After downloading all the patches that came out since I left the US last year, my boyfriend, Stick, and I restarted our long-awaited adventures on World of WarCraft. Can I just say that "long-awaited" doesn't even come close to how much I missed Ironforge, Stormwind and even the Barrens?

Even in China, I YouTubed South Park's now-famous Make Love, Not WarCraft episode, and forced my non-gaming co-worker to watch it with me. He said it was very funny but I think that had more to do with shutting me up than actually finding the Sword Of A Thousand Truths even a little bit amusing. I kept daydreaming about improving my Mandarin reading so I could play Chinese WoW, when in reality my character-recognition skills are almost good enough to read a simple menu.

More than I missed WoW, I missed playing with Stick. I've always thought smugly of our MMORPG cooperation when listening to my friends tell me their boyfriends are on a different wavelength. On EverQuest, City of Heroes, even playing D&D or Betrayal House, Stick and I work well. We're not so much a precision team as a dramatic three-hit-points-left rescue duo. That translates well to the non-gaming parts of my life. Planning how to pull just one murloc, and then replanning on the spot when the whole village is aggroed, was great training for teaching middle-schoolers.

Last night, I was back in the US, back with Stick and and ready to play our brand new level-one characters. But there was just something off about it. Sure, there were still Chuck Norris jokes on the chat channel (will that never get old?), angry Defias bandits chasing us around with their freshly-sharpened blades, clever and misspelled guild names, and bikini-clad emote dancers. It seemed like the same Azeroth.

No, the problem was Stick and me. We were off our game, handing each other useless items and accidentally selling necessary objects. Instead of dramatic rescues, there were near-misses and one disastrous fight when we both totally forgot that we're in the same room and can talk to each other mid-battle. Have we soloed too long to form a decent party? Are we doomed by these low-level antagonists?

Tonight, I'll be playing more WarCraft... for the good of my relationship, of course.


Meg foolishly mocks Chuck Norris as she plays WoW.

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