My Warcraft-life sofar.

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.

First Days of Ulduar

I love it, ok. Wiping for hours to get a boss down. I was full on adrenaline last night when we got Razorscale down after 4 hours of wiping. I have no problem that we wiped for 6 hours on XT-002 and still don't have him down :p

Flame Leviathan
This is just plain fun, we one-shotted him last wednesday, and i still don't know how. I was in one of the 'tank'-vehicles, and I survived, so i probably did good :p I think Loot Leviathan will be a proper nickname :p

Razorscale
Adds, bombs from the ky, frontal AoE-attack...oh my. The adds spawn from spawned turrets, and if the turret spawns within the circle, a big dude comes out that needs to be killed asap. My task is to get the other adds (max 3) on me. Sometimes I need to get 2 turrets under control, which means 6 adds. The slowing part on Avengers Shield comes in handy then. Shield the first 3, then run to the other 3 and RD/Cons or HotR them... very fun.

In phase 3, I also am kiting Razorscale, the big dude is constanly moving his body/wings, so the screen is filled with movement, while I almost can't see where I am moving, trick is to just walk back in circles, and hope you do it right :p You also need to thrust your healers, on our first kill last night, I hit the ground, after tank-switch, probably because healers where a little slow on target-switching.

XT-002
Light Bombs, Shadow-pullers, earthquakes and more adds :p. I did have the oppurtunity to tank XT myself, after Sajuuk died, and tbh, it's boring, just tank and spank. The adds are a little different. First of all, only the Pummelers can be tanked, and every hearth-phase 0-2 spawn. They can spawn 100 yards apart, so you need to get one (after applying judgement-crit-debuff on Heart), and then wait for a possible other one.

I use Seal/Judgement of Light on them, because they will not be killed during the fight. The trick is to know that the adds can be stunned/slowed, so Hammer of justice/Avengers shield again comes in handy. While the all-new Exorcism is a good ranged puller for the new add. the moment you got more then 3 adds on you, be ready to use oh-shit buttons. 4 adds+one of the damage-things that goes on, can be lethal.

The tactic that works best so far, is only having 2 tanks, 5.5 healers and a shitload of dps (rogues shine here). Just nuke him down as fast as possible, so you don't get to many earthquakes. If an earthquake comes before the first hearth-phase, I use Bubble/Divine Guardian to lower raid-damage taken. If it comes after, well, no bubbling for me with adds on me :p

I suppose he comes down tonight, maybe even on the second try (first try is zoning in, so dont have high hopes for that)

Oh, and something else, after 2 months, /o is again on my screen. After my little hiatus/boredom/breakdown, the other officers decided I could retake my former position as Recruitment-Officer/Paladin CL/Tactical back-up :p

Oh, and Katthy, you are right, I really can be a Pain in the ass :p