Deathwing Cometh! (And the Perils of IRL Aggro)

Been a while. Much has changed since I last posted. My computer had to be formatted and I'm in the process of downloading all the patches, so I thought I'd take the time to get a post in. So, in case you live under a rock, you've probably heard that the Cataclysm expansion finally has an official release date, December 7th, 2010... a mere 2 months away. Will I be in line at GameStop at midnight? You betcha!

Anywho... so last I wrote to you all, I had just got back on to WoW, to find my account hacked, much of my gear and all of my gold and bank items gone. I am pleased to say the Blizzard was extremely helpful and was able to restore ALMOST all of my lost gear and gold and items. And over the last few months, I've made up (and then some) whatever I lost. But yea, props to Blizzard. Before this happened though, I spent some time leveling my draenei warrior, and have since gotten even a stinking Alliance to the level cap.

But most of the last few months was spent continuing to gear up my hordies, getting different achievments I was interested in, farming rare mounts, leveling fishing, and most recently, really beginning to plan for the future alts that will come in Cataclysm. Some of the highlights of this time was getting my orc shaman Cid a netherdrake and nether ray (the nether drake quests are especially fun, if you never experienced that), getting my Tauren druid Barret the Guardian of Cenarius title and the Cenarion Hippogryph, and finally getting some WotLK raiding experience. I've done at least some of the bosses in every raid except EoE and RS, even getting Cid (whos up to a GS of about 5200) into ICC 10 (did Gunship, Saurfang, and Rotface). I am hoping to at least get a Lich King kill on normal 10 man before Cata hits, but we'll see. I realized though that all this gear I'm collecting will soon be replaced by quest greens or at least by dungeon blues, so, mayhap my frost and triumph badges would be better spent on heirlooms for the new alts, so I set about farming heroics to get all the heirlooms I could, and even leveled fishing for a chance at the heirloom ring. My planned new alts are Stiltzkin, a female goblin rogue, Leto, a male tauren paladin, Scytale, a male goblin shaman, and yet un named female forsaken hunter, male troll druid, and male worgen warrior. Now, as you know, I've already got 10 80s on my main server (and now an 80 alliance on another server), so, no room for all these alts... so, to get heirlooms to them, I decided to server transfer my 80 BE rogue, Claude, to a new server. I will replace him with Stiltzkin on my main server so I will still have one of each class, and on the new server I'll make the rest of my horde alts, and maybe my worgen too... or maybe the worgen on the server with my ally 80, depends how much stuff i can send in the mail cross faction (heirlooms can be sent, not sure about gold). Also, since I need a Claude on my main server to fit with the theme of my characters there, and since Claude does not fit with the theme of my new characters, I also recustomized Claude into a female BE named Alia. When Cata hits, I will be race changing my currently female orc warrior Tifa into a male BE warrior Claude. The theme of my new alts is Frank Herbert's Dune in case you didn't catch it. So the heirloom farm is what I'm working on now. I've got everything I need on my main server and on Alia's server but I still need more for my worgen if I do it on my alliance server, I might need more if I do it on Alia's server too, I'll have to check.

In other news, I have indeed found myself deep into the WoW addiction that once gripped me so strong. When I came back to WoW after a hiatus it was only with the promise that it wouldn't interfere with my real life, but its done just that once again... my roommate and best friend has told me she feels like she lives alone or with someone who completely ignores her in favor of a game. So, I need to try to cut back, at least a little. But, I can't stop now... I've still yet to have the expansion launch experience, and I am NOT missing it this time. Till next time guys.

Best. Quests. Ever.

Its been awhile since I've posted. I've been working overtime and have had limited internet access. The good news is, starting next week I'll be living in a hotel for 7 weeks and as long as the hotel has WiFi, it will be the perfect time to end the long dark tea time of my WoW soul. Hopefully, I'll be back into WoW within three weeks, if not sooner.

So, we left off heading into the frozen wastes of Dragonblight, one of my favorite zones in Northrend. The look of the zone is exactly what I pictured for Northrend, big and epic with mountains, valleys, gorges, weird bones sticking out of the snow covered wastes, etc. And there are some great questlines. Hunting the several name elite mobs around the zone is a good way to make new friends in Northrend. The magnataur quests are fun. The Scarlet Onslaught quests are innovative and loads of fun, even if a bit frustrating at times. We get introduced to the Wyrmcrest Accord and the different flights, do their dirty work, and start fighting the blues. And of course, the most epic questline in WoW, the Wrathgate event that then leads to the amazing Battle for Undercity phased event. Blizzard really WOWed me with that (no pun intended). Seriously amazing stuff, and I get to go kick demon and apothecary ass with Thrall and Sylvannas. Golbez was a happy camper. And then we get a choice of zones again.... if you do most of the quests in Dragonblight, you'll end up with a quest that leads you towards Grizzly Hills, and another towards Zul'Drak. Now, in later play throughs, for effective leveling, I only dipped into Grizzly Hills to unlock the DTK quests there, but, with Golbez, I didn't know any better, and as Grizzly Hills seemed a bit lower leveled than Zul'Drak, I went there first.

Welcome to the Big Show Kids

No more tropical paradises like STV. No more verdant rolling hills of Mulgore. No more exotic veldt of Nagrand. No kids, welcome to the frozen wastes. This is Northrend, and it is NOT a nice place to visit.

With a tear in my eye, I waved goodbye to my friends in Tirisfal Glades, took one last look at the Undercity, and braced myself for the cold.... luckily, as a Forsaken death knight, I probably won't feel it. As the zepplin pulls into Vengeance Landing, I see something new and interesting right away... Forsaken architecture. All we've seen of Forsaken towns before have been old human ruins, but this was a town built by the undead... and it suits us perfectly. I started questing and was pleased that with a few exceptions, the quests were mainly objective based rather than "Kill 30 of X or collect 20 of Y." There are some really enjoyable quest lines in Howling Fjord which is kinda sad because these days my leveling route mostly avoids Howling Fjord other than a few of the early quests out of Vengeance Landing.. its simply more efficient and rewarding to level in Borean Tundra. After taking 10 characters through Northrend, I got my leveling route down to a science. I met the Tanuka for the first time shortly after my arrival, and was a bit let down that they were really just Tauren with new faces (for the males, the females are lamely just Tauren clones). I knew they were related to Tauren but I was hoping they'd be a bit more unique. The Tuskaar filled that role though. And there are some really fun Tanuka quests, especially the one where the Tanuka brave accompanies you into the vyrkul place. There's also alot of twisted mischief going on with my fellow Forsaken, which is always a good time. But, before long, I got back on the zepplin and headed to Borean Tundra via Org.

Borean is where you start seeing the difficulty level bump up a bit (not that anything in WoW is really hard). It can be easy to get overwhelmed in the early quests here fighting the nerubians outside of Warsong Hold (especially if you come here at 68), they repop fast, have long pat routes and big aggro range. But, it was still early enough in the expansion cycle that there were alot of people leveling here and alot of us helped each other out. It is also here that us Hordies got our first real taste of Garrosh Hellscream and his douchiness. Sure, he was in Nagrand, but he was a fairly minor character at the time, no one paid him much attention other than maybe some Warcraft III Grom fanboys. But now, hes in charge of the Horde Expedition, and has turned into a giant D-bag, starkly in contrast to Saurfang the Elder who is ridiculously awesome. I'm trying to think of someone equally repellent on the Alliance side (besides all the players... kidding) to try to explain to you Allies how you'd feel if someone said he'd be the next King of Stormwind... then again, Varian IS pretty bad... but, yea, not as bad as Garrosh. Damn you Blizzard! I was glad to be rid of him when they sent me off to the Tanuka village, especially since I got an awesome blue 2H axe just for walking in the door. Borean is really a great place to level, theres tons of quests (I think maybe only Dragonblight and Icecrown have more) and alot of the quest rewards are really good. And it was cool when for the last quest in the zone, they have you escort a refuge Tanuka into the next zone, the first place that really looks like you'd expect Northrend to look, Dragonblight.

DK Tank, DK Healer, DK DPS

Leveling a death knight through Outland right after WotLK launched was pretty weird. Hellfire was once again a giant gankfest, with everyone Death Gripping everyone all over the place. There were also a few level 80s (who must have power leveled to the cap, then got bored waiting for enough other people to be 80 to share endgame content with) just griefing all the poor nooby DKs.

And then there were the 5 man all DK instance runs... cuz pretty much everyone doing the leveling game 60-70 at that time was a DK. The one frost, one unholy, three blood group was very common. The strength of the DK starting blues helped us getting through the first few instances, but it did get a little harder as time went on. After Hellfire Citadel, I didn't really bother with instances anymore, I really just did it for the novelty of doing an all one class instance run that wasn't with pallies or druids. As I progressed through Outland, I found it wasn't just Hellfire that was a gankfest, and the longer it took me, the more bored 80s there were griefing. I actually decided to go to Shadowmoon as soon as I hit 67, as I had never quested there before, and figured it was usually a less traveled zone and would have less ganking. The amount of "group" quests I was able to EASILY solo as a DK, both in Shadowmoon and other zones, was ridonkulous. I hit 68 and decided to say fuck Outland, and headed for the frozen wastes of Northrend, home to Arthas Menethil, AKA, the Lich King.

The Altaholic's Dilema

With Burning Crusade, it wasn't a dilema for me, though I'm sure it was for many altaholics, but when Lich King came out, it was hard to decide if I wanted to play with a shiny new DK but have to go through the familiar Outland again, or take my 70 huntard and jump straight into Northrend. I decided on the former as you know, but its a tough call. I'm sure alot of my fellows had the same decision to make then, or for BC, whether to jump on your 60 and head through the portal, or make a new belf pally or draenei shammy. And with Cataclysm on the horizon, I'll face the dilema again... to jump on Faeyth and take to the skies of ravaged Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, or to head to Kezan with my goblin. Yes kids, you can be sure my altaholism isn't cured, I will be making a goblin.

So, my journey with Golbez.. right off the bat, you can tell Blizzard has really changed the game again. The Lich King, who would become the expansion's final raid boss, is there to give you your first quest. You're level 55 yet have no talent points, and you've got some pretty impressive green gear as starting equipment. You know all your weapon skills at max level, and already have a high level in first aid. My only complaint is still you can't pick trade skills to have leveled up to an appropriate skill, and have to go muck about in low level areas or spend a ton of gold on the AH to level some up.

Then I start doing the quests. The first thing that amazes me is the area I'm in keeps changing as I complete quests. Yet, other people must still be doing the quests I've done already, yet I don't see other players fighting invisible mobs. I didn't know about the new phasing technology and how it worked at this point, but I was dazzled by whatever Blizz had used to pull this off.

I also really enjoyed the lore... I've always enjoyed my clashes with the Scarlet Crusade. Scarlet Monastary was probably my favorite instances in the old world, for a variety of reasons. It's design of four separate and short wings was great (why couldn't WC have been like that?), some of the gear you got there was some of the most longlived gear in pre-BC days that would not be replaced for a good 10-15 levels (only rivaled by some of the leather gear from WC and the cloth from SFK), and it was also a good training ground. I feel like SM was where I really learned to play alot of my classes well in group scenarios. It was one of the first instances that presented a challenge, where more than luck and brute strength were required, you couldn't just blunder throug it, you needed stategy. It's probably the instance I've run the most, between hunting for gear for my clothies in Cath and Library, and for my melee classes in Armory, and running it solo on my 60s for the copius amounts of silk and mageweave. So seeing my old Scarlet friends and murdering them in vast quantities was fun.

And then, finally the grand concusion in the EPL (one of my favorite zones) was epic. Seeing my favorite in game human (Tirion Fordring) be all bad ass was awesome Sadly, after this was done, I found myself level 58 or 59, and had to trudge off, yet again, to the Outland....

P.S.: Finished Day of the Dragon today, I got into it finally. Even though it portrayed the Horde in a very negative light (all the orcs, trolls, and goblins in it are dicks) and sngs the praise of the humans to no end, it was good with Cataclysm on the way to get some more insight into Deathwing and the rest of the Aspects. Also read Chris Metzen's short story Of Blood and Honor. My only complaint was that it was too short. It had my previously stated favorite human being awesome, the rest of the humans being racist dicks, showed more of the honor and intelligence and bravery of orcs, and even had a Thrall cameo. All in all, a good read. Next on my reading list, Arthas: Rise of the Lich King. I'm excited because the same author who did Lord of the Clans, my favorite WoW story thus far, did this one too.

Captain of the Red Wings

So 2008 found me sidetracked from the project by console games. First, it was Grand Theft Auto IV. I spent a month or more playing this pretty heavily, with WoW thrown in here and there. Then I got back to it, and had gotten Claude, Faeyth, Renoh, Barrett, and Tifah up to 60, with the other three in the works. However, I started realizing how close Lich King was, and decided I wanted to have whichever of my toons I wanted to level t0 80 first sitting ready at 70 when it hit. I decided that I enjoyed the ease of warlock leveling, so Renoh would be my choice. With only weeks until the release, I began working on leveling him to 70. However, something happened that'd derail me once again. My roommate brought home a copy of Fallout 3. I was hooked in. Damnit. It got so bad I didn't even buy WotLK until a couple weeks after it was released, and the dream of having 9 70s at launch went unfulfilled. But, I did get it, and decided that since I didn't have my warlock ready, I'd just jump into my death knight, and so, the tenth of my alts, Golbez the forsaken Death Knight, was born. And then my jaw dropped as I started doing the amazing quests in the DK starting area. Blizzard had REALLY outdone themselves. I like it so much that whenever my server goes down these days, I roll a new DK on a new server and just dick around for a bit with it. This was a very differen class to play, with very dfferent mechanics... it took some getting used to..

Multiple Personality Disorder

I finished Lord of the Clans a few days ago, it was amazing. I love how well they "humanized" the orcs, made them really strong, honorable, respectable characters. I'm now working on Day of the Dragon, but, I'm having trouble getting into it... Kirin Tor and elves... blah.

So weeks go by, and I get all of the gang up to 30. My plan at this point was to cycle through all of them again to 50, and when that was done, cycle through to 70. However, as I went back to Faeyth the paladin, I realized the problem... I had totally forgotten to play her. I started thinking about how to fix this problem going forward. I decided I'd pair everyone up, and do two toons at a time all the way to 70, then move on to the next pair. So, Claude and Faeyth became the first pair.

Quick aside about the gang... not all of them were original. Originally I had a slightly different line up, most got changed before I got started, with the exception of Cid and Tifah who I did a paid recustomization on. When I heard about death knights coming in WotLK I knew I wanted to make him a forsaken named Golbez. That meant breaking from my original all Final Fantasy VII naming scheme. So I deleted my troll priest named Aeris and made a blood elf priest named Terra, and my undead warlock named Valentine became the blood elf warlock Renoh. I always had a female orc named Tifah, but originally she was a shaman, and my warrior was a male orc named Highwind. However (much later, after WotLK came out) I decided I REALLY wanted a male orc shaman who looked like Thrall. So, I recustomized my warrior into a female named Tifah, and my shaman into a male named Cid.

