As I’m sure 99% of the blogosphere knows by now, Phaelia is closing the doors of Resto4Life. I don’t know if she is quitting the game entirely or just the blog, I couldn’t make it out from the entry, however, it’s definitely put a lot of thoughts into my head.

I remember a time when I figured I’d never quit Neopets. (shaddup, do you guys know how long it took me to get my Draik? =P) Of course here I am now having not touched it in months. I miss the friends I made there on the Neoboards sometimes, but other than that, there is very little that I do miss, and although I have tried a time or two, I haven’t been able to get back into it on the same scale that I was before. I have no regrets about the time I spent playing, and I made some accomplishments I’m quite proud of. But eventually I lost interest, and moved on.

World of Warcraft is like that. I think it’s something that we as a blogging community perhaps don’t like to think of sometimes. But it’s true. How many of us will still be playing this game ten or twenty years from now? Will it even be around? Even if it is in some incarnation, I imagine many of us will have moved on by that point. What that means for us as a community, is that these blogs we read and enjoy so very much will not be around forever, at least not in their current form. And it’s hard to deal with sometimes.

It’s perhaps ironic that it’s been on my mind a lot lately. I’ve reached a point where I sort of feel like I need to scale back the time I spend in game. I love this game dearly. Yeah, I try to deny it sometimes, but it’s true. I still have fun with the game. I am not quitting anytime soon, I don’t think (so please don’t think this post is about that!) But man cannot live on WoW alone. And there are days where I feel like I come home from work, I get onto my computer, aaand… I play WoW, I read about WoW, I write about WoW, I tweet about it on Twitter. And sometimes I wonder where that line is. You know what line I’m talking about. Where it becomes too much. Where it goes from being a hobby into being your only hobby. I often find myself wondering if I need a break or something.

And then my mind wanders to how I’ve lost interest in other obsessive hobbies I’ve had like this so fast. Sometimes seemingly overnight. It’s just a matter of time for this one, too.

In a way, it scares me, because when I think of all that, I inevitably end up thinking of this blog and this little community that has gathered here. What will happen when it comes to that point for me where I have to say goodbye? What would I do with this blog? How could I even bring myself to end something I enjoy so much? And more than that, I wonder if it all matters anyway. Will it matter decades from now when I look back on my life? Will it matter that I taught someone how to improve the way they played a class in some long-forgotten video game? Does it matter?

In the end though, I think it does. If for any reason, because of all the raw talent that is out there. Through this community I have met artists and writers and CSS masters and people whose blogs are packed with personality and humor and wit, and that’s only to name a few– I can only hope that Blizzard is at least marginally aware of this massive gathering of talent they have unwittingly drawn together, out of the passion for a video game, of all things. Positive influences from my guildies and in-game friends aside, I am extremely humbled to be a part of this community perhaps best known collectively as “Blog Azeroth“.

So, thank you, Phaelia. Thank you for being the person (well, alongside Bell) to really inspire me to make my own treedruid, who to this day is still the only thing in game that has really caught my interest anywhere close to what hunters do. And thanks for sharing your talent and enthusiasm with the internet.

And to everyone else, the specifics of what we blog about may not be important twenty or thirty years down the road. But positive influences only have to be very small, to be positive and meaningful. Thank you for being both, to me. I do not know how long our time together will ultimately pan out to be. But thank you for making the most of it every day.