Let's rewind time, shall we? Back in the 90's my brother, sister and I played this game called Warcraft and it's much superior younger brother, Warcraft II. After my interest in the 'get my ass kicked all the time by my siblings' genre waned, my brother kept the Blizzard flame burning strong through the years. He played the fucking bejesus out of Starcraft and Diablos, and was a Blizzard fan boy in general. He was the one who got me into WoW initially.
When WoW was unleashed unto the world, my brother was still carrying the Blizzard banner high and proud. I was aware of WoW, but was hesitant to enlist because of my previous attempts at MMO'ing. I had played Galaxies quite a bit, and enjoyed it. I did play Everquest for about a month before I got into Galaxies, but it was nothing to write home about. I never got into the meat of the game. Final Fantasy XI was also on the hit list of games I've played and didn't get into. I figured WoW would be one of those games and I didn't care to waste the time.
Oh how fucking wrong I was.
I created a character on my brother's account just to see how the game was. It looked neat to me, as Final Fantasy XI did before it (I still think XI looks great, it's just BORING AS HELL) and I was interested in checking it out on my brother's $15 a month. Unfortunately I was instantaneously hooked. The very next day I went to Wal Mart and bought the game. That was December 5th, 2005.
I started my warrior on that fateful day, I named him Xalthos. He would be the only character I would play for a few years. I spent a great deal of time being a complete noob, running around and killing stuff. The first few months, I had absolutely no fucking idea what I was doing and it was great. I would just run around and do quests. As a matter of fact, I never did a dungeon until I was like level 55 and even then it was in BC with two 70's ushering us through.
I took a break at the end of 2006 because I wasn't as interested in the game, and I had a lot of school work to do. While I wasn't playing, Burning Crusade launched and I couldn't really be bothered. I wasn't level 60 yet and leveling back in those days was a huge bitch, so I was just like "fuck it." I eventually caved and bought the game, because it was like 50% off when CompUSA was closing down. A short time later, I resubscribed but never installed the X-pac until I hit 60.
I didn't hit 70 until March of 2008, which was the final year of Burning Crusade. I was about to graduate college, and I didn't really play the game all that much. I had gotten my friend Zach and Mike into playing and Zach had taken it to a new level. He surpassed me in level and hit 70 well before I did and started raiding with some people. After I hit 70 I joined the guild he was in, which is the guild I am still in today, Wrath of Nekromancy.
It wasn't until I had graduated and gotten a job that my addiction to the game hit full intensity. I found myself with a great deal of time after work and not a lot to do, so I just played more WoW. As the new expansion pack loomed, I found myself learning more and more about the game, and just getting better and better at it. As ridiculous as that sounds, there is sort of a learning curve to the game. Once you figure out how a lot of the stuff works, the game is a lot easier to comprehend and excel at.
I was in full WoW mode when Wrath of the Lich King dropped. I took time off work and got the game at midnight to play for the next day straight. Now you might be thinking "that sounds like something only a loser would do!" Well, I took a paid day off of work and spent it doing something I enjoyed with my friends. If you took a day off work to watch a football game, it's pretty much the same exact thing. It's the same exact thing as taking a sick day from school and playing Final Fantasy VII all day, because I know you've all fucking done that. I know I have.
Wrath of the Lich King, contrary to popular belief among the players, was a pretty solid expansion. Granted there was a fucking nerf roller coaster for the entire duration of the expansion, the x-pac on a whole was really fun. I had tried my hand at raiding in BC, so I wanted to do more. Luckily for me Wrath was the x-pac that aimed to bring raiding to everyone.
Now to the uninitiated, raiding sounds like we're going to run into a girls dormitory and steal their undies. The concept here is the same, except replace dorm with dungeon and panties with swords and shields. You can loot pants, so I guess that's fairly close. Raiding in terms of MMO's is a large group of people tackling a dungeon together with the ultimate goal of crying over loot and complaining about someone else being terrible. While this doesn't sound very appealing, it's pretty fun. Although people bitching isn't fun, and you just kind of have to look past that part these days.
I enjoyed raiding quite a bit, so I tried to do as much as I could. It was really enjoyable to get together with 24 other people and tackle difficult raid bosses. Some would argue that Wrath on a whole was a cakewalk, and I will partially agree. The game, as a whole, is pretty simple. Early bosses had weird mechanics, but if you just paid attention and weren't a moron the game is not hard at all. Even still, there were a few challenges in Wrath to be had, and it was enjoyable to see them through.
One of my greatest accomplishments in WoW would probably be Charlie and I putting a random PUG together to get Ulduar drakes and actually doing it. Granted we were mostly in ToC gear, but even then it wasn't as easy as it sounds. It took us two nights, because by the time we got to Yogg it was like 3 in the fucking morning and I was falling asleep at the keys. But the second night we came in there, one-shot it and then went to Algalon and managed to kill him before he disappeared. I was very pleased that we had assembled a group of random people and got some sweet ass drakes. I was so pumped.
