Breaking up

Actually the whole process was a bit too easy and fast. According to the information from Blizzard it could take as much as five days for my character to change server, time when she wouldn't be playable, but be in a sort of quarantine, sort of floating about in limbo, without contact with anyone. But actually it took less than an hour. A few key strokes, lots of "I agrees", leave your credit card number (20 Euro transfer fee) and suddenly larisa had taken her belongings and moved from her childhood server Kul Tiras to the unknown territory Stormrage. Time had come to head out for new adventures in the big world waiting out there.

"Too fast?" some of you may ask. Isn't it a good thing if Blizzard is having a well functioning service? And I could agree on that. But the time for adjusting was so short that it somehow was frightening. I had almost needed those five days in order to get used to the thought that Larisa was on her way. Away from all the friends she had got to know on the server, away from the well known guild tags, away from the security of the guild, out into the unknown. Instead this was a piece of cake, no more complicated than ordering any kind of goods on the net.

Suddenly Larisa was appearing again, ready for her new home world. But first of all there was a request to change her name. Obviously there was a little horde creep at Stormrage who had picked up MY name and if I wanted to I now had the opportunity to start all over again, to leave my old identity behind me. But of course I hold on to Larisa - as a measure of emergency I just changed the spot over the "I" into an accent (Larísa). To have a completely different name was as out of the question as it would be to abandon my pink pigtails. Larisa is Larisa.

Then I did my entrance on Stormrage, took a deep breath and joined my new guild.

This will be a new beginning in the game, that hopefully will mean more of raiding and instance playing than I've been able to get lately. If you're like me has caught the raiding flu you can't keep it back in the long run, and it isn't easily cured. It isn't enough that the guild is social and cosy in all sorts of way, without a certain amount of challenges at least I'm climbing the walls.

Will the transfer be a hit or will it turn out to be a wrong decision that I'll regret? That is yet to see. Thankfully Blizzard has nowadays lowered the cooldown on character moves. In only a month, when my trial membership runs out, I'm free to move back to Kul Tiras. All it takes is another bribe of 20 Euro. So I'm certainly not stuck here, if it shows that me and my new guild just won't connect. Arisal is for now still back at Kul Tiras, as a connection to all the friends I'll miss there. That feels good.

To me the WoW playing has turned into a sort of walk, a twisting path, which sometimes joins other paths. For a while I wandered together with my former guild, until I suddenly noticed that my path was going away in another direction. In that kind of situation I think it's stupid to struggle against it. I keep following the road wherever it takes me, and who knows, one day our paths may cross again and I'll meet my old guild mates where I least had thought of it.
Sunday I'll play Larisa, or I should rather say Larísa, in her new environment. I'm longing for it already.

I can't refrain myself from quoting a verse from the Swedish poet Karin Boye, that I keep coming back to:

"Strike camp, strike camp! The new day shows its light. Our great adventure has no end in sight."

So true.