When Virtual Life Meets Real Life...

Today me and the boyfriend went to meet a fellow guildie (whom I will now refer to as P). P was on holiday at a relatively close sea-side town and so I took a day off work and we got the train over for a few hours. It was only a short visit, a matter of 3 or so hours, as the boyf had to get back for work this evening. Slightly annoyingly another guildie was visiting the same town this bank holiday weekend and has come down a day early (this evening) but we weren't able to stay around a meet him.

For me, and the boyf, this was our first experience of meeting a guildie as such. Obviously, I live with a fellow guildie (the boyf) but he was my boyfriend long before I started to play WoW. Similarly, I have friends from university that play WoW, several of which are in my guild, but again I knew them in real life first. More recently, a work colleague of mine plays WoW and we do occassionally do things together in Azeroth.

Our sand castle version of Stormwind post-
 Deathwing's attack.

I built this sand castle :)

I really wasn't sure what exactly to expect. I have known P ever since I started to play the game casually on my boyfriends account. When I got my own account, Feb 2012, he was currently away from the game but once he got back he really helped me get to grips with my hunter etc. The boyfriend has known P for a number of years - I'm not exactly sure how many but I'd say we're esily talking 3 years. So, what I guess I'm trying to say is we both know P pretty well and could be fairly sure he was not in fact a she or likely to be awkward to meet / chat to.

We spent the day at the beach building sand castles (as you may have guessed from the pics). I'll point out that P has a son who was a brilliant excuse for such activities. Whilst we were chilling out on the beach we spoke generally about WoW, the guild and real life stuff. Our guild is very family-esque and everything is discussed including real life so todays conversations were nothing out of the ordinary. I guess if I'm honest it was just like the conversations we'd have on a normal day playing WoW. But this normalilty doesn't mean that it wasn't a big day for all involved.

I really would love to meet more of my guildies! Unfortunately me and the boyf are pretty far away (geographically) from most of the UK guildies which makes things tricky. Not to mention those that live abroad in places like Holland. I think it's a great experience to really meet someone that you spend many hours a week with in a virtual world.