It's moments like that which keep me coming back to WoW. There are so many moments and stories that remind me of my love for the game. For instance, one time I joined a random group of people from Phenomenon (the top guild on the server) who were going to clear Sunwell for shit n' giggles. We were all level 80, so Sunwell was pretty easy for the most part although it was the most difficult raid at level 70. We clear all the way to the last boss and by that time I have to take a major, major deuce. It looks like we have a lot more trash to clear before Kil'Jaeden so I get up to use the bathroom and by the time I get back they had already beaten him AND THE LEGENDARY BOW HAD DROPPED. Not only did I miss the RP event at the end, I missed seeing a legendary drop. Boo hoo.
These days WoW isn't the same as it used to be, but I still sort of enjoy it. For me, it was all about playing with my friends and now most of them don't play anymore. I had a pretty solid group of people I raided with on my rogue, but they all changed servers or quit. Playing by yourself is just not as fun as playing with others. I wish I could raid like the old days, but the new raids just look kinda boring by comparison.
WoW has this unending appeal to me, and I really can't nail it down. I really enjoy the world in World of Warcraft, it's enjoyable just to fly around and explore stuff. It's such a colorful and elaborate world, filled with a bunch of random shit. There is always something better than what you have, and you just have to go out and get it. I feel like there is constant progression in the game, and it gives you a sense of accomplishment for doing trivial things, which sort of makes you feel good. I enjoy that.
This is going to sound ridiculous coming from me, if you know me. Over the past few years I've been in a lul of sorts. I lost my job I got right out of school after working there for about a year and a half. At first I wasn't all that bothered, but after I couldn't find another job for a few months, I got worried. I managed to get a job working at an online sex toy shop, only because I needed a job. So I had a job I hated and I moved back in with my mom to save money, and I felt pretty terrible about it. I never felt much like doing anything, and the lack of interest in hiring me to do something I enjoyed and excelled at was bringing me down further.
Over this time I played WoW a whole lot, because it made me forget about all the bummer shit that was going on. At times I felt like maybe I was spending too much time playing WoW, and at times it felt like that's all I wanted to do. Looking back, it really helped me not plunge completely into the bummer oblivion I was approaching. WoW and it's constant make-you-feel-good gameplay style made me feel good about myself in terms of the game. I was pretty good at it, and it kept me going.
I joined a progression raiding guild and they liked me, and accepted me. It felt good to be accepted when all I felt was rejection. I'm sure if I joined a club or did some other social interactions I might have found the same acceptance, but I'm pretty weird around people I don't know and the internet sort of breaks down those barriers for you. Plus you're all into WoW, so you can just talk about that anyway.
Luckily for me I have amazing people in my life who have supported me all the way through my shit-storm of a life for the past few years and I've come to a much better place. I still have a desire to play WoW, but in a different capacity. I no longer feel like I have to play the game to feel accomplished, I feel that in other areas of things I do. Now I can just play WoW to play WoW and kill some wolves and complain about loot.
I don't really want to end this post with a cliched story about how WoW changed my life, so I'll end it with another WoW related story. For the first tier of Cataclysm, I raided with a small group of guys from my raiding guild on my rogue. We were probably like server 3rd or 4th in terms of progression, but we just wanted to kill da bosses. We were on the last boss of the normal modes, before we were going to do heroics, which was Nefarion. We had cleared Cho'Gall, and Al'Akir so Nefarion was on our shit list.
We worked on the fight for a few nights, rarely ever making it past the lava phase. We put in several good attempts which got us to the third phase, which was the tank n' spank phase. We wiped a lot because our off-tank was a clueless stoner Paladin who was carried by class at that point (Paladins is WoW on easy mode if you are interested in playing the game), and couldn't kite adds to save his life.
On the attempt we finally killed him, everything was running smooth until Phase 3. We had him down to execute range and that's when shit hit the fan. We managed to keep the adds at bay the entire time, just to have the off-tank die. We throw out a battle res, only to have the tank die again a few seconds later. The whole time we are CC'ing the shit out of some adds trying to lighten the load on the main tank, but it doesn't work. He goes down.
We're at about 10% at this point, the furthest we've ever gone. We'd just popped Bloodlust to get in the extra damage on the phase, so we were working with a little bit of extra damage on our side. With both tanks down, I noticed that I was sitting really high on threat so I get the hunter to Misdirect the boss to me and I pop Evasion (increases my dodge by like 90% or something). For the last remaining 10% on the boss, I Evasion tank Nefarion like a boss while he gets nuked to death. When he finally died, I was down to like 1000 health and there were only like 4 people left up in the raid. The sloppiest kill we ever did and quite possibly the most exciting.
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