So, here's my story.

I started playing wow in highschool, when I was maybe 14 or 15. I started right after another mmo turned to dirt to me. Star Wars Galaxies was what I played prior to wow. The combat upgrade came and i quit. My best friend continued to play and got me to come back to it. Then the "New Game Enhancements" came, and I quit and he quit.

We tried planetside. He got into that while I played guild wars with some other friends from highschool. I leveled too slowly and got left behind. My search started up again.

We tried everquest 2. He got into that and I didn't. Another friend was quitting wow at that time to play everquest 2.

Me and my best friend started having LAN parties where we'd play Halo, or Warcraft 3. Then we got into wow. We both rolled tauren hunters. He got to level 35 or something and I was level 20. I quit and went back to guild wars because they had a new expansion.

I played GW for a while but my friend kept telling me how fun it was to raid. How 40 people had to work together to accomplish a single task. So I got back into it. We played and we played, and we kept playing, and it hurt my grades in school. I'd play til 3 in the morning and sleep a few hours and then go to school, often falling asleep in class.

Some stuff happened that I can't remember.

I was off at a university for my first year there, second year in college. WotLK hits. I go buy the collector's edition at midnight. Did I say I bought it, I meant I had one of my new college friends buy it for me to feed my addiction. I still owe her over 100$. I sat in my room for 4 days straight, ditching class, and only leaving my room to eat twice. I would play wow, and then fall asleep in my bed right next to my desk. I wouldn't shower or anything. I'd try to make bathroom breaks while I was flying between flight points.

Fast forward to this summer. Another one of my good friends, who had never played wow, decided he wanted to start playing wow shortly after I had quit for the nth time. We started back up, 5 of us. Sitting in a basement playing wow at the same table, drinking 12 packs of diet pepsi in a matter of a hour, eating junk food, etc.

My 4 friends still play. I quit about a month ago. We did Naxx, OS, Ulduar, TotC, and then ICC came out. I tanked trash to rep farm. All the while my friends were becoming more and more pvptarded. I am awful at arena. I have 2 80s, both of which are highly common classes in the top 100. A warrior and a hunter. Not to mention my slew of other alts ranging anywhere from 20-40. One day after a confrontation about how my friends only wanted to pvp when they knew I was not good at it, I logged off and haven't logged back on since. I canceled my acct the next day. I still talk to my friend through skype because we're all off at college for the most part and we all live in different town. I sit and listen to them talk about wow, call for polymorphs on this target, hexes on this, cleanses, etc. It pisses me off. Tonight they were talking about rerolling on a new server because they were sick of our server. I had that sudden urge to go reactivate my account just to play with them, but I didn't.

I never want to play wow again.
I never want to be addicted to wow again.
I am going to show this to the people in my story to try to get my friends out before they are not my friends anymore.
I will keep fighting the good fight.
Stay the course and live strong.
Get out and live life.

Thank you for reading my story.
Sincerely,
Nick Langston