2022 is nearly over, and for me, at least, it’s been an incredibly challenging year full of some really dark points. This is the first time that my holidays have be structured like they are in over a decade. I lost something important to me, an element of my life that I assumed was immovable, and now it’s gone and it’s never coming back again.

That doesn’t mean I’m asking for sympathy, though. Literally at the time I’m writing this, I’m still on a cloud over getting some absolutely wonderful news, and it looks like 2023 is already poised to be a significant improvement. The year has been challenging, but it’s had bright spots, too. But it does mean that I’m waving goodbye to a life I lived for a long while.

You know, just like you’ve probably had to say goodbye to a lot of MMOs. Like I’ve had to say goodbye to World of Warcraft at least half a dozen times. No, not in the “I’m leaving and never coming back” sense; that’s performative nonsense. I’m talking about the WoW that’s never coming back because it wasn’t ever really about the video game alone.


The first character I played was a Paladin, and I made a group of friends. We formed a guild, and it went really well for a while. Then personal issues came between us, arguments happened, things were said that you couldn’t take back, and when it was all over I was logging out and not really planning to ever log back in again. I was 23 or so; back then performative nonsense was kind of on-brand. Growing up means looking back and realizing that you used to be a twit.

Obviously, I didn’t stay gone. I went back, and then I drew my future wife in, and we made another group of friends and connected with them and then that ended for various reasons, again. We moved on. Another group. We had good times. Things ended. Rinse and repeat, time goes by, and while our relationship stayed strong, the same group of people did not remain our bosom buddies from launch until now.

This is not unique to WoW and is not really about that, either. The people I play Final Fantasy XIV with right now are almost entirely not the same people I met when I first started playing the game. Do you remember the FFXIV RPC? I definitely do because it was formed specifically to ensure that roleplayers congregated and had a server and could find one another, something that Final Fantasy XI had made difficult to impossible. It was unique and it was special.

And it’s gone now, having shut down earlier this year. Some of those people are my friends; some were my friends but aren’t any longer. And even the reasons for that vary; some were people I don’t dislike but have nothing in common with, some were people I now look at with a big yikes. So long, and thanks for all the fish.