There and Back Again

I had a rather stuttering introduction to WoW. A friend told me about the game and thought I would enjoy it. I signed up for the 10 day free trial and created an account. I didn’t know anything about the game at all. I rolled an orc warrior and wandered about, eventually noticing the first quest giver. I didn’t know it was a quest giver, nor did I have any idea what the big yellow “!” over his head meant. After some initial frustration, I figured out that you could right-click to interact with him and I received my first quest. After playing for about an hour alone – there were no other “real” people to be found, not that I’d be able to talk to them anyway since I had no clue as to how to use the chat, I logged off and the free trial eventually ran out. A few weeks later, I created another account for another free trial and it ended up lapsing without me even logging on.

The third time was a charm. I created another account, rolled a nelf hunter and never looked back. The difference in the starting area was the thing that hooked me. Instead of the barren, empty wasteland there was a colorful, thriving area with several “real” people playing. I went to the local electronics megastore and picked up a WoW bundle that came with BC and the large WoW and BC player handbooks. After reading them both several times, I dived back into WoW and leveled my hunter up to 10, rolled a nelf rogue, a nelf warrior, nelf priest, and finally a nelf druid. Now that I had a stable of level 10 nelfs, I thought I’d do something different and rolled a spacegoat hunter.

I eventually settled on my original hunter and continued leveling. I was invited into a guild and started to get into the social aspect of the game, spending about half of my time playing solo and the other half questing with a few others in the guild. I found that the ghost kitty that spawned from the relics in Darkshore could be tamed, and I made that my mission. This would become my signature pet, and I still have her to this day. I learned a lot about my class from my new friend that invited me to the guild. I also learned a lot from trial and error. I progressed rather slowly, exploring and experimenting, spending a lot of time on my various alts. I used them mainly to play around with different professions, eventually creating my own personal guild for storage space and transferring items.

My new friend went to anther guild and invited me to come along. Since the only people that I ever played with went to the new guild, I followed suit. The new guild was a bit more social and after about eight months I hit the level cap of 70. The guild started raiding, and we spent two and sometimes three nights in Kara. I discovered the wonderful world of WoW blogs and spent many hours reading and learning. WotLK arrived and the guild stopped raiding while everyone leveled and explored Northrend. Once we were all 80 and semi-geared from heroics we started raiding Naxx.

I was having a blast. The guild was a lot of fun. These fights were new for several of us, but a few in the guild were raiding Naxx back in the day. The raid leader was great, explaining what need to be done, and we carried out the plan. We were slow progressing, but we were efficient with very few wipes. Just before Ulduar showed up we had Naxx on farm and were working on Maly. All good things, however, must come to an end it seems.

I logged on one night and noticed that the guild roster was missing almost 80% of the people. My first thought was that an officer or the GM had been hacked and we were in the middle of getting everything stolen. My suspicions grew stronger and “so and so has left the guild” messages started scrolling up my chat log. The GM wasn’t on and none of the remaining guildies were online. I received a whisper from one of the former guild members. We weren’t being hacked, the guild had imploded.

There was drama brewing that I was unaware of. I won’t get into the specifics, but it started when WotLK came out. It seemed such a petty thing. I was in shock that the seemingly solid team we had could be torn apart so quickly. A few days later I received an email from the GM saying that the guild was finished and I should look for a new home. I received whispers from some guildies who moved to a new guild asking if I wanted to join. I turned the offer down and retreated into my private alt guild. I took a short break from WoW.

RAF came out and so did sales of WoW/BC combo packs, so I tried to get my wife and son to play with me. My wife played once and didn’t get into it, but my son still plays occasionally. I ended up multi-boxing. At first I would three-box, eventually five-boxing. I gifted levels to my stable of alts to continue their professions, and eventually dropped back down to three accounts as the RAF expired. I had two level 80 toons, and almost thirty more ranging from level 20 to 74.

My RL friend that got me into WoW played on a different server. Rather than spend the money to transfer all of those to his server, I rolled a DK and some bank alts on his server. I quickly leveled up to 80 and joined the raiding guild his main was on with my alts in his private friends and family guild. When WoW went on sale for $5, I couldn’t resist the urge to grow my alt farm on the new server. I now have several level 60 toons to rebuild my profession group. Currently, I spend my time bouncing between servers, and I will eventually transfer at least my hunter over to the new server. My friend has a low level alt and, along with his two sons and a friend of theirs, we get together every Thursday night and run an instance or two.