When I was 10 years old at my friend Chloe's house when she led me into her dad's office and pointed at a game flashing from his computer. It was World of Warcraft, a massively-multiplayer online role playing game that she played with her dad. Enthralled by the clean graphics and promise of an entire virtual fantasy world, I made it my life's mission to convince my parents to buy me an account for that game. That Christmas, my grandparents sent me the game and I was thrilled - immediately, I hopped online and began stumbling around the gigantic online world presented to me, searching for quests and coming to identify more and more with my character - the blonde-haired human paladin whom I had endearingly named "Lightswing".
Throughout the years since, I have come and gone from World of Warcraft - many new and memorable avatars have come into and departed from existence as I've done so. I've always liked to think that I have at least some spark of creative energy in me - from shapeless scribbling as a toddler to my well-meaning if melodramatic attempts at short-story writing in my teenage years, I've always tried to speak louder than my words could carry. My largest project, an enthusiastic dream of creating an MMORPG world in the vein of World of Warcraft's, has been ongoing since around the time I was 10 as well - while I don't have an exact date, I'd estimate it's been about 10 years.
It's strange for me to type these words out, because this admittedly niche hobby feels like such an intrinsic part of who I am. The lands I've imagined and the races I've peopled them with - from the avian Featherbeings to the haughty High Elves to the rugged Walrit (walrus men, and my personal favorite), these pulses of brain energy are just as real to me in some ways as the world around me. These characters and places and concepts have evolved with me, growing from a child's messy strokes at world building to an adult's fascination with cultures and religion. In a way, the inhuman beings I've conjured have come to be deeply human to me. They aren't friends, exactly, or replacements for the reality I inhabit - more like constants that assure me that I am who I've always been.
The 10 year old project feels to me like an old dog who I've grown up with, and now lumbers up to curl next to my chair, watching me knowingly. My energies have wandered elsewhere over the years - other settings, other worlds which I might will into being. There is a sort of limitless empowerment found in the art of world building - the search for completion in our unresolvable continuity. It is comfortable to me, and perhaps someday I will make something of this hobby for the world to see and appreciate as its own.
