Monday, September 23, 2013

WAR's Legacy

With WAR closing down, it got me to thinking about how it has affected my life.  Sure, it is just a game, but it actually did a lot for me other than just provide me with countless hours of entertainment.  It also has a legacy in the MMO industry, but I'll leave that for another time (or writer).

Blog.  This blog was started because of WAR.  I had been looking for an excuse to create one, and once WAR came along I had something I wanted to write about.  The blog has since expanded to cover a lot of different things, but WAR still has the most posts by a very large margin.  It has served me well as a creative outlet.

Projects.  Writing about WAR is nice and all, but the game inspired me to create some other projects.  When WARDB went down, the community needed another item database.  I ended up creating the Arsenal of WAR to fill the gap.  It was my first 'major' web project.  It also got me into programming WAR addons a bit.

The Arsenal of WAR gave me the experience I needed to create other projects, like Dev Spy and Sites with Benefits. Overall, I have learned quite a bit about web programming thanks to WAR.

Friends.  I've made many friends because of WAR.  Bother players and developers.  I still keep in contact with some of my guild mates.  I also got to meet a number of WAR developers over the years due to being invited down to Mythic.  Then there is the Core Tester program, which let me get to know some of the devs and other players even better.

So how has WAR impacted your life?