Saint Stuart
August 31, 2022

As a Christian I feel led to do two important things regularly — to represent Jesus in the world and to fellowship with other believers. As an avid online video game player, this led me to think of the millions of people who spend much of their time online engaged in the social competitions and collaborations of online role-playing games. There’s a lot of interaction between players in these games, whether it’s in someone’s team, playing against them, or just exploring the virtual world in these simulated environments where many people gather to have fun and be entertained. The opportunity to speak God’s love to these people is ever present.

Before venturing into my newfound mission, I was first determined to find other believers who may be interested to join me, or at least fellowship with while enjoying the game myself. As my game of choice was the heavily populated World of Warcraft, I had no difficulties finding a variety of groups to approach. A quick online search pulled up several lists of Christian guilds, many which were still active. I was very excited to see all of this, and to introduce myself to my brothers and sisters in Christ. Doing so has been one of the best things for me in my walk with God.

The first guild I joined was the fairly active The Fish and Bread Trick on the Horde side of the Dalaran server. This was during the Battle for Azeroth expansion. I had started playing the retail version of the game during the Legion expansion which was active just prior to Battle for Azeroth, and had some past experience on a Wrath of the Lich King private server, but I was still quite new to the game compared to others and still learning all the aspects of its play. My favourite class to play was and still is mage; in Legion and Battle for Azeroth I mained a fire mage. I was Alliance when I started in Legion and played a human mage named Soulfire. That was the name of a Christian youth group I was in as a teenager. It was an acronym for “Serving Our Ultimate Lord with Friends In Relationships Eternally.” Bringing back that reference from my church experience when I was younger sparked something inside of me. I was representing a part of my life connected to my walk with God and it made me very happy. The Fish and Bread Trick was Horde, however, so I started a new character, a female blood elf mage.

I wasn’t yet a highly proficient raider or a high mythic dungeon key runner, but had a lot of fun in battlegrounds which are group-sized (from ten to forty players on each side) player versus player battles. The guild ran a battleground night and I had a lot of fun with them. It’s a very good form of team building and an opportunity to encourage others in gameplay. Most importantly, knowing I was playing with fellow Christians gave me a huge sense of mental comfort and security. The first time I ran a dungeon group with all guild members I felt a significant improvement in my enjoyment of playing the game. My head felt clear and confident. These people were believers in God and followers of Christ, and the friendliness between us flowed extremely easily. I talked a bit about my calling to evangelise to other players, and received some interest and support, but nothing had firmly developed.

Soon after, the Shadowlands expansion was released and I spent most of the first part of it with The Fish and Bread Trick, still learning the game and the new parts of it, specifically the new covenant system. The guild had many talented players and was very proficient. I was still new to raiding and wasn’t really keeping up with the group, so as happens in games like this, when they had successfully defeated all the new raid bosses and achievements, players started to focus on other challenges. This was around the time that Warcraft Classic was released, allowing players to relive the original version of the game, and most of the guild migrated to play that. I was still intent to play Shadowlands so I considered finding another guild with members still active to fellowship with. That was my priority — having Christians to play and chat with. It was a mental comfort and security that I knew was healthy and important to my life.

Around this time I moved to Moonguard, a server notorious for players who would engage in ‘erotic role-play,’ a sexually-focused activity that was frowned upon by most of the population. I felt called to represent God among these people, and eventually found myself among them, speaking God’s words of love and commitment. Moonguard is a role-play server, meaning the focus on role-play is more emphasized and many imaginative people would play out improvised characters. I had made a new character on the Alliance side and brought my path of God back into my name, this time as literally as I could as ‘Saintstuart.’ Though a priest class may have been more fitting, I stayed with mage, and had come up with a role-play style of representing God among the players by offering prayers to anyone who came to the cathedral in Stormwind where my character would be. Some people came and “played along” as I offered inspirational prayers from my heart. I felt very accomplished. I had found a creative way to spread God’s love, and the people I prayed for expressed gratitude very genuinely. Praise God. Hallelujah! Amen.

