Volo, I miss you

WoW is hard sometimes. I have guildies and acquaintances and friends and a few real friends in the game. Sometimes a friend up and disappears one day. Maybe they went to a different guild. Maybe they quit WoW. Maybe they stealth server transferred, or deleted that toon in a fit of rage. Maybe they died.

No matter what happened, if they were a reasonably nice person their loss will be felt. More the closer you were with them.

It seems like I wouldn't have to spell out that the people I know in WoW are friends. We play a video game together. ISD. Gnoxen. Woonie. Smoovesta. Ariyn. Babzy. Ratrider. Nothinman. Drognin. Jataka. I know them by their character's names. A few of them I've met in person. But even the ones that I haven't met in person I consider friends who have fallen out of my life. And I miss them. Just as much as if we'd met in person and had taken classes or worked together.


At the end of July Clariana/Oldbw/Ildiavolo let everyone know that her account would expire in early August and it wasn't going to be reactivated. Volo was bored of WoW and wasn't going to be coming back.

We all took screen shots together. There were a few last hurrahs, as we ran a last dungeon or raid as a group.


Because WoW is all character names it's next to impossible to keep in touch with any of the people who leave WoW. (Unless you go RealID, and I'm only doing that with four people who I don't mind knowing what character I am on all the time.) It's like a friend moving to another city and changing their name. The person you know has disappeared and you have no way to get in touch with them again.

Maybe he or she will start playing WoW at some later time. Maybe years in the future you'll find each other in some other game. But probably not. Probably they and you are forever swept apart by the Real World, which doesn't even count that your friendship was real.


This is the last time I saw Ildiavolo online. She was planning on logging out sitting right there at the base of the falls in Orgrimmar.

Bye Volo. I miss you.


EDIT: Between the time I wrote this and posted it Volo got in touch with me! Totally made my day! Maybe sometime DraNgNon and I will get to meet up with Volo.