I came to World of Warcraft through an outbreak. Not a real-life one, like COVID-19. Not even a narrative one in-game. It wasn’t a scripted occurrence. It was, instead, a failure. The Corrupted Blood incident circulated beyond the game. Epidemiologists studied it. Scholars wrote about it. A digital system had produced something complex enough to matter outside itself. By accident.
That was the threshold. Scholarship was my point of entry. It wasn’t entertainment or escape. It was scholarly structure. I logged in because it mattered within a discourse I cared about. I stayed for the same reason: for what it came to hold. In the lore. In the community sustained by the game’s ecosystem. I continue to stay for what it has come to mean to me.
I started playing when I was 33. A couple of years later, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. That meant surgery. While I was on the table, an earthquake happened. I was told afterward. Recovery took over a year. World of Warcraft was part of that time. It wasn’t escape then either. It was physical therapy. Something steady along a recuperation I couldn’t see the end of. WoW was something I could return to without pressure. My guild visited me in the hospital. Not everyone lived nearby, so only some could come. But they came.
Later, my financial circumstances changed. I had to step away from the game for years. But I never let go of being a WoW player. Not really. I couldn’t.
Watching Captain Grim reflect on his relationship to the game, I recognized the same markers. Entry. Duration. But the focus isn’t only on why we begin. It’s on why we remain. He holds on the question and it becomes unavoidable: Why are we still here?
We often tell ourselves a story in response. That we stay because the game is still good. Because there is always something new. Because we are choosing to. But staying is not only about enjoyment. It is also about devotion.
Time, stretched across expansions. Attention, held through constant change. Care—for guilds, for people, for routines. Identity, sedimented into characters that outlast phases of life. You invest. And what you invest does not release easily.
There was a time when the game allowed for slack, for boredom—long stretches where nothing was required. That space was not empty. It was where I made my own meaning. Farming pets. Grinding for gold. Moving at a pace that wasn’t measured. I wasn’t behind or concerned about missing out. I was inhabiting the world.
The game didn’t push you narratively either. You didn’t have to care about its central figures. You could ignore the main story entirely and still belong. You just did your thing. It felt, in that way, closer to real life.
But then something shifted. Not all at once. But enough. Now, the relationship is no longer reciprocal in the way it once was. The game continues to ask, but does not always give.
So the question sharpens: What does the game do with our devotion?
Because systems don’t just receive care. They organize it.
Retention. Engagement. Reset. Return. Devotion becomes participation. Participation becomes value. You can feel the accumulation.
But still—
Leaving is not simple.
Because none of it was false. The friendships were real. The raids were real. Showing up for each other—real. This is what is hardest to name. It isn’t only disillusionment. Not simply betrayal. It’s the recognition that something can be meaningful, and still be extracted from.
In a different register, I’ve been thinking about this as a question of ethical aliveness. How we continue to act, choose, and remain present within systems that no longer sustain us in return.
If Corrupted Blood was the reason I entered, this is the question that follows from having stayed: What does it mean to continue when return is impossible?
I am not leaving. But I am no longer willing to treat my presence as neutral. To log in is to participate. To participate is to contribute. This week, it was a pet. Last week, transmog. I bought both. So the question becomes: What does it mean to offer devotion to something that can only read my commitment as use?
We stayed because our staying meant something. That part was never the mistake.
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