunter on another server, called BigRedKitty (his blog and his game name). BRK plays alliance but since he has a large readership, he puts on events. In honor of Cinco de Mayo, he put together ” Running of da Bulls” where he invited players to create a level 1 tauren on his server.  BigRedKitty, recently lost a friend of his, a member of his guild named Shavan. In honor of his friend who died, BRK dedicated “Running of Da Bulls” to her, because she loved cows. He asked people to donate to help out his friends family, and got over $500 dollars. Shavan’s family, play the game and also participated in “Running of da Bulls for Shavan”, because they knew she would love it.

Here is a video:

From WoW Insider - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzM40dF86Go

I didn’t participate in the event, but I have seen a lot of people from the Cenerion Circle server posting on it. A large group of them keep blogs. It seemed to have gone well. It touched me that the family appriecated how much people came together for their daughter, because I know they are going through a hard time. But most of all, it makes me feel like there is a lot more kindness and compassion in the world than it sometimes seems.

And an event like this is a far cry from what some people would have you believe.