Thoughts from the other side of the shattering!

As I'm an EU-type, the forever changed Azeroth made its debut yesterday. The first thing I did was give my priest a spec...boring... The second - I rolled a new UD rogue.

After I'd messed around on both beta and the PTR I knew that questing was forever changed and that I was about to have an amazing time levelling - something which had definitely lost a bit of the shine after the first 10 or 20 times... And yet, I still completely underestimated how fun it was.

I chose undead, mainly because it was one I hadn't done on beta, and boy...was it different. And in the best kind of way. I was completely absorbed in all this lore, and the huge feel of the world in a way that had been completely beyond the vanilla levelling experience. I fought alongside Sylvanas in Silverpine... Everything flowed seemlessly, I never felt like I was wasting time running around - anything and everything I did had a point.

I entered Hillsbrad, where I ended up doing one of the most horrifying quests I've ever done - collecting spider eggs off infested bears - talk about disgusting. Although in all honesty I think that was personal squemishness more than anything - I loved bashing in the heads of human seedlings, however, so it evened out.

At the end of a night of playing I was level 28, with about 5 hours played. And I hadn't even complained once about how much I hated levelling rogues. That in itself is an achievement. Blizzard, you honestly have outdone yourself with this one. I've said since I first saw beta, and now it's on live the magnitude of this has truely hit home, and I love it.

So the First Post...

Well everything starts somewhere, and this has been something I've been thinking of starting for a while. Then while poking Blog Azeroth's forum I noticed that the shared topic this week was autobiographies of bloggers. Well obviously that doesn't apply much to me... I haven't been blogging anything WoW related (a couple of posts in my personal journal excluded). I have thought about it several times - then again there are so many blogs out there, what could I say that could have any impact. Well, truth be told, probably not much. But I can still get a lot of personal enjoyment out of it. So my autobiography is not going to focus on my blogging past, it's going to be an introduction to who I am, and what I do - which will probably tell you a fair bit about where this blog could head. And hopefully a year from now, I'll come back to this post and smile.

My WoW experience started on the 23rd of September 2008 (I asked my account history - I'm not quite that good with dates). My very first character was a human rogue, I believe her name was Thadia - she made it to the lofty heights of level 10. Then she was repeatedly murdered by murlocs, I decided she was far to squishy to be my character, and that I should try something a little more...sturdy. Enter the warrior - I made a male nelf, he made it an awful lot further. He was my first 70, and first 80. He also became a she when the customisation was available, and recently a troll female. She won't be my first 85, but she won't be far behind - and I definitely see discussion of my warrior coming up in the future alongside the priest that is currently the main focus of my time in endgame. But I digress - this is supposed to be more focused on my WoW history.

When I first started it was about 6 weeks before Wrath's release, something I became aware of while levelling. I remember the 3.0.1 patch - I fell completely in love with the achievement window. I remember Hallow's End that year - complete with the fun of my level 30 something self navigating Eastern Plaguelands for a candy bucket (last one for the achieve... what was I thinking running to all those crazy places?), only to level to 62 by the end of the holiday. My crazy levelling helped - I hit 70 two days before Wrath day, I was there in Howling Fjord on release day, fighting it out with all the epic clad raiders also questing their way to 80. By this point I had done some homework and I was even wearing gear appropriate for my class (instead of pala plate, anything with spirit... tank gear as dps...sword and board as arms - yay for noobs). I hit 80 two weeks after the release of wrath. I was level capped, I did heroics, I got gear... overall I fell more in love with WoW.

Story continues pretty typically, I raided 10 man Naxx, it was made of awesome. Raiding was exactly what I never knew I needed. By the way - our guild at the time was not awesome, but... we had an awesome time. There was no min-maxing, no loot drama, no DPS whoring (don't get me wrong my meter topping 2.1k in my 10man gear was awesome...but there was no need to tear it apart). Cutting an already too long story down - I got bored. I tried the alt thing, love my alts, but it wasn't all there. I wanted to go more hardcore, I became defacto raid leader as I was the only one who knew anything about the fights, but it wasn't enough.

For 3.1 I jumped ship - to a raiding guild, honestly - we're still not talking hardcore; still 10mans, hard modes sounded a bit too difficult, and there was still that guy who stands in fire, and the holy priest who refused to believe they could group heal. They did get a lot closer to what I wanted. I was raiding regularly - and now on a resto shaman. My warrior didn't really fit me in terms of raiding - healing...seemed more me. But... shammy didn't last long as my main, my long neglected priest alt stole my heart in heroics. I was all about the bubbles, and still am to this day. That priest cleared out Yogg, our guild was the little guild that could almost... we managed a couple of those hard modes, without massively overgearing the whole encounter. We had our drama, we survived, and then we had ToC hit.

ToC was our first real taste of being near progression - granted, we weren't looking at server firsts - we were poking 10 man, but... we did manage to clear Anub something like 2 weeks after his release. We even got to 4/5 in ToGC eventually - but really we all hated that place, we had raiding boredom, we played about in Ulduar, I think we lacked focus, but I stuck it out. There were awesome people there, and looking back on that time I miss some of them.

Then ICC came out, this was new, and shiny. Saying that a year later when I'm so sick of the place...feels weird, but it was true at the time. We cleared the first wing on release night. Our 10 man tiny guild...didn't suck. We hit a bit of a brick wall on Putri, but we got our Kingslayer titles around the time the 15% buff came in. Nothing special, but enough that we were considered raiders. Even with our strange aversion to 25mans. And I raid lead the whole thing. It was amazing - and the distance I was from that noob rogue dying to murlocs was incomprehensibly huge; I had 8 level 80 chars (still no rogue... another future topic methinks, and missing a hunter as well), people asked for my opinion on details for class specifics, raid strategies, gemming, enchants. I had done my homework, I love that side of the game, and going forward I'm going to carry on loving it. Heroic modes fell slowly but surely, it became apparent that in cata 10 man raids weren't going to mean 2nd class loot, things were looking good.

Unfortunately, good things don't last long enough, and things fell apart little by little. After a month of trying to fix it, followed by another month trying to adjust to the circumstances in the bigger guild a lot of us ended up in... it wasn't for me. I found somewhere that was more up my street, forked out for the server and faction change, and... hit 25 mans, with a group of people who were as serious about the game as I am. I've never felt more like I belong - and this is a guild who will be challenging for server firsts, the talent there is amazing. We still might get server first HcLK25 (42% and falling every raid night), but the focus is looking towards Cata now.

And now... looking back at when I started - in the run up to a huge expansion, compared to now - in the run up to a bigger expansion there is a lot of nostalgia, a lot of useless details, and not a whole lot to discuss. But it is going to give me something amazing to look back on in the run up to 5.0 - whenever that is. Hopefully between then and now there will be some interesting discussions and thoughts, on raiding, healing, priests, alts, achievements, drama, making my UI look pretty - the typical wow experience.