World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic have brought both personal and professional happiness into the life of Mein-MMO author Kevin. This is the story of that.
In life, we make many decisions and very often we only realize afterward how good or bad they were. Some of these decisions change our lives so much that we can hardly imagine how it would have been otherwise. To find the love of my life, I had to make one decision in particular, one that I never thought would lead me to her.
Therefore, I want to tell you the little story of how I met the woman I later married and with whom I now have a wonderful child.
The article was published as part of our action Find Your Next Game: Love Edition. Here is the overview of the joint event with GameStar and GamePro:
WoW ignited my love for MMOs
The release of World of Warcraft in 2005 redirected my life in a whole new direction. Back then, I was 17 and had to beg my parents to pay for the monthly subscription to WoW. Not so easy to explain to parents why they should now pay 13 euros per month for their child to spend even more hours in front of the computer than they already do. Fortunately, they eventually gave in. Daily nagging and talking for hours about how important it was to me must have worked.
It was my first real MMORPG and especially the first one that captivated me. The huge open world, the possibility to play with others, the fast and quite easy entry, as well as all the things you could discover. It was just incredibly exciting because everything was unknown and new to me. I had never seen anything like this in gaming before.
Over the years, countless hours in the game and in TeamSpeak followed. Especially the latter is part of the whole nostalgia around WoW Classic for me. Hanging out with others in TS until 4 AM, running in circles with your character in Ironforge while talking about life and everything – that was a special, unforgettable beautiful time. Back then, I was also a smoker and during those nights, cigarettes were consumed faster than I let lemmings fall to their death in Lemmings. Definitely unforgettable how the keyboard looked from the ash of the cigarettes.
To this day, I have spent over 20,000 hours in WoW. It would be interesting to know how many of those hours I spent running in circles. Ultimately, WoW ignited a fire in me for MMOs and specifically for MMORPGs. Accordingly, I tried everything that came onto the market as a WoW killer – Lord of the Rings Online, RIFT, Warhammer Online, and whatever they were called. But one also captivated me and, like WoW, brought my life in a new direction – Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Star Wars and a new MMO? I have to play this!
These were my thoughts in 2009 when I first realized that Star Wars: The Old Republic from EA and Bioware would be available. Of course, I knew Star Wars Galaxies. However, the train had passed me by for too long, so I saw SWTOR as the chance to make my mark in this wonderful universe because I love Star Wars.
Back then, I informed myself about games on various gaming websites and through magazines. In 2010, I happened to stumble upon Oldrep.de. Maybe some of you know this SWTOR fan site from gamona, which later continued to exist under SW-Planet.de. In any case, they were looking for voluntary contributors to report on SWTOR.
At that time, I was a student, had time, and wanted to see what it was like to work editorially. My studies in German and Scandinavian studies might suggest an editorial career path. However, I applied more out of whim than because of a concrete career vision. Oldrep.de seemed like the opportunity to write something about a topic I was passionate about.
As someone who spent countless hours in MMOs and was willing to write articles for free, I was probably a good candidate for the site operators. They certainly didn’t hesitate long and took me into the team. A passionate volunteer and MMO nerd – that must have sounded fantastic back then.
How important the decision was to apply back then only became clear later. Without this application, I would neither have met my wife nor would I likely be practicing my current profession. Accordingly, my work back then, although unpaid, was an absolute gain for my life.
“I am the guild leader – don’t you want to join my guild?”
My wife was playing Aion and Guild Wars at that time. She found her passion for MMOs with both games and earned a lot in these two games. I am still amazed at how easily she can grind things in games – I totally stink in comparison. In any case, she was also interested in SWTOR and had an internship at gamona during her master’s degree. She was then part of Oldrep.de, and that is where we got to know each other.
That was initially purely a professional collaboration and stayed that way for quite some time. We communicated as a team back then through Google Hangouts and there was not much more to it at first. That only changed after the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Because after the release, my wife was looking for a guild and as luck would have it, I was then the guild leader of a great guild called Calacyria. We came from WoW and simply wanted to play SWTOR as well.
So back then I said to my wife: “Hey, I am the guild leader of a guild – don’t you want to join my guild? No problem, I can just add you.” Why I emphasized being the guild leader, I don’t remember. As if it were some kind of special feature or an accolade. Fortunately, she wasn’t put off by the “Look how cool I am” and joined the guild.
What does it really take to lead a large guild in an MMORPG?
In the guild, we logically spent more time together in the game, more time in TeamSpeak. We played dungeons, raids, earned hard-earned credits, and left no survivors as bounty hunters and Sith warriors – it was great. Over time, more developed between us, and it happened that she visited me in real life. What can I say: She blew me away.
Back then, I wasn’t sure if I wanted a relationship. My last few relationships were already two to three years ago, but somehow I was undecided. What I did know was: If I enter into a relationship, then one that could potentially end with marriage and children. I was tired of short stories. I told her all of this just as openly and honestly. It didn’t scare her off and we entered into a relationship that has now lasted over 10 years.
So we got to know each other through work and then slowly fell in love through SWTOR. Today we play World of Warcraft together since I was able to convince her that this could be our gaming home after a modest development of SWTOR.
Dream woman and dream job
I certainly haven’t forgotten the little extra income. That I found my wife had another significant impact on my life. The decision to build a life together with her also led to me becoming self-employed today (in the areas of editing, online marketing, and project management) and working for GameStar, GamePro, Mein-MMO, and others. This self-employment would never have been possible without her.
My wife was the one who had a first trainee job after her studies and financed our life with it. My self-employment only generated around 200 to 300 euros per month in the first few months. Accordingly, she had to finance and support both of us. In the meantime, my work is on solid and successful ground. She has also pursued a great career path and is very successful.
However, she is still the one who supports me in difficult moments of self-employment. Without her, I wouldn’t be living my dream job – I know that. For this, I am forever grateful to her. I am daily grateful to have a strong, loving, and fantastic woman in my life.
All of this just because I started with WoW in 2005, discovered my love for MMOs, and thus became interested in SWTOR. I then whimsically applied for an open position at Oldrep and was lucky that my wife looked past some “macho thing”. These are the decisions in life that later made me think: “Wow, that really changed everything.”
I look forward to the next adventures with my wife. A big one is currently our child, and what comes next will show itself. Only one thing is clear: MMOs will always be a part of our lives, and we make a damn great team.
Couple tells us how they met in the MMORPG: “The biggest problem was, of course, the distance”