Anywho, I estimated it would take me about 7 months to get all my toons up to 70 at this point (from 30), if I were playing an average of 6 hours a day. A lot of days I didn't get to play that much but I'd make up for it with usually at least one marathon session a week. At the time, it was looking like WotLK was about 8 or 9 months away, so I had a little wiggle room.

Unfortunately for the project, 2008 ended up being a really good year for console games I wanted to play....

Why'd Draenor Get the Works? That's Nobody's Business But the Orcs

Ah, Hellfire Peninsula... a gankfest that made STV look pale by comparison. Good forethought on Blizzard's part, eh? Lets put every single level 60 on a server on both sides and put them in the same starting zone, with quest hubs separated by a one minute mount ride. Add on to the gankfest the ridiculous server strain put on by having thousands of players in the same zone at once, and you get the idea of what Hellfire was like in the heady early days of the Burning Crusade.

Didn't matter though... for those of us who had been playing for years, bored of the old world content, a whole new world was like a gift from the Earthmother... oh wait, I'm a draenei... the Light, I guess.

I was so excited with all the new quests and towns and whatnot, I was forgetting to find groups for Hellfire Citadel. By the time I ran it, I was level 63 or so and almost done with the zone. I ran it once, and then found myself so excited to move onto Zangamarsh that I couldn't be bothered to keep running it for gear. Once I made it to Zangarmarsh, I was so excited to keep moving that I stopped running instances all together. Soon I was off to Terrokar and found new levels of lagginess in Shattrath City, and new levels of awesomeness with the Dune-inspired quests in the Bone Wastes.

And then came Nagrand. The zone that would surpass Mulgore, STV, the Plaguelands, Tanaris, and Feralas as my favorite and most beautiful zones. It was then and there, in the homeland of the orcs, that I knew that I could not be an Ally for much longer, and that as much I liked Tauren, there was a little green orc living in my soul. I picked up the pace, ran trough Blade's Edge Mountains, and, a few quests into Netherstorm, I dinged 70, and hung up my Alliance tabard forever.

Sleeping with the Enemy

So there I was, in the Azuremyst Isles. Alliance territory. Strange. The first 20 levels or so were fun. I was experiencing new content, and I could see Blizzard had really improved the dynamics of a starting area. I got through the epic questline in Bloodmyst, and then, around level 18 or so, I had to head off to the greater Alliance world at large. I forget where I went first to continue leveling. But I do know that very soon, I hated questing Alliance side. One, the general chat channels were far worse than Horde side. Horde was just full of inane chatter and Chuck Norris jokes. The inane chatter was still there, but you get constantly bombarded with requests for help, with the simplest of things. A quest that isn't very hard, finding something, killing some Horde that are killing them. Not just in general chat, but they'd personally send me whispers. Drove me nuts. Game's not that hard, people, and theres always Wowhead.

After a bit, I decided that since I had always heard the Alliance was superior in PVE, I would level mostly by running instances. And so Murbellah became a tank, though she was arms specced, I used a somewhat hybrid spec that worked pretty well for tanking 5 mans and still being able to solo easily. The only pain in the ass was keeping both my one handed and two handed weapon skills trained up.

The way I would do things was run every instance until I had all of the tank gear upgrades, and then move on to the next. If I got some dps gear in the process, all the better. It was around this time though, I heard the big news. Wrath of the Lich King had been announced. Death Knights! Dance Studio! New Level Cap! And as more info started coming in, I realized I was never gonna be happy with just one class. All the casses had interesting news about them. It was then an idea was born. I would finish leveling Mur up to the cap, but then, I'd go back to Dragonmaw, and begin my "project."

The project was nothing short of leveling 9 characters, one of each class to the cap, preferably in time so they'd all be 70 when the expansion hit. It was a mammoth undertaking, I knew, but I was gonna try...

