How did I get into this?
So, World of Warcraft, which has been a large part of my life the last 5 years, and probably will be for the foreseeable future. How did I roll into this, and what did I do?
I am actually a quite old warcraft-player. (yes, besides age). I clearly remember playing Warcraft: Orcs and Humans way back in the 90's. When I was still studying that is. Because the follow-ups were released when I already was working, I didn't know them that well. I did try Warcraft2 I remember, but no idea what I thought about it.
I know I was actually playing the civilization-games a lot (or Birth of the Federation). Turn-based strategy games. I did try some RPG-games, but non of those actually stuck with me.
Now fast forward to halfway the first decennium of this millennium. There where some large things going on in my personal life. One of which was getting a job with more time to do other stuff.
Now, I heard of this World of Warcraft-game. One of my best friends (Kemwer/Gunho) was playing it, and I sometimes watched it. I clearly remember him doing something called 'tanking' on a character shaped as a female cow. (He was playing a Tauren female warrior in SFK I later learned).
So, somewhere in my first vacation as 'Teacher', I got myself one of those try-10-days-for-free thingies, and I went to Azeroth. And I made a dwarf hunter (with a bear-pet called Ursa)....
...and well... I completely forgot about Civ that week, so at the end, I signed up for the real deal (including The Burning Crusade), and made a Blood Elf Paladin on the server Ghostlands called Gowron.
Now this was way before the Zulaman-patch, so yes, I did it uphill in the snow. No mount till level 40, and the level 60 mount was still pretty expensive. I actually got that mount on lvl64 (with the quest).
I levelled quite slowly, looking at current levelling-speeds. I remember hitting level 70 somewhere late august, that's around 5 months. I met a lot of people, was in a guild, co-founded another guild (retribution) and killed Prince somewhere end december/beginning januar.
After a little break I joined a guild Gunho was playing in, called XII. And well... most of the first 100 posts on this blog are about XII. I became Maintankadin, Raidleader, Recruiting-officer and DKP-officer.... which ofcourse was too much.
I had a nice time in XII, even meeting up with the GM who lived in slovenia or something. At the beginning of 2009 I had some problems IRL and with some in XII. So I tried out for Blood and Tears, then the best guild on Ghostland, and they accepted me. BaT and me didn't click though. I left, and played a little around on the server Khadgar with a druid called Mardah.
Although I returned for a short while to XII, doing some stuff in Ulduar and Sarth3D, I actually think I had enough of hardcore-raiding. And when the culling happened, well, I went on to do other stuff.
I levelled Mardah some more, and brought her to Argent Dawn to join Gunho, who was playing there. Not much happened. Somewhere on this blog there are probably more stories. In Januar 2010 another thing happened, Single Abstract Noun.
SAN was formed by Tam, to make a guild for bloggers, and readers, and everyone else. We had a lot of fun those months, now remember this was the ICC-summer. ICC was the Endraid for almost a year, so people got bored, and SAN was exactly what most of us needed. In the end we even did some raids in SAN, but with the start of Cataclysm, SAN was empty.
When Cata started, I started with Gowron, now also on Argent Dawn and in SAN. I reached level 85 fairly quickly, but I disliked (and still do for prot) the Holy Power system. So, instead of getting Gowron raid-ready, I turned to Mardah... but what would I do if she hits 85?
The answer came in the raiding-community Gunho was in. I already saw some raids in ICC over his shoulder, and well, any guild that keeps him in for over a year, is probably a good one. So an application was fired at the Inno-site, and I was accepted as Boomkin.
And I liked it in Innovation, not the fastest guild, but I had, and still have fun there, some drama sometimes, some hard words, but always solved. And I even went to the guildmeet of Innovation this year, which was hosted by the healing-officer Kris.
And here I am now... well almost... considering that I am writing this in the home of Kris, where I have been the last 6 weeks....
....the road goes ever, ever on.... but watch out for little fury bears.
