[ EU ] World of Warcraft finally ends and shuts down all servers . All the WoW addicts have to fill the hole left in their life .

The final charge petered out and the last few high level characters were taken down in a hail of spells and impressive looking explosions. Danny's screen froze for a second and then smoothly slid into a pre-rendered cutscene, at last the end had come. 
 
 The final war had been planned for months; it was basically all that every gaming website, games magazine and battle.net had been able to talk about since it had first been announced. The World of Warcraft, after two decades as the top MMO, was finally going to end. 
 
 What an ending had been planned though. It was the showdown that everyone had always wanted, the Horde vs the Alliance, fighting it out for supremacy in the most basic way possible; all-out war. 
 
 Never before had such vast battles been possible and in an orgy of last minute sign ups the numbers involved had swollen to nearly 14 million people, higher even than its heyday. A series of preliminary battles had allowed each side to make key decisions on location, time of day and exactly how each of earth's regions would map and play their battles. 
 
 Blizzard, it was rumoured, had hired almost one third of the entire server capacity of the world so that every single person could lot onto WoW and at the same time fight. Each region would fight locally, commanders being appointed in game and out of game to marshal their sides. Tens of thousands of people logging on to vast battles and once dead, you were out, gone, forever out of WoW. 
 
 The first few battles had been intense, never before had people been able to fight in a real war with such high stakes. Many people had created hundreds of new alternate characters so that they could last longer but with the vast and destructive magics that had been added they could lose their lives extremely quickly. They had very carefully planned how to handle multiple accounts and it had been done fairly but with only limited time to play there was not much chance to manipulate things with alternate accounts. 
 
 As each region narrowed to a few thousand people they were combined, the armies being melded together, to keep things even for as long as possible. Danny had been lucky, he'd stayed on the edge of many battles, keeping out of the worst of the fighting and only once having a close call. 
 
 After four days of nearly constant war it had come to the final battlefield. One hundred thousand warriors, the earlier battles having been surprisingly even made it almost exactly equal between Horde and Alliance and now they would settle it for once and for all. 
 
 Danny had thrown his character into the middle of the fray, if this was the last time he would play he might as well go out with as much fun as possible. As they reached the halfway point the Alliance had a slight lead and he pushed harder. Too hard. 
 
 He realised too late how vulnerable he had become, and just then a Pandaren appeared behind him and with a sickening crunch his character slumped to the ground. He was the 45,435 last to die. 
 
 He looked over at the chatlog where millions of people were watching and commenting. There was plenty of pity there and he quickly dropped a quick note to thank them and then, like all of them, watched as the final battle raged. 
 
 The numbers dropped, twenty thousand, ten, five one thousand and then there were just a hundred left and at last there was victory. With millions having started it was down to the last fifteen players before the final blow was hit. 
 
 The pre-rendered cut scene played out and Danny slumped back in his chair. Years he had given to WoW, years which were now over. He felt... free? It had been a long time since he slept and he stretched up and tried to shake out his wrists from their stiffness. 
 
 The cut-scene finally finished and the screen went black. All over the world people sighed and felt a little piece of their world disappear. The screen rebooted and the familiar title screen now popped up but with a large banner obscuring most of the screen `` WORLD OF WARCRAFT 2 LAUNCHING IN 15 MINUTES, SIGN UP NOW FOR A 20 % DISCOUNT''. 
 
 Danny's finger hovered for a moment and then clicked on `` accept''. 
 
 ***** 
 
 EDIT: Thank you very much for the gold! 

