Introduction

Welcome to my new blog. This will be the home for my reflections, rants, and research about World of Warcraft. I expect the topics to cover everything related to the game, but will follow whatever interest I have at the time I sit down to write. I hope to update this site at least a couple of times a week, but we will see.

To begin I think I should introduce myself, while retaining my aura if internet anonymity of course. Let’s see if I can be properly vague so people can’t figure out who I am. I have been playing WoW since December 2004. I first played a night elf hunter, on an RP server. While I didn’t RP much the server was great and that hunter was my first 60, and the hunter class is still one of my favorite.

After my first few experiences of bad tanks and horribly lead instances I rolled a human protection warrior, which allowed me to lead instances and ensure they went off smoother. I leveled both the hunter and warrior to 60, and played the hunter through the beginning of MC, before realizing that the raiding world wasn’t for me. The farm to fun ratio was much too high, and the amount of time spent standing around in a 4 hour raid was also not to my liking. I also felt like the individual contribution to a 40 man raid was much less then that to a 5 man instance, and I prefer to actually make a difference when I play. Granted a few people in the raid, like the RL, MT and MH, make a huge difference, but as hunter0301 in a 40 man raid there isn’t much contribution.

After quitting my raiding guild I proceeding to form my first guild, and gather a few friends to my banner. We instanced a lot and I decided that 5 mans and pvp was the endgame for me. I worked my hunter up to Knight Lieutenant before realizing that instant queues and more team oriented people existed among the Horde.

I tossed in the alliance towel and re-rolled horde on a new server that had just opened up in my region. Since I was planning to pvp heavily I picked a new class that I felt had a lot of potential in PvP, and could contribute to 5 man runs. Yes, I rolled a troll mage. I had a blast playing the mage, but I tended to play with others who were not always available, so I decided to start another character to play when they weren’t around. I was looking for something to solo with, that had potential for instancing and pvp. So I rolled a druid, thinking that I could heal, something I had never done heavily.

Around this time I fled my random guild, after a GM lead raid on STV with level 15 characters was so horribly organized. Me and another member of the old guild formed our own guild, to level up and instance together. We both brought other friends/family and we had a nice small friendly guild.

Now, druids were a complete unknown to me and I quickly realized I liked the feral forms more then casting and healing. This, and the need for a tank for the new guild, led to me specing into feral combat and eventually tanking the majority of the guild runs as we leveled to 60. So the druid became my main, and I fell in love with the hybrid power to save runs, and myself, from almost certain horrible death. (My love of hybrids will be a theme for this blog, and my next post will likely explain my thoughts on this topic.)

Since my druid became a large furry bullseye, my mage became my solo character. I had a blast learning to AoE grind. Killing 20 mobs at once with high risk is my favorite kind of fun. I had planned to level the mage as fire, but the survivability and mob control that frost provide mean that I have never speced out of deep frost since switching at level 20.

A month or so after these two horde characters hit 60, TBC came out, and the race to 70 was on. The guild actually selected to roll some blood elfs first, and give Hellfire a few days to cool off before we went after quests heavily. I rolled a rogue, as I have always wanted to try one, he is still sitting around level 27. We did go through the portal the first night and had a blast replacing all our fresh 60 gear with uber quest items. I very much enjoy the expansion and it has been a blast going through all new areas, low and high level. I reached 70 first on the druid, followed closely by the mage. The mage ended up getting a bit more play, since we found a nice protection tank as we leveled 60-70. But he has since moved on and my druid is definitely my current main.

As we hit 70 the guild wasn’t meeting my grouping needs, so, against all past experience, I joined a large raiding guild. This was ok for a short while, leading to more instance runs, and the large numbers meant more people to call on for 5 man quests. The leadership was lacking though, and the guild was headed for drama. I left that guild and once again formed my own, with my normal instance running group. We have been growing since with the goal to hit heroic 5 mans and arena heavily. We have a nice group of involved officers, and we have leveled up a crop of good players, mainly new to the game. We hit our first heroic a few weeks ago, and I love the challenge without all the farming that raids need.

As I hit 70 I also started hitting some BGs and Arena on my druid. I quickly found that healing was the most effective way to be successful, but that my feral spec and abilities didn’t lend themselves to healing pvp and arena. I would pop to caster form to heal and get absolutely mauled by other players. I took this to heart and decided that I wanted to heal and that a paladin was the way to go for pvp and they were strong healers for pve too, if the group needed that over my tank or dps mage.

So I rolled another new blood elf, and worked my way through the levels playing as protection spec, so I could AoE grind, and tank instances. The guild had a small group of new players at the lower levels, so we all leveled up together. When we found good players we invited them, and weeded out those who didn’t fit in or who acted entitled. We spent a long time teaching the new players to use marks and coordinate the runs well. As we have all hit 70 since and started hitting heroics and hard 70 instances all of this work has paid off, and we have had very few messy runs.

My pally is now 70, and has respecced Holy. He is rolling through the BGs and Arena now, healing his little blonde pony tail off. I am enjoying healing as much as I like tanking, and doing something completely different is a good thing from time to time.

So, that’s my WoW “career” all laid out. As you can see I have done most things in the game, except raiding, though I have stepped into different raid instances from time to time. I have maxed most professions and leveled fishing once. I have been a member, officer and currently GM. I have a 60 NE hunter, 60 human warrior, 70 troll mage, 70 tauren druid, 70 BE pally, and a smattering of 20 something alts. Even though I have done a lot, I know there is heaps I still don’t know about this game, and hope that when I share information here I can get some back from you. Please leave me a note, corrections welcome, feedback needed, and comments a must.