Since several fellow guildies have blogs, and have had them for some time, I decided to get in on the act. We’ll see how long I manage to keep it going. I have no particular goal for this blog, other than to just write about stuff that I want to write about. Well, about WOW at least.
So, let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...
During open beta for WOW, back in 2004, I rolled a paladin. I quickly became engrossed in the game, but I realize now that I was the epitome of slowness—by the time the open beta ended I had just barely made it to Stormwind.
Being a Christian, the idea of a holy man fighting against the forces of darkness was appealing to me. However, I’m also a big LoTR fan (along with several other fantasy series), so I was also really interested in being an elf of some sort. During the time between open beta and launch, my friend and co-worker, Neo, encouraged me to be a night elf rogue. And so, a couple weeks after launch, I rolled my first official toon, night elf rogue.
The first 2.7 years of this character’s existence, he was named “Canth”, after the brown dragon of the Pern series of books by Anne McCaffrey. During this time, I learned a lot of the basics of the game, but in many ways I struggled; I was always poor in-game because I didn’t know how to make gold, I hardly ever ran dungeons because I didn’t know a lot of other players to run stuff with and I had major trouble finding a guild that fit my schedule, my play-style and my temperment.
Long after Neo’s druid was epicced out in purples from BWL and AQ40, I happened to run Undead Strat with my (now non-WOW playing) best friend, Zatanna (mage) and a warrior, pally and priest. We cleared the place smoothly, one-shotting everything without much trouble despite the fact that we were all basically still in blues. The warrior, pally and priest were all from the same guild and barely said anything in party chat. Little did I know they were saying a lot in their Vent. After the run, the tank told me and Z that he had started this guild with his brother, that they were trying to build it up to run MC and BWL, that they were looking for good players who weren’t kids or loot whores, and were we interested in joining? Of course we were. Thus began my (somewhat) hardcore raiding experience.
Within a month, they made me the rogue officer, and we started running MC weekly not long after that. I was suddenly responsible for knowing a lot more about the rogue class than I ever had before. It was a new experience for me in WOW and I enjoyed it immensely. However, raid times that began at 7:30 or 8 p.m. did not mesh very well with the schedules of a 3.5 year old boy, a 1 year old girl and the mother of both. We were raiding 3 to 5 times a week, several hours at a time, and I was in charge of the guild web site (though, thankfully, Neo always did the DKP updates).
It was a recipe for disaster that was fortunately avoided by other events beyond my doing. The short of it was that some friction had developed between the GM and his brother, and the GM decided to leave the guild. He was a good GM, an excellent tank, a positive, talented leader and a friend. I was burned out enough that his leaving proved to be the catalyst for my own departure, from the guild and the server. Sick of the drama and greed that had penetrated the guild, and the increasing attention my RL deserved, I sought out another guild, regardless of realm, that better suited my and my play style, and found Heroes Inc. I ran my last raid, Gruul’s Lair, with Praeparet Bellum of Dragonmaw, in August of 2007.
In some ways, I miss those days. It was fun being an officer. It was really fun blowing away the damage meters. My rogues and I absolutely owned the MC meters; I know I won’t see the like again. But in other ways, I am disappointed at how much I let the game run my life during that time period, at how much drama and greed and BS I put up with for the sake of some purple pixels. It was definitely a learning experience, one that has made me appreciate Heroes that much more.
As often happens to me, I set out to write something brief, and wind up writing a book. Thanks for reading this far. I’ll get into my entry in Heroes and arrival on AoS next.
