WoW Times

 

Hello, something a little different again; I’ve talked about World of WarCraft here and there but I kind of wanted to just talk about my journey in WoW over the years, some stories and personal feats I remember. Probably not exactly interesting to most and that’s fine, just something I wanted to do. I’ll try my best to keep it coherent and the paragraphs relevant to themselves in some way even if I do skip around a little. Let’s just get started.

            I’ve always liked druids in WarCraft. I’ve tried to make several over the years but never stuck with one. Anytime a new race would get druids I’d check them out because their animal forms were usually pretty cool but my very first character was a Night Elf druid. My dad had gotten a trial disc in a Maxim magazine of all things and he handed it off to me. Night Elf being my favorite race in WC3, a NE druid was the obvious choice. I played around for a while with a friend, got summoned to Moonglade, pretty sure I abandoned my water form quest and it was just gone, I couldn’t retake the quest and was bummed that I “ruined” my character and I’d have to restart it. Not that it was a big deal, it was only a trial version of the game, I didn’t get very far level wise but I don’t know if I knew that then.

            I then decided to make a horde character, a Troll shaman, shaman being another unit I really liked in WC3 and I was enjoying myself. Then I was told I was on a “Care Bear” server and I should be on a PvP server if I was a real boy so I found one and made a Tauren shaman that would be my main for the years to come. I really love my Tauren, he just embodies everything that is Horde to me. Tauren have a racial passive to have slightly better herbalism so I paired that with alchemy and really enjoyed doing that. I don’t really like doing other professions, I could never get into the armor making ones, I just liked being able to make my own health and mana potions amongst other things. I really feel that Tauren have a stronger connection with nature and the planet that they would make for better shaman too. I’ve always been into the elements and such so I think that’s why I gravitate to shaman and not something like paladins that use something so vague as “the light.” Kind of like religion I guess. I rely on logical, tangible things and not something that I need to “believe” is true, you follow me? In that sense Tauren paladins have always confused me.

            I remember when my friend and I first started I stayed at his house one night and brought my PC to play WoW into the night. He had a Tauren druid and I was on my shaman. We were doing Wailing Caverns and didn’t really know what we were doing. Our group was making our way through the dungeon and we were on our way to the Serpent King and one guy in the group was like “hold on, I need to go have supper” and afk’d. Like, what? So we sat around for a bit and the rest of us decided to continue on. We found the Serpent King and ended up beating him then the other two people left. We were looking at our quests and noticed we missed a mini boss so we carefully backtracked and ended up finding him. We kited the smaller enemies away from him and were like “how are we going to do this?” I then suggested, “we’re both healers so whoever he isn’t attacking will heal” and that’s what we did. It took a little while but we did it. We were pretty excited for ourselves and right as we finished that the afk guy came back and was like “hey, where are you guys?” and we were like “we’re done dude” and left.

            Burning Crusade came out and I made a Blood Elf priest. Shadow priest were always pretty cool to me so I really wanted one. Doing the early quest lines I had only one left before I could go join the rest of the world. It was down in the very bottom of Ghostlands, in some castle like thing to fight some guy. It was a group quest so I was asking into the void if anyone was on this quest, one person said yes, an Orc hunter of all things and no one else was around so we just decided to try. We go and fight the guy and it’s just a constant back and forth of me aggroing him, trying to keep myself alive, the Orc’s pet aggroing, trying to keep it alive, it was more annoying then it needed to be but we did it. After the hunter was like “best tank ever!”

