I started playing WoW the fall of 2012, a good six years ago. For the first year I played, I spent maybe an hour a week leveling my character. It took me an entire year to level that one character up to max level (at the time, level 90). To put that into perspective, if a bit of real effort is put in, most gamers could probably do that in a few days. I also only leveled with a couple of real life friends, that played just as rarely as I. For the most part we would do some questing that doesn’t require players to be in a group. Sometimes, though, we would go into Dungeons, and that required a group of 5 people. However, WoW offers a way to randomly group up with people, and often you join a few people you don’t know, do the content, then leave the group never to see them or even remember them again. The content of Dungeons while leveling is easy enough that someone like me who didn’t understand what I was doing could get through them no problem. As such, even though it ‘required’ 5 people, there was no need to coordinate anything amongst the group, no need to communicate, no need to even perform. What I remember of it is always going to where a bunch of flashy things were happening (the mobs we needed to kill were usually there), and randomly pressing buttons that should allow me to hit stuff. Sometimes I wouldn’t even target anything and would be hitting nothing, and I didn’t even realize. It didn’t matter. There wasn’t anything about the content that required thinking, you could do whatever and just accidentally finish it. Essentially, it felt like a mindless solo game that you could do at the same time with friends if you wanted, like Candy Crush with Friends or something. What constituted the ultimate fun in the game was having my character and my friend’s dress up in sexy Christmas outfits and take screenshots.

I was a ‘gamer girl’ in name only. That first year was a time I hovered in a weird in-between zone, where I thought of myself as a ‘gamer girl’, telling myself I now fit that nerdy yet cool cachet, but I didn’t even realize I barely dipped my toes in the gaming world. It was the only time in my gaming career that I took pride in the term ‘gamer girl’, for the appearance of uniqueness it lent me (“you’re a gamer girl? Wow…. can I have your number and take you to dinner?”), instead of taking pride in myself for what I was really doing.

This all changed about the end of 2013 or beginning of 2014. For one, I had finally reached max level (in fact, I’d done so on two characters, the second character probably only took a month or so). Secondly, I had discovered there were things called Raids, something that was only available to max level players. I discovered Raids when I realized that there were people running around with these amazing wings that would flash behind them.

I’ve always been vain, both in game and out, so I knew I needed to have those things. And in order to have them, I needed to do Raids. Now, perhaps the biggest part of WoW gaming is raiding, but even when I realized this I was afraid to go, because they required at minimum 10 people (25 for the easiest difficulty, called Looking for Raid). I didn’t even know what would happen, if I enter would people see me? If I messed up would they be upset? 24 other people I didn’t know! I’d spent over a year treating this game as a basically solo game, I wasn’t sure I would be able to deal with more difficult content that involved so many other strangers. It really took all the clout those wings could muster on my vanity for me to overcome that fear and go into Raids.

I went into a Looking for Raid difficulty Raid, and realized, omg, this is a whole new world of gaming. Years later, I’d have heated debates with raiders about the benefits of LFR Raids. Most high-end raiders believe that it’s far too easy and fosters a mindset where you don’t need any coordination or performance to be able to kill bosses. I’ll admit that this is true, yet when I first entered that LFR Raid, I, for the first time, realized there was at least something semi-intelligent to WoW gaming. You at least can’t have no idea if you’re not targetting anything. You did sort of have to watch what was going on around you and react. Because, unlike the leveling Dungeons, if you’re standing at the wrong place at the wrong time, you would still die. True, LFR really is easy enough that you could die and the other 24 people would still kill the bosses, but now you’re among 24 other people, and they are aware if you’re dead almost all the time. In fact, they’re aware if you’re off at the side obviously not knowing what to do. And ‘knowing what to do’ was actually relevant here. Not just move-to-flashy-area-and-hit-buttons. Sometimes we would be required to stand away from flashy areas. Sometimes we would need to run around gathering things. Sometimes we would need to turn around to face specific directions. I later learned that these things were called Mechanics, and they are the element that tips this game over into a game of intelligence, rather than a game of mindlessness and prettiness.

When I started raiding is when I left the limbo of being a gamer girl in name only, and truly started entering the world of gaming.