The guild was split between people in the Eastern Time Zone and the Pacific Time Zone, so at 5 PM EST and then at 8 PM EST we'd have people getting off work and getting online to relax and chat. Alcohol was optional, of course, but after a long week at work it was nice to grab a beer and chat online while I worked on dinner. There was no pressure to actually run anything at that time, although if you wanted to run a dungeon with guildies it was an option.
Even when that WoW guild imploded, I found another 'Happy Hour' on Lord of the Rings Online with the local band on the Gladden server playing at 5 PM EST in Bree.
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| I reached into the archives for this one. |
The mini-Reds found the band first, but after they informed me of the Friday afternoon concert I became a regular as well.
I didn't often drink during these concerts, but there were weeks where a beer or a glass of wine felt like a good idea.
However, my participation in these Happy Hour concerts ended when the kids reached high school and they joined the marching band. That meant that in the Autumn, Friday after work was spent going to high school football games to watch the marching band.*
Eight years later, the mini-Reds aren't quite so mini, and they've all graduated high school and gone to college. It's been a few years since we last attended a high school football game, but of course it's also been a few years since the pandemic began as well.
And oh yeah, it's been a few years since my health was turned upside down.
***
When I returned to WoW Classic in 2019, I fully expected to remain guildless. It wasn't a desire to play solo per se, but when you've had enough drama within guilds --and being the parent of teenagers**-- you prefer to keep the drama to a minimum. That being said, I did kind of miss the old Happy Hour on Fridays: the ability to just kick back and relax where people are glad to see you.
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| From Cheers, via yarn.co. |
I ended up joining a few guilds in my WoW Classic career, and with the exception of the one guild pivoting toward a truly hardcore raiding scene which directly led to my departure from it, I had an okay time. I say "okay" because being on a West Coast server meant there weren't a lot of people on when I got off work; that usually happened when it hit 5 PM Pacific Time.
But now, with my involvement in Classic Era with my Questing Buddy and a small cadre of friends --originally hers, but I kind of got adopted by them-- it feels... Good. While we're not part of the same guild, we have a chat channel that we share that keeps us all connected. We also use their old TBC Classic guild's Discord server for when we want to get in voice chat.
Today, being Friday, means that we'll likely get on voice chat and enjoy the company of each other for a while. It'll be later than the traditional Happy Hour, as some of them have kids that need to be put to bed, but it definitely qualifies as one to me.
Now, about that beer...
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| Yes, I can drink beer, but I have to ration my amounts. And yes, I know that means 'light beer' for the most part, and that probably sucks for a lot of people. But local breweries make light beer such as this one that taste much better than the big brands and I support the local economy. From the Braxton Brewing Company, Covington, Kentucky. |
*To be clear, it wasn't to watch the football team. We were there to watch our kids, and the football team lost their games a lot. And by 'a lot', I mean that seasons where they only won one game wasn't that uncommon.
**There's also drama in our neighborhood that I definitely try my damnedest to avoid but don't always succeed. In a way, not sending my kids to Catholic schools --which is where most of the kids in our neighborhood attend-- has been a boon in the end. It sure didn't feel like it at first, but once the kids grew up I realized I'd successfully avoided most of the parochial school/church related drama (and there tends to be a crap ton of it, from what I can see).
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