We need to talk about Sata.

He logged in again last night.

It wasn't the first time, and we're afraid it won't be the last. The friend we knew - the one who answered our texts, who showed up in Discord, who could hold a conversation that wasn't about epic flying costs - has been replaced by a freshly-boosted level 58, blinking under the red sky of Hellfire Peninsula.

We told ourselves it was a phase. We told ourselves the queue times would save him. They did not. Every patch is a relapse. Every fresh server is a promise he cannot keep.

He is paying for it now. Real money. The kind he used to spend on rent, on groceries, funneled into level 58 boosts so he can skip the very leveling he claimed to love. And it isn't even the Classic he wept for. It is Burning Crusade, the sequel. The one his old self, the one we miss, used to call the beginning of the end.

Illidan was right. He was not prepared. He is not prepared. He never will be.

And so, with heavy hearts, we have to say what no one else will say to him:

• Know the warning signs
• "I'll be back after a couple heroics." (We did not see him for three days.)
• "I'm only going to play on weekends."
• An unprompted lecture on world buff logistics.
• The phrase "just one more dungeon."
• A second monitor mysteriously appearing on his desk.
• Defending the AV queue meta in public.

If you love Sata, do not enable him. Do not ask him how his druid is doing. Do not laugh at his /played. Do not promise to roll on his server "just to check it out."

There is help. There is a world outside Azeroth. It is patient, and it is waiting, and it misses him very much.

In loving memory of the Sata we knew. 2004 - present