So, looks like you ran out of luck this week, cuz nothing wanted to work today. I mean nothing. Including me! I will instead torture us all with stories of my life!
Like I’ve mentioned before, I’m a fairly avid WoW player. I started playing like, I don’t know, 9 or 10 years ago. I started playing with my older brother, who had some friends that were into it. They wanted to put together a raid team or whatever. That never really happened. I wasn’t really into it enough back then. I mean I loved it. I just had a whole lot more going on back then. I didn’t really have time for the WHOLE game. I was just mesmerized by the world and playing through quests and what not. I think it’s fair to say my brother was like that too, while the friends that got us playing, were all like, ‘hurry and level! Hurry and level!’ I was like, ‘Why? The sooner I cap, the sooner I’m done with it!’ lol Okay so I didn’t really know anything about ‘end-game’ back then. (And, actually, I think I was happier back then too.) Those guys disappeared one by one, and eventually I was the last one left, still playing… eventually I got a taste of that end game.
My first full raid was nax! I pugged into a 25 man. It was sooo cool. I mean, I didn’t know a single fight and I stood in all the wrong places, but I was an Arcane Mage, so my damage was way up there! But, given how unprepared I was, I was really lucky that I got into a team that could take me all the way to the end. I remember I won the roll for the ‘Cloak of the Unworthy Wizard’ (Edit: it’s actualy ‘Cape of the Unworthy Wizard’) that dropped, which still tickles me. I still have it as a trophy, somewhere. I remember somebody’s snide comment coming over Vent, that it was fitting, but I just laughed, I had too much fun to care.
Anyway, the guild I was in at the time, saw me ding in a 25man Kel’thuzad kill, so they got the idea in their head, through no fault of my own, I knew enough about raiding to get me a spot on their raid team! W00t! suckers… I had a lot to learn! This was just in time for Ulduar. Back then, Ulduar was the hard stuff. At least once a week, me and 9 other players would try to tackle that place. I think we made it to Mimeron before my account lapsed, and I was unable to play for several months. At the time I was okay with it, I felt like I had enough of that, and I didn’t really have money for it anymore.
Eventually though, I got things sorted and got back into the game. Now, to my old guild, it was as though I went to buy a pack of cigarettes and never came back for all those months. I was not there for the rest of Ulduar and I did not help at all in the Trial of the Crusader, so when ICC was about to come out, and I suddenly wanted to raid, needless to say, I no longer had a spot on that raid team.
Meh. I deserved it. I left that guild and started looking for something new. It ain’t easy, I’ll tell you that. Mostly I wound up pugging for a really long time. WotLK was a really long expansion, and ICC was progression for a loooong time. I got so frustrated with no one wanting a damage dealer, I leveled my pally tank all the way to 80, all with the idea of leading my own damn raid team.
So listen… starting a raid team isn’t easy. I still haven’t figured it out. Convincing people to listen to you is next to impossible, especially when trying to talk through text or even over Vent. In all honesty, communication is one of my weak points in real life, to boot. So this was just endless frustration