Guild Mergers, or How to Lose Your Officer Standing in 3 Days

So by this time Magdalena was one of the officers of the Savage War Boyz, and the highest level priest in the guild, very likely going to be the first string main healer for raids and possibly class leader. Then, one day, the guild leaders second-in command suddenly /gquits. Th guild channel is a flurry of questions, of course, but our leader was offline. Not even any of the officers knew what was up. We found out later things weren't going fast enough for the #2 man, and he jumped ship for the biggest and most progressed guild on the server (though they were only just getting enough 60s to raid, and we were probably only a week or two away from that point). Over the next few days, a deal was worked out. The big guild decided in an effort to flesh out the 40 man rosters, they would offer us and another smaller guild the oppurtunity to merge wih them. The new guild would be run by a triumvirate of the three old guild leaders, and each would choose 3 officers for the new guild.

Sadly, I was one of the newer officers. I was not picked. Other things sucked too... each guild lost about a third of its orgianl rosters in the merge, including some of my favorite guildies. We voted on a new name, and ended up with the name Vaevictus (lame in my opinion). We were however now the biggest, baddest, and most progressed guild Horde side. I tried to look on the bright side. Even losing my officer status, I was still the second highest level priest in guild, still pretty much a shoe in for first string raider. Sure, guild chat was as spammed as trade chat at this point. Sure I didnt like a lot of the new guildies. But, it was still a good opportunity.

Not long after, I dinged 60 with much fanfare, and was immediately set to respec holy and brought to LBRS, UBRS, etc to start gearing up for ZG. Within a few weeks, we were ready for our first ZG run. And it would be that that would spell my first major break from WoW...

Melting Face and Taking Names

So, as soon as the new server went live, I was rolling my lovely new Forsaken priest. First few levels were pretty slow going, but once I got SW:P and Mind Blast, I was in love with being a priest. And this time, things were going faster in general. For one, I had done this before. And I had done alot of research; on priests and how to level them, had found a power leveling quest guide, started to use the AH more, etc. Things were just much smoother in general. From day one I was being as frugal as possible, trying to save gold for my mount.

The only thing that slowed me down a little (once I got to Ashenvale, 1K Needles, STV) was the whole PVP server ganking thing. Unluckily for the Ally scum, turns out though I sucked at duels and 1v1 PVP as a druid and a hunter, I was pretty adept at face melting. Around my mid 30s or so, I decided to start shopping around for a guild. I found a small guild by the name of Savage War Boyz. I had run a few instances with some of their members and found them to be both competent players as well as being funny and good to talk to. Their plan was to recruit around 100 people who seemed to have potential, and as people approached 60, they felt like they would have weeded out the weaker players and found their first string raiders. Seemed like a good plan. Of course, for the moment, we were, like everyone else, a leveling guild(Though a small handful of speed levelers were already 60).

Around this time I started to realize the strange power I had as a female toon. I had never done this as a guy playing with other people who had girl toons, but I soon found that if I said I needed a piece of gear, my competitors would often pass on rolls. Sometimes guys would give me free gold. Or kick someone else out of group to add me. Random strangers passing by would see me tackling an elite for quest and would help me kill it. Some people think its a little weird or scummy to let guys do this and not tell them I'm a dude. I say screw that, take what you can get. In fact, it was at this point I decided I would never even tell me guild what sex I was IRL (I didn't say I was a girl, I just wouldn't say either way) and always claim I didn't have a mic for Vent.

Things were going great, I was leveling about 3 times faster than I had on my first toon, I loved my guild, dudes were giving me free shit, and I was melting Ally face left and right. What could go wrong? Guild drama, of course.....

The Move Away from Carebears and Toward Face Melting

When we left off, my good old Tauren druid was bored out of his mind hitting the Decursive hotkey like Desmond in Lost hitting the button. 60 wasn't turning out to be the grand adventure I thought it would be. Why had no one warned me. Well, they had, actually. I just wasn't looking. It was at this point I began to discover all the wonderful resources the Interwebs provided for WoW. The official forums, Thottbot, WoWHead, Elitist Jerks, etc. And as I began to peruse these sites, I found that plenty of people HAD warned me that being an endgame PVE druid was a whole lot of boring crap. So, I began to do a lot of research. I decided that since I had a bit of experience in healing endgame, I should go with a healer class, but one that actually healed alot and did exciting stuff. Horde side in those days, priests were pretty much always the main healers. And leveling Shadow sounded fun. I also discovered that most hardcore players regarded those of us who played on "Normal" PVE (Carebear) servers as wussies... real orcs roll PVP. I also decided I wanted to wait for a new server, I wanted a fresh experience where everyone started at level 1 and I could climb levels with everyone else. Not knowing when this would happen, I rolled my first alt on my original server. A PVP twink. I decided I could use all the gold my main had to fund him since I was soon giving up playing him, and I needed the PVP practice.

And so was born Kralizec, the troll hunter. I leveled him up to 29, doing just enough WC runs to get some good twink gear, bought some of the AH, got my chants, and dove into the world of WSG. Surprisingly, I found I was pretty good at this, which seemed odd cause I had always been terrible (and still am) at one on one world pvp and duels. But this was a team sport, and I knew my role. And did it well. I was the a flag carrier stopper. Me and my boar would hit the Ally scum flag thief with concussive shot, boar charge, that'd usually give me time to get into melee range for wing clip, and by then usually one of my fellow Horde (rogue or warrior usually) came in for the actual kill. I was really good at my job. I actually rolled a level one ally toon and went into IF to ask people who the most hated Hordies in the 29 WSG bracket were, and my name was almost always in the top 3. I had alot of fun doing this. Sadly, just about the time I was really getting my Warsong Outriders rep up pretty high, word came down the forums that a new PVP server was opening up, and it was time for me to move.

And so was born Magdalena, my first female toon, a badass Undead Priest who would soon be melting alot of faces.

My Nerdiness Knows No Bounds

So I went to the bookstore yesterday to grab something for a friend, and while Iwas there I stumbled across one of the Warcraft novels. Now, I'm a self professed nerd, but I haven't read a book based on a video game since I was knee high to a grasshopper. And as for my age now, lets just say that the original 8-bit Nintendo was current when I was a youngin'. But, I'm jonesing bad for WoW, so I decided to buy one. I was hoping for one with alot of Thrall in it, but the only thing they had was The Last Guardian. A little Ally-centric for my tastes, but I guess there'd be no Horde without Medivh, and he did have sex with a half-orc.

If you hadn't already figured it out from my orc profile pic or the fact my first two toons were a UD and a Tauren, I'm a proud member of the Horde. In the beginning this was mostly because my two IRL friends that played were Horde (troll hunter and UD lock) and because I looked at the Ally races and thought "I can be a human, a short stocky human, a really short pudgy human, or a tall goofy human with pointy ears... boring." As time went on though, I began to prefer the Horde for both lore and gameplay reasons. Thrall is the man, anyone who says otherwise is a fool, and Saurfang is badass too. Cairne is another of my favorite lore characters, and from a lore standpoint, Tauren are my favorite race. Like any good warrior of the Horde, I am disturbed and worried about Thrall's choice of Garrosh as the new Warchief, but, we'll just have to wait for Cataclysm to see how it plays out.

Long intro, I know. Anyways, the book is ok so far, its a pretty light read, I'm about halfway through it. The part when Khadgar first meets orcs pisses me off though. Granted, they're under the demon blood rage and trying to kill him, but his description of them reads like Nazi propaganda about Jews or white supremacists bullshit about African Americans. I'll give you a full review when I'm done.

