This time it’s personal

“Seriously, where do we go from here? WoW 5.0: The Really Really Dark Portal that Leads to the Hecka Burning Crusade (this time it’s personal, and this time you REALLY aren’t prepared)?” – Ixobelle, The Pink Pigtail Inn

 

Those of you who listened to NPNM show 67  heard Fran and I discuss a funny, but thought provoking piece about World of Warcraft (WoW) over at The Pink Pigtail Inn. Doubtless there will never be a time when there is a complete server wipe. But still, as the quote from her post suggests, for me at least, this time my journey though Outland is personal – and Fran has agreed to go along for the ride.

For Fran WoW is indeed about the journey and not the destination – she has 3 level 80 characters to chose from, but instead she is accompanying my gnome warrior, Pharthing through the classic world, to Outland and beyond. Fran has her choice or roles when it comes to endgame, whether it be DPS, healing or tanking.  Not so with me; I can choose hunter or I can choose hunter. Now the time was when beast master hunters where all the rage and we owned the top of the charts. Now, however we have been nerfed but good. Where it not for a great guild on the Proudmore server I would continue to feel like Blizzard dug a hole, told my hunter to hop in, kicked the dirt in on top of me. Back in the day when Alterac Valley was the king of the PvP Battlegrounds, and endgame consisted mostly of Molten Core, pvp with my hunter character was fun. I loved standing on top of ledges and behind hills, plunking away at unsuspecting alliance characters.

Ah but times have changed.

 

As much as Fran tried to convince me that “paladins are all the rage” I had been subject to the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” or far too long while playing my holy warrior to believe it. And so there languishes my Blood Elf (formerly Dwarven) paladin, forever at level 72. As for my hunter, whether it was being called a “huntard” one too many times, or tiring of running instances, there reached a time when I swore off WoW forever, and my cursor hovered over “delete”.

Yet now I am back.

 

I am not sure what it is that brought me back. Perhaps the promise of the Cataclysm expansion in the not too distant future…It could be the doldrums that setting in between the release of those bright shiny new mmos and even single player games like Fallout: New Vegas.

This time it is personal.

 

When I first played WoW I was fresh from Ultima Online (U.O). As anyone who has played UO knows, there was no endgame in this enormous sandbox  of a game.  If it were for the fact that the player community to which I belonged flew apart like a shattered fly wheel I would still be there.  So it was when I started WoW and Everquest I had no idea what endgame was for either.  In fashion that can best be described as “hell I don’t know” I chose a dwarven paladin. I wish I could say I never regretted my decision, but that is not the case. The second I hit level 60 (the level cap at the time) I was relegated to the back row as a “buff bot/alternate healer”. When I protested the guild leader magnanimously agreed to let me fight “the trash mobs” but not on the bosses that “really counted”. It was shortly after that I decided to go horde, and discovered what I thought was the truth…”once you role horde you never get bored.”

But the truth is the grass is always greener on the other side so this time I came back to the game forewarned and forearmed.  Fran can fit any role in an instance. Instead of looking for healer, looking for tank, all you need is to look for one of Fran’s characters. Me? I know what I don’t like. I don’t like healing; I tried it on my priest named Vashj. I have tried characters like druids, mages, warlocks and even, in what I can only believe was a moment of insanity, a rogue.

So this time I decided to create a character I knew would excel at the type of endgame that I enjoyed the most – PvP. Not the “OMG I LOST IT ALL” Eve online type of Pvp. I am talking about the pvp where I can do it just for the enjoyment of the game play…without being a rogue.

So it was that my co-host and I decided to travel the highways and byways of the alliance ways together, beginning with two of my alts that had been years cast by the wayside, stuck forever in the level 30 to 40 range. Recently we both reached level 60 and so earned our wings.  Fran learned to shape shift into a bird, and I built my gyrocopter, and shortly thereafter my tankatronic goggles . In the case of the epic goggles that are also plate armor for the head, it was not without the use of what I call suicide mining. This consists of mining in an area where the mobs far exceed your ability to do anything but stun them just long enough to mine the ore.

And the best thing about the arrangement is, no matter how mean the pugs can get, we never have to worry about the healer or the tank quitting…because that’s us.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

[posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster]