Get Gif'd(copium,broke)

Imagine this: The year is 2000. You're thirteen years old. The bus drops you off at 3:15 and you're running. Not jogging. Running. Your backpack is slamming against your spine and you don't care because today is patch day. You burst through the front door. Your mom yells something about a snack. You don't hear her. You're already in the computer room. The chair is still warm from your older brother who just logged off. You hear the modem screech its ancient hymn. The connection holds. You're in. The login screen has changed. New music. New art. Your heart is beating like you just discovered fire. The server list loads and your server is FULL. Not high. FULL. Everyone is online. Every single person you have ever met in this game is logged in right now. Your buddy list is lit up like a Christmas tree. There's Kyle from two streets over. Tyler from third period. That kid Danny you met on an IGN forum six months ago who goes to Jefferson Middle School across town and you've never seen his face but he's one of your best friends on earth. You load into the main city and there are players EVERYWHERE. People are standing around the new NPCs in crowds so thick your frame rate drops to nine. Someone in world chat types "NEW CLASS IS INSANE" and your hands start shaking. There's a new class. There are new zones. There are monsters you've never seen before. There's a sword in someone's hand that glows a color you didn't know existed in this game. You open the patch notes. They're eleven pages long. You read every word like it's scripture. New armor sets. New dungeons. A level cap increase. A whole continent you've never set foot on. The map has areas that just say "???" and that three question marks hit your brain like pure serotonin. Someone in guild chat says "yo come to the new zone we found a dragon." You don't walk. You don't take the portal. You run there on foot because the new zone is so new that portals don't connect yet and the run itself is part of the magic. Every creature you pass is something you've never seen. You die twice to mobs you didn't know existed and you're laughing. You find your guild at the dragon. There are thirty of you. Nobody knows the mechanics. You wipe four times. Kyle's mom makes him get off at 7. Danny has to eat dinner but says he'll be back in fifteen minutes. He comes back in eight. Tyler discovers that the dragon drops a shield that nobody in the game has ever equipped before. He wins the roll. He equips it in front of everyone and you all stand in a circle and look at it like cavemen discovering metal. It's 11pm. You have school tomorrow and you do not care. Your mom has told you to get off the computer three times. You are exploring a cave that isn't on any wiki because wikis have not yet been invented. Nothing has been datamined. Nothing has been optimized. Nobody knows the best build. Nobody knows the meta. You are all wandering blind through a world that is brand new to every single human being experiencing it. This is the purest form of joy that has ever existed. No drug will touch it. No amount of money will recreate it. You will spend the rest of your life getting rich, getting successful, getting everything you thought you wanted, and none of it will hit like nine FPS in a new zone with your friends at 11pm on a school night in the year 2000. Past generations never had it. Future generations will have better graphics and worse magic. The internet was still innocent. The games were still mysterious. Your friends were still a buddy list away. You had to be there. And if you were, you already know that nothing since has ever come close.