Rainy Friday
So it’s Friday and here, in my corner of Azeroth, it’s raining. Rainy Fridays are good because you can snuggle in your favorite chair with a hot cup of Honeymint Tea. Or you can get drenched to the bone in the hunt for more Scourge to maim, dismember or otherwise pulverize.
Your choice, really.
Today feels like a mellow day for me, a rather nostalgic day if you will. I’m going to steal a question from a fellow blogger (whose blog rocks, by the way) and talk about “that moment.” The moment when this game became more than just another video game to you. When you decided to actually carefully craft your character into the shining example of perfection they are today.
I look back on my days in WoW with a bit of fondness. I picked up the game about a year ago with my husband, purely on a whim. We’d heard about this game and heard it was so popular and, us being the shunners of all things popular, we avoided picking it up. So there we were, in Fry’s, staring at the box and the little “for sale” sticker on it. We looked at each other and shrugged and picked up two copies.
When we got home, I realized the race I wanted to play (at the time, Blood Elf) wasn’t available until I got the Burning Crusade so I hopped on Blizzard’s website and downloaded it. I rolled a Blood Elf mage and started bumbling my way through this new game. The opening cinematic had me in awe as it gave me this sense that this was a tiny, tiny piece of something much larger and much more grandiose.
A friend of ours found out we’d entered the world and got us to roll on a new server on the Alliance side with him. That’s when Ailis was born. The concept of a Shaman appealed to me greatly. So my little blue-skinned, curvy-horned baby Shaman entered the world of Azeroth having no idea what lay in store for her.
I fondly remember riding a Hippogryph for the first time and thinking that was the coolest thing ever.
I remember struggling to reach level 40 so I could dual-wield. That’s all I wanted to do, hold two weapons. That felt like the ultimate in awesome.
I remember standing there amazed when I zoned through the Dark Portal into an all-out war.
I remember riding into Nagrand for the first time and thinking it was the most beautiful zone I’d ever seen.
I have two turning points in the game for me. I can’t really pick between the two because one was an experience and the other was help from a friend.
The first major turning point came when I hit 70. I dinged 70 about three weeks before Wrath came out, which means I still haven’t experienced much of the Burning Crusade content but that’s another story. The second I dinged 70, my GM at the time sent me my first raid invite. Another guild had graciously agreed to let these newb 70′s in on one of their Kara farming runs. I was in awe, scared, excited, confused and intrigued all at the same time. I had never been on a raid before. I didn’t even fully grasp the concept of a raid group or raid mechanics or anything of the sort. But I was hooked and absolutely needed to find out more.
The second major turning point came when I was barreling through my 70′s in the effort to ding 80 so I could keep raiding. The same now-guildie who dubbed me “Alice” in vent had a Shaman at the time who was an enchanter. He took one look at my enchant-less gear and said that wouldn’t do so he had me meet him in Valiance Keep while he chanted up all my gear free of charge. I realize that he had the mats in a stockpile and it wasn’t much skin off his nose but that gesture and the five minutes he took to teach me about enchants did wonders for me and really set me on the path to bettering myself as a player and as a Shaman.
So, what about you? What was your “moment” when this became more than just another game to you?