There were some other Christians on Moonguard. There’s an active and well-populated community group in the game called Christian Warcraft Guilds. It might have been there that I met some of these other Christians on Moonguard. One of them went by the name Snowflake and would often post bible verses in the game’s trade chat, which could be read by anyone playing a character in any of that character’s faction’s main virtual cities. Snowflake would sometimes get antagonizing responses and we offered support and Christ-like responses of our own. We ended up forming a guild called Violet Dragonwing, but one day soon after we stopped seeing Snowflake online and never heard from them again. The guild disbanded and the other members went the The Fish and Bread Trick while I moved on to find another guild. To this day I’m not sure what happened to Snowflake, and wonder if their account was banned for sharing the gospel or perhaps getting into a heated spiritual discussion with other players.

I started to scout other active Christian guilds on WoW. In some ways I wanted to be a part of all of them, but knew I had to dedicate my time to one. I introduced myself to one called “By His Stripes” and met some friendly people that I still run groups with sometimes. Continuing on, I put in a membership application with a promising, well-populated guild called I.O.Y.X.E., which is an acronym for the names of Christ and the letters seen in some “Jesus fish” symbols. I was warmly welcomed and happy to see that they were still progressing and replaying the Shadowlands content that I was interested in completing, which meant that I would have fellow believers to play with regularly and continue in the fellowship that brought wholesome joy to my life. I moved to a new server yet again, starting a new character on Medivh — a human mage with my Moonguard name, Saintstuart. I was questioned about my name and told people that as a Christian I considered myself a saint. My devotion to God had revealed to me a path of sainthood that I feel strongly about each day. I believe that all believers are called to be saints.

At this time I was getting serious about gaming, which meant getting a headset with a microphone and logging into Discord, a voice chat program, where members of the guild could talk and listen to each other. I had actually started on Discord with just a pair of headphones hooked up to my smartphone which I used as a microphone. I would log in to Discord on my phone and voice chat with them as we played together. For gamers, it offers a better, more efficient gameplay experience with the ability to voice commands and information to each other instead of taking the time to type it out. It offers a potentially better social experience, too, being able to hear how people talk and laugh, and have a better flow of conversation than simple text on a screen. It was a new, more interactive and involved experience with my fellow Christian gamers and we utilized it to the glory of God through great Christian conversation, encouragements, support and prayer for one another. I started making the friends and forming relationships that I knew God wanted for me, and it became a foundation of His that kept me sane and mentally healthy for as long as I was with them. Some even reached out and helped me when I was out of work. Praise God. Amen!

My favourite conversations with fellow believers is hearing their testimony and sharing mine. That is how I got to know others as a new member myself, and how I would later engage new members or others I hadn’t met yet. It can often be the best and easiest way to get to know another Christian and spark a meaningful and deeply wholesome conversation. I was daily inspired, comforted and encouraged by these people and am ever grateful for that. Thank you Lord God!

There was the small-group community and the large. On weekends we would gather as many as we could for the raid nights. Our top players would get together to tackle difficult challenges by defeating raid bosses together. While only more experienced and progressed players participated, everyone was welcome to join in Discord to chat, watch a live stream video of the action and most importantly to be a part of the pre-raid prayer where the raid leader would take requests and offer prayers for whoever needed it. For much of the time in the guild I was dealing with cancer and undergoing chemotherapy, a process that can be very hard on the body. I received many prayers and support from guild members as well as many friends and family outside of I.O.X.Y.E., and surprisingly my experience with the medical treatment was not too harsh for much of the time. I’m very grateful for both the amazing healthcare workers who gave me the best of care, and to all who offered prayers and encouragement. Thank you God for those miracles. All glory to You. Amen.

The pre-raid prayers were spiritual highlights of my week. We started alt-raid nights for our lesser-progressed characters during the week days and those would start off with prayer as well. At one point the alt-raid leader was absent and I was designated to say the prayer. Doing so was a great honour, and I later felt very overjoyed for the experience. For the most part we all seemed to have a lot of fun together, making jokes, fine-tuning our skills and teamwork, and feeling the rush of accomplishing the defeat of the game’s challenges together. We all also seemed to agree that despite frustrations of failures and lack of progress that would sometimes take up our highly valued time together, the true enjoyment came from our fellowship which was always present in a positive way through Christ our King. Amen!