So, back to the tale of my path to altaholism. When we left off. I had begun my life as a Tauren druid. I started on US Whisperwind, a carebear server, because thats where my friends were, and I didn't know the difference. For the first 35 levels or so of my existence, things were great and magical. Everything was new and exciting in my noobishness, and nothing frustrated me. I had luckily decided to level as feral cause that seemed like the coolest part of being a druid, I didnt know at the time it was the de facto leveling spec. Eventually I caught up in levels to my friends, we did some instances and group questing, it was fun. But I played a lot more than they did and soon found the need to make more hardcore friends in game. I joined a very large leveling guild that was planning to become a raiding guild. I didn't know really what that meant, but I joined anyways. And thank god I did, cause I needed people to talk to for what came next. The dreaded level 40 mount gold grind. For those of you who go back to vanilla days, you may remember that making 100 gold for your mount in those days was no easy task. Now, had I been smart enough to have made my first toon have two gathering professions, I might have had an easier time of it, but I made mine a leatherworker, and barely knew how to use the AH for profit, so as it was I spent hours and hours for days on end killing earth elementals in the Badlands for the high valued vendor junk they dropped. Guild chat was the only thing that kept me sane. But, in the end, it was worth it. While my hunter friend was still walking on two legs, I was riding my shiny new kodo in style.

It was at this point I really started diverging from my IRL friends. By the time I got my mount, I was around 43, my lock friend around 41, and my hunter friend around 38. I've always been a hardcore gamer, and WoW only made it worse. Soon enough I was up to 50 and they were pretty much in the same place, so we couldn't do much together. I started playing with my guildies alot, running Sunken Temple, BRD, LBRS, etc. I was starting to gear up and inch towards 60. Then came my first big frustration in WoW. My guildies told me I was gonna have to respec to Resto and spend my time in raids decursing and doing the occasional back up healing. But I loved being a killer kitty and going RAWR! I loved tanking looking at my fat bear ass. But, they told me there was no place for feral druids in end game.

I hit 60 with much fanfare from the guild which eased the pain a bit. I stayed feral fora couple weeks to grind out some Argent Dawn and Cenarion Circle rep. By this point, my guild had ZG on farm status, but needed another decurser for MC, so they got me attuned and took me straight there. It took us an hour just to get to the first boss, and then I spent my time decursing. Over. And over. And over again. I was bored as hell. I did not want to be a healer, never mind an off healer. Why had no one told me druids were next to useless endgame? What was I to do? Find out in my next installment, my hands are getting sore from typing.

A WoW Junkie in Limbo

Welcome to What's a Main? As you may have guessed from the title, I'm an altaholic, as in, someone who can't play just one character in World of Warcraft. On my main server, I have ten level 80 toons, one of each class. I also have a level 70 toon on another server on the enemy side, with a couple of other low level alts. And I still have my original toons from way back in the day on my old carebear servers, and a low level toon I sometimes used to grief people on a PVPRP realm. Sometimes when I'm bored, I roll up a new DK toon just to mess around. How does someone end up in this state? Well, lets go back to the beginning.

I'm not quite e-cool enough to say I was playing the vanilla beta, or even playing it at launch. But, World of Warcraft was less than a year old when I started playing. A buddy of mine had been playing it very casually for a few months, and I was spending the night at his house one night, and he suggested I try it, and make a toon. He logged in, showed me his level 25ish troll hunter. I thought having a pet seemed cool but didn't want to be the same class, so I rolled a UD warlock. And so it began. I had never played an MMO before, so I wasn't just a WoW noob, but a total noob. The first mob I pulled, I didn't get that the game had auto-attack, so I was continuously mashing the attack hot key. I played for an hour or so, and found it to be pretty cool. It wasn't long after that I bought the game and took it home to install on my shiny new computer. Now, I hadn't liked being a warlock too much. Too squishy. I carefully read through the game manual about all the races and classes, and decided that Tauren were my favorite race, and that being able to transform into animals seemed awesome, and thus began my life as a Tauren druid.

I think that's a good place to end my tale for today. I need to save somemore to keep getting my WoW fix. You see, I had to sell my computer in February, and I am suffering from major WoW withdrawals. I decided to start this blog as an outlet to keep me going until I can play again, and then keep it going with more tales of my alts.