Some time during Mists I decided to check out discipline, I never really saw anyone do it, you were either shadow and melted things or you were holy and kept everyone alive and I still wasn’t really doing dungeons or raids. I started doing discipline and really liked it. It was cool to be able to attack but cause healing because of it and it was also neat that they had moves and effects that would cast shields on your party. Like, it’s a different form of support, it’s preemptive, I really liked it. They’ve since moved away from the bubbles (shields) mostly but I wish they’d come back. I don’t know why they’ve moved away from them, I’m sure there’s a reason but I miss them. (I've found some bubbles! They're hiding in the talents of course.) Mists was the first time I was max level with the current expansion and might’ve been when they introduced “raid finder,” not sure, but before raid finder the only way you were going to be raiding is if you were in a raiding guild and were good. I didn’t quite have the time for that and was young so I never had a chance to raid until Mists. For the most part it wasn’t bad. I had a good understanding of my spells and for the most part it went pretty smoothly. I remember at the end of one boss someone said something like “the disc priests has more dps then the balance druid” to which I replied with “ :D ” I don’t know if that’s actually a good thing or if they were even speaking to me but we did alright. Then Blizzard introduced a prepatch for Warlords and did a level squish, reduced our stats and all sorts of things and doing the raids were just not possible for me anymore. We started wiping on the very first boss, sometimes even to just trash, it was a rough transition and I haven’t gotten a raid ready character since.

During this prepatch, Blizzard had a new dungeon available to give players an idea of what Warlords was going to be like. I was using my shaman and @Poe was using his paladin, whata pair, I know. I don’t really remember what happened but at some point we were down to just three of us, Poe tanking, me healing and some guy on dps. We were at a boss that would “fixate” on someone and if you didn’t interrupt him that person would just die. Apparently no one else had interrupts except me so I’m trying to heal these two and keep an eye on this guy so when he starts casting his instakill spell I can wind sheer him, it was rough but we did it. I don’t remember how the rest of that dungeon went though.

 I really enjoyed PvP with my priest, I loved whenever a warrior would see me they’d charge right at me because I’m a cloth wearer, I don’t have a lot of armor but they would just get melted. I remember during Wrath a buddy and I were still questing in Outland, me on my priest and him on a warlock and death knights would be around, see us, think they’re king shit and just get annihilated. I remember one guy fought us, died, rezzed, must’ve thought it was a fluke, tried again and died again. After that we went after him. He rezzed and we chased him, killed him at least once more but we ran him out of the area. I remember one time being somewhere near Alterac Valley when a Draenei shaman started attacking me, we were fighting, I was kind of in trouble, both of us had low mana so I feared him. He started going towards a pack of mobs but he was going to be able to use ghost wolf and get out of there, probably, but I had just enough mana to do mana burn (old spell lol) and deny him the mana he needed to use ghost wolf. Tricky victories like that are my favorite, but she was my main PvPer. I have plenty of wins and stories with my shaman but it was with her I got my Frost Wolf Howler.

There was one encounter I had with a group, we were in Hinterlands or something doing a group quest somewhere with a bunch of trolls. There was a bridge going to our goal and as we get there, there was a group of Alliance coming the other way. Both sides just stood there for a while and so finally I go to one side of the bridge and someone on their team went on the opposite side, everyone else fell in line and we crossed the bridge single file just keeping an eye on the other team. It was a funny encounter I thought.

During Mists the guys and I would do some battlegrounds and one of them was some mine cart, transport guard kind of thing and more often then not we dominated. After doing the PvP enough we had some okay gear so that was a big help. I believe I was on my shaman and was healing the team but it was kind of sad how badly we would win. Then it was like the Alliance got pissed, hopped on their mains with the way better PvP gear and would just slaughter us the next round.

I’ve done a pretty even split using my shaman and priest for the For the Horde achievement where you raid and defeat each of the Alliance leaders in their capital cities. It was kind of a big deal to pull it off in the early days but it’s always exciting to do that; to get a group together and just go from place to place that you’re not suppose to be in and try to defeat the boss, the guards and other players. And as you do this, if you have the channel open in chat, it says “(Whatever city) is being attacked!” so after a while the other players know what’s going on and will usually guard their leaders super hard. I remember on one occasion being in Stormwind and this Blood Elf hunter guarding our rear and just murdering anyone who tried to get through. I would look back and she’s just one shotting people, it was disgusting.

