Burning

Ali gets hard for exactly two things: hot girls and World of Warcraft. When the Burning Crusade beta dropped, he couldn’t shut up about it. New races, new zones, the whole expansion spinning up.

I never really got into WoW like everyone else did. Honestly scared I’d end up like one of those people—you know, the basement-dwelling type that South Park perfectly captured when they realized the whole thing stops being a game and becomes your actual life. It’s a world. It’s an existence. It’s the difference between being somebody and being nobody.

But then something about this expansion kept pulling at me. Blood Elves. Running raids with Ali and the crew. Getting stronger with people who actually cared about the same stupid stuff. I told myself it was beneath me, that I was smarter than that, and I almost believed it. Almost.

That’s the thing with these games though—they exist whether you’re in them or not. Your friends are in there right now, this second, grinding for reputation, chasing loot, becoming legends. The Burning Crusade was coming in a month. It was a whole new world opening up, and everyone was already thinking about when it would land. It was a door. Permission to want something you’d already walked away from.

I wasn’t sure if I actually wanted back in or if I was just tired of saying no. Probably both.