Welcome to my blog. As the title may imply, this blog is dedicated the online adventures of my girlfriend, Annie, within the virtual world of Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft. Having worked for Blizzard for five years, and being in the credits (for something innocuous and unimportant), I have a fairly extensive curriculum vitae when it comes to online worlds, video games, and World of Warcraft. I have recently discovered something new: Annie has never ventured into the sometimes frightening and always challenging World of Warcraft, and therefore has never experienced the depths of depravity, Chuck Norris jokes, acronyms, stress, and competition of World of Warcraft's online universe (hence forth: WoW).
In discovering Annie's lack of experience, I've also discovered that her experiences reveal careful details regarding the interaction between a virtual world and those individuals who have remained naive to their existence thus far.
Annie's first adventure came in the challenge of naming her character (avatar) within the game. When we first fired up WoW so that she and I could play side by side, she had no idea that she would have to create a character of her own. She was under the impression she would assume the role of a premade mario-and-luigi esque character. After realizing this was not the case, she quickly became lost -- she had no idea what to name her character.
A little more background -- we had chosen the same game world, or realm, that Annie's friends play on. The intent was to adventure with them when we got to their same level. Annie decided that it was appropriate to make quite the entrance into WoW and her friend's online lives. This, also being the same week that the final Harry Potter book came, became the perfect opportunity to simultaneously destroy her friend's enjoyment of the book, and serve as a constant reminder (to her friends) of this victorious feat. Thus, she settle on the name of "Potterlives". She created her level 1 blood elf mage, and began running around killing little angry cats and other assorted fauna. Potterlives continues to this day, and this blog will remain about the adventures of Potterlives as controlled by my lovely girlfriend, Annie.