I don’t have too many interactions with randoms in WoW cause in like most games most people are just kind of assholes. There were two people I remember being super cool though. One guy was in chat asking for someone, anyone to do 2v2’s with him. I don’t know if I reached out for some reason or if he whispered me but I was like “I’m not very good” and “I have no armor for this” and he was like “I don’t care, it doesn’t bother me, I just want to play” so we did. I tried doing the healing thing again, I just always wanted to be a PvP healer, that was always just something I wanted to do, and we actually won a few fights. I was like “huh, if we win a few more I’ll be able to get some gear and might actually be helpful.” There was one in particular where we fought two Tauren warriors, they both charged me, warstomped me, and then I was dead. No chance.

The thing with PvP though is if you’re gear isn’t on par or better than your opponents, you’re screwed. My favorite times to PvP were at the “9”s, so 19, 39, because the way they divided you was by level so 10-19 ect. The problem being if you’re 19, with a bunch of 11s and the Alliance has all 19s, then it’s no fun, you WILL lose. 39 was my favorite because you were just one level away from getting your super awesome talent, so for shadow priest, shadow form, so it kind of made things interesting to me. I don’t know why or how to explain, maybe just because I was a shadow priest it was fun that people couldn’t tell I was shadow just by looking at me so they’d initiate a fight and get destroyed. But at some point Blizzard started making peoples characters level out of battlegrounds, they started giving xp for doing battlegrounds which was kind of odd to me. A lot of people would have “twinks” at 19 with decent or the best gear you could find for 19 and then a main character they played. To me twinks are the fairest way to PvP, everyone would have the sameish gear so then the fights are more fair and come down to your skill with your character and not determined by the fact that you’re missing one piece for your armor set yet your opponent has a full set. I think twink battle grounds for 19 and 39 would be quite fun to watch at Blizzcon or something, personally.

The other guy that was real cool with me was an Undead warrior. I don’t know why but he really wanted me and my druid fried from the Wailing Caverns story to be 60 so he would run us through some dungeons. Again, I don’t know why, he just offered to do this for us, I don’t even know how he came into our lives but he did.

I have this conundrum of wanting to play my shaman because he is everything Horde but wanting to play my priest because I just like her more. I spent so much time in Icecrown doing the jousting thing because they had a couple of mounts that were perfect for my priest and I just HAD to have them. I sometimes flirt with warriors, I really like questing as a protection warrior just because I like doing shield things but I’ve never stuck with one. I made a few just to hold names that I really like, I did use a Draenei warrior to get the Lightforged but then deleted her because I don’t really need two Draeneis. Druids are the same, a new race will get them, I’ll play with them a bit but then go back to my shaman and priest. I think part of it is because I want to play feral but I don’t really love doing melee classes in WoW. Just the other week I leveled up my Lightforged to unlock Kul’Tiran humans because they have some sick druid forms. It helps too that they aren’t typical boring looking humans, they have some actual character to them. Unlocking allied races are so much easier now, holy shit. When I was trying to unlock Highmountain Tauren and the Zandalari it was such a grind. I’d get home from work and have to go do some dailies to try and get these things a little faster than you know, not doing it.

            My new conundrum is whether I should play the allied races or stick with my mains. I went through the trouble of getting these races so I feel I should play them. I really like the Highmountain Tauren for much of the same reason as my first Tauren but they are also moose like and my state is a famous one for moose so it kind of feels right. And also, Megamilk is just such a fitting name and like, how did no one else take that yet? I like the Nightborne but I think I’m going to stick with my BE, again, I’ve just done so much with her. I’ve done so much with my Tauren and BE, my Highmountain will probably never see the inside of Stormwind. I kind of wish things were a little more unique though. I mentioned using bubble shields as a discipline priest but I also miss having to carry reagents in order to cast certain spells; water walking, breathing underwater, resurrection. It’s also strange that we can heal the Forsaken with holy magic, that should kill them. I know it’d just cause havoc for raids and PvP but it’d also be quite interesting. Horde would be filled with Forsaken PvPers, Alliance would have to have no shadow priest and Forsaken would probably never be allowed in raids but it would be cool.

