The Long, Dark Tea Time of the Soul

WoW was becoming a problem for me. I still liked playing, but I had found end game PVE to be an unviable time sink. End game PVP seemed like it would take a long time just to be competitive at, and that seemed to daunting. I like playing my BG twinks, but only if my IRL friend was with me, and he wasn't playing much. Furthermore, WoW was affecting my real life. I was single and and hadn't been on a date in too long. I was out of work and though I had significant savings I wasn't working hard enough to look for a job cause I was playing WoW. I had on multiple occasions blown off my IRL friends to spend time with my guild.

So, in November of 2006, I quit WoW. I got a job, I got out more (though still didn't find a GF). Things were getting better. My friends were happy I quit. For awhile, things were good. I changed jobs a couple times. FInally, in the summer of 2007, I got a new job bartending. I was working all nights and weekends, which really cut into my social life. All of my free time was in the morning and early afternoon (when everyone else was at work) or late at night (when everyone was sleeping). So, around July, I decided on a whim to go pick up the Burning Crusade. As I brought it home, I looked at the box, and remembered why I had quit in the first place. I swore to myself, that this time, WoW would just be a game. If my friends wanted me to hang out, or if I could make a date, or whatever, I would regardless of what draw WoW had. I would only play at those times when no one else was around. I would even keep it secret that I was playing again.

I logged into Magdalena, and found I was still in the old guild, but it was a shadow of its former self, as was the entire server. The guild was about a fifth the size it had been when I left, and the server seemed a ghost town. I ran Mags to the Dark Portal, stepped through, and got my first look at the Outlands. But, before I did anything, I realized I did not want to keep playing on this dead server, in a broken guild. Nor did I really want to be a priest anymore. But what did I want to do?

After some thought, though the Orcish voice in my head was screaming lok'tar ogar at me, I decided I wanted a NEW experience. So, I'd try rolling an Alliance toon. I knew I'd end up coming back to the Horde though, so I decided to make a Horde character as well. I had been wanting to play a paladin forever, and now I had my chance. I decided to do some realm research first though. Having experienced the typical boom then bust of new realms, I decided to look for well established older high pop realms. And I decided to find realms that favored the faction I was going to be on each. For the Alliance, I picked Arthas, and for the Horde, Dragonmaw. I rolled up a blood elf pally on Dragonmaw, then went over to Arthas and tried to decide what to make. I decided on a draenei. I know, they're goofy purple space goats, but, at least they don't look like humans like every other ally race. Plus I figured the new content of the starting area would be cool. I had messed around leveling a warrior up to about 25 on my last realm, and had really enjoyed tanking the low level instances, and the idea of a warrior with a racial heal seemed pretty neat, so I decided to make a warrior. And so Murbellah, the first and last Alliance toon I'd play for more than a day was born.