I play a lot of World of Warcraft. I began playing in the summer of 2008, with a Burning Crusade box set purchased on the advice of a coworker. I began my first toon, an Undead warrior named Carbuncle, and began questing my way around Tirisfal Glades. For some reason though, the game didn't capture my attention. I cancelled my membership and put Wow aside for the time being.
I picked the game up again in spring of 2011, when I found myself with a surplus of spare time after a breakup. I downloaded vanilla Wow and began playing Beryllium the night elf arcane mage on the Drak'Tharon server. At around level 30 and half a million ganks (Drak'Tharon is PvP), I deleted that toon too, and rolled a troll beast mastery hunter on the PvE server Drak'Thul. This time, the game clicked with me, in large part because I started treating it like my other obsessions and began reading everything I could get my hands on about the hunter class. I loved playing a hunter, too; still traumatized by the squishiness of my mage, I liked that I could send my pet into battle and blast the hell out of an enemy from a safe distance.
After buying the rest of the expansions and leveling my hunter up to about level 70, I finally got a bit burned out on playing that toon. She went though a couple of faction changes (to dranei, and then back to Horde as a goblin), was respecced as marksman, and now sits at level 72 in Dragonblight. Meet Galeena:
I do plan to finish leveling her eventually, just to say I did it.
Next up was a blood elf demonology warlock, who appealed to me for some of the same reasons as the hunter: a pet to tank plus ranged dps. I leveled the hell out of the warlock, reaching level 54 in about a week, until I got burned out on the slowness of battles: it seemed to take forever to kill even a single mob. So now my warlock sits in Orgrimmar awaiting her next command. Meet Fossegrimme:
At this point I was ready for a melee toon who could rush right up into an enemy's grill and beat the hell out of it. So I rolled a goblin combat rogue and took her all the way to level 85 in a few months. During this time I also began to read obsessively about everything Wow, working on professions and exploration and achievements in addition to questing. I was still a bit afraid of doing any group play with her, so to this day she has never been in a battleground and has only soloed dungeons. These days she's kind of a worker for hire, doing Firelands and Tol Barad dailies for gold and Argent Tournament for heirlooms. Meet Goetia:
Dig that transmogged gear!
Finally, I decided to take the plunge and start playing the actual MMO part of the game. I rolled a tauren enhancement shaman so I could level her up primarily in battlegrounds and dungeons, choosing enhancement because after playing the rogue I was in love with dual-wield melee fighting. Just this past weekend I did my first battlegrounds (Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin) and first dungeons (Ragefire Chasm, Deadmines and Wailing Caverns). Despite a couple of stumbles in the dungeons (shamans can rez other characters? That's what that button is for!), I had a great time and am looking for to the rest of the journey to 85 on this toon (currently level 27). Meet Wapsipinicon:
I love that Stinging Viper mace, acquired by beating down Lord Pythas in Wailing Caverns!
The semester just began (I work in academia teaching upper-level Biology courses) so my Wow time will be much less than it has been over the break, but I hope to run Wapsi through a dungeon or battleground each day, with a little bit of questing on the weekends. I'm also doing some literature research prior to beginning a study of nervous system development in tsetse flies, how cool is that?
Until next time,
Goetia (aka Sarah)