            I like characters that make sense like Pandaren monks and Highmountain hunters but I also kind of like the oddballs like Tauren paladins. They shouldn’t work but they’re there. Orc mages, Lightforged shadow priest, most death knights really. The death knights in WoW aren’t the same as the ones we’ve seen in WC3, they’re basically just reanimated soldiers. DKs in WC3 were fallen paladins so really only the Horde should have them or if you want to share them then only races that have paladins. In the early days of WoW I always thought that Alliance should have paladins and druids and Horde should have warlocks and shaman. Paladins and warlocks seem to be on opposite ends of the spectrum and druids and shaman are similar but go about things differently. That’s another reason why all this back and forth fighting between Horde and Alliance is confusing. You have groups, like the druids, who have members on both sides and have their own agenda, are they going to put aside whatever they’re working on because their told to fight each other? No. Their work is more important to them then some political war. There’s other things that are goofy like this talent I saw for restoration shaman. It’s for healing rain and it damages any enemies in the healing rain circle. So it heals allies but hurts enemies. How does it differentiate? How does the rain feel different depending on who you are? I know, it’s a game, don’t take it seriously but it’s just goofy. Another thing for me is when I’m on my priest and doing discipline I don’t want to be casting mind blast, shadow word: DEATH or summon a creepy shadow fiend, I should just be doing holy stuff. If it’s imperative I have these moves then just change them, make them look holy and change the name.

            I think it was during Cata they put in this mount that you could make with alchemy called a Sandstone Drake. You had to do a shit ton of archeology to find the recipe and then you had to actually make it but it was for alchemy and I wanted it. I actually ended up finding it and making it, it’s probably the rarest thing I have in WoW. On my priest with jewel crafting they introduced these jeweled panther mounts in Mists. I didn’t want any of them nearly as much as the Sandstone Drake but I figured I should try to make it for my priest but one of the parts was so expensive! It was like 10,000 gold if I remember right and I did not have that kind of money on me. I have made a panther since, I think the price of that item dropped a bit to make it more manageable. I made a Pandaren monk just to see what they were like and saw their Legion class mount and it was really cool so I started to do the process for that. I remember some of the dailies being annoying but I got it, it’s the only class mount I have at the moment, after Megamilk gets to 70 I think I’m gonna have her go get hers. The monk tiger talks though, like, I don’t really need that please.

            I miss the glyphs having a separate page in the spellbook? Right? That’s where it was? It was just convenient to see what was available and what I had on. I bought a glyph for my priest recently that was like “sometimes get wings when doing healing” and I was like “cool, I used to have something like that,” I think it was when I did evangelism or something I’d get wings and I liked it, so I bought it, tried to put it on and it says “can’t use this with discipline” like what? I do healing, I make with the wiggly-woos, what gives? Turned around and threw that shit back in the AH.

            I was thinking recently with Cataclysm Classic coming what does that mean for the original classic? I haven’t jumped on Classic yet, I figured once I get bored on my 70’s I’ll make a character on Classic to kill some time until there’s something else to do but when Cata originally came out it changed Vanilla’s zones forever so when Cata Classic comes out is it going to do the same thing? I feel that would defeat the purpose like, you might as well just play retail at that point. The whole reason I would want to go on Classic is to re-experience the game when I first played it 19 years ago. I’m hoping they leave the original zones alone but open up the new zones that were introduced in Cata like Deepholm and such. Relive those zones but leave the rest of Vanilla alone.

            Alright. That's enough of that I guess. I hope you found it a little interesting or it made you reminisce about your own adventures. Have any stories you'd like to share? Put them down below so I've got something to read and I'll be back sometime, bye-bye! Happy Thanksgiving also if you do that sort of thing.

            @AztecSauce