On both a physical, and mental scale, the loss of a friend is hard. Now I’m not talking about the death of a close friend, but more or less the death of a friendship in game that might not ever come back.
In the past few days, we’ve had two of our best healers leave the guild and all around quit the game. For whatever reasons of thiers, we support them wherever they go.
The hardest part of watching them go was the fact that not only were they guild healers, but everyone in our guild is a friend. Guilds, even with thier occational drama, is like family, and watching someone leave with the nagging thought in the back of your mind saying you’ll never talk to them again, is hard to cope with for a while.
Someone you generally care about, concerned for thier well being, you want them to be happy and enjoy themselves in and out of the game, even if that means cutting the game off completely and letting the account die never speaking to that family again. No one realized it at first, but the impact of that loss of a friend is lasting.
The imediate feeling of loss once you see that person log off for the last time, you want them to log on one last time to wish them luck in life and to have fun. And long after that last log, the lasting impact on the guild knowing one of thier own is gone, it dents the guild confidence and moral.
In the case of our guild healers, we’re all really close to one another. We look out and help one another, laugh with one another, we’re a close knit group. When our two finest left, we were kind of at a loss. These two said people were masters of thier class. They knew the ends and outs of thier specs and gear, they were absolutely MINDBLOWING.
When they left, we didn’t know how to make up for that level of skill in our raids. Last night in Ulduar, we were having such a hard time on Ignis. There was so much damage going on, people dieing the the pot, the tanks going down quick, DPS that were actually following directions dieing because healers were in such disarray.
At the end of the night, we stood scratching our heads asking ourselfs “Did those two really make that much of a difference.”
Surprisingly enough, I believe they did. Not only are we down two amazing healers with wicked crazy skill, but two friends who are gone forever that we’ll never get to laugh with again.
Some people don’t understand why WoW players can spend hours on end in front of the computer, and talk to strangers all day. They don’t understand how the game can become so addictive. It’s not the game aspect that makes it addictive, it’s the social aspect of the game that keeps drawing people back.
Sure we’re all strangers at first, but when you start cutting up and joking in gchat, or throwing snarky comments in good humor at one another in vent with a playful gkick, these strangers quickly become your friends. You know thier names, where they come from, what kind of music and TV shows they like, thier favorite beer to drink during a raid. These people become friends.
And it’s always a tragic thing to say a final good-bye to a friend.
I’m sure everyone has experienced this type of loss in game of a friend, and you know how it feels to lose that companionship that made you want to keep logging on and playing. But as we all know, time heals all wounds… so I’ll believe that in time, we’ll always come back, and pick up loss ground, and keep trudging forward to try and live up to thier memory.
8 comments
Comments feed for this article
August 13, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Zalgosh
Back in February, I had to quit the game due to school was a bit overwhelming at the time. My guild at the time was having a lot of issues, with people dropping out for various reasons which eventually led to the destruction of the guild (our original GM had computer troubles and no money, switched GM to another friend, she had to quit cause of money and time issues, then I got the GM spot, when I quit I gave it to another guy who was always nice, but afterwards apparently turned into a douche).
Anyways, fast forward to June, graduated college and settled into my new job, so I started up my Wow account again. I logged in and I was surprised not only at how many of my old friends started talking to me, but how quickly they responded to me getting online. Within a few minutes of me getting on, they asked me to quit the old guild (which only had ~15 people in it at that point and 3 were my chars. The douche I had left in charge was still GM, but hadn’t been on in over 2 months. I still feel bad about making him GM, too, but no one else had been willing to do it.) and invited me to the guild I’m in now.
My girlfriend doesn’t get how I can consider these people actual friends, but I talk to and hang out with these people for hours throughout the week. Some of them I’ve known for over a year now, from when we were still levelling. It was really a great experience coming back and knowing how much I was missed.
August 13, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Mikata
It’s a shame to say, but most of the old guildies and friends from BC have left the game in general to follow differnet paths in life be it school, work, or personal. I miss these friends dearly. Occationally they’ll log back on an alt, or jump on a temp account just to see who’s still playing.
When I see these whispers from people that I had known and talked to for almost two years, I’m not ashamed to say it brought tears to my eyes to hear how they were. To tell me they were doing okay, just got engaged, moved out, started school. Granted they had no intentions of coming back, just knowing they were still alive and breathing was good to hear.
I’ve had friends IRL up and leave out of my life and never contact me again, be it in a game with someone I’ve been friends with for two years, or friends IRL who I’ve known for two years, knowing that the laughs, the jokes, the good times with that person are gone still hurts regardless.
August 13, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Ambrosyne
It’s not just that we lost Yarp. It’s that we lost Yarp, so I have to MT heal because we don’t have anyone else I trust with the job that isn’t needed elsewhere (alt holy pally? no).
When I MT heal, I can do nothing else. Nothing. When I OT healed on Ignis, I was often watching the pot, providing bubbles and renews for them and the OMG THEY ARE GONNA DIE penance.
So really, we need another MT healer so I can go back to my OT/support role where I’m actually pretty damn awesome, if I do say so myself.
August 13, 2009 at 9:55 pm
Mikata
Yeah… no offense to the new guy, but his main is a mage, not a pally… for a reason. I don’t think I do terribly on the Ignis fight in particular for tank healing simply because I can hot the tanks and I have two oh shit buttons for Flame Jets or Pot Victims when no one else can cast in mid air. (Even though I did have a minor slip up on War once… but that’s because he ran so far out of range, I couldn’t reach him without stepping into the scortches on the ground.) And especially after the recraft of my healing style, on fights like Kologarn or IC would be cake for tank healing if needed.
Granted Druids are still considered a ‘utility healer’, depending on how you play determines your best suited role as a healer.
August 14, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Zalgosh
On our 25 Ulduar run, we didn’t have quite enough of our normal healers, so we had 3 paladins tank healing for some fights. 1 was his main, and he’s awesome, but the other two are alts, and just one of them wasn’t enough help to keep the tank up.
P.S. I love the OT/utility healing role for the Ignis fight.
August 14, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Mikata
Let’s see… I believe for our ignis we had 2 holy priests, a disc priest, 1 Holy pally, and 2 resto druids. I had a nourish build, so I was in charge of one of the OTs while the other resto druid played the role of the utility/crotch pot healer.
It was hard keeping tanks up because the pally healers was the MT healer and Amber was trying to overload herself by helping him, and trying to heal the crotch pot, and bubbling other OTs and like…. Amber’s too OP and needs to chill.
But atm we’re looking into trying to get more healers for the guild that are… well…. reliable, to say the least.
August 14, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Zalgosh
I’ve noticed a distinct lack of resto shamans in general. I don’t know where they’re all hiding at.
They are reallly good for Ignis OT healing. I put up my earth shield and riptide on my OT, and then he only needs an occasional HW or LHW. I’ll usually get the crotch pot and raid heal as well.
May 22, 2010 at 1:53 am
[Combat Log]: Healer Corp Is Critically Hit For…Aw, Screw It You’re Dead! « Casual Hardcore
[...] Posted on August 14, 2009 by kyrilean OK, you’ve probably already read about it here and here, but if you haven’t <Brotherhood of Oblivion>’s healer corp has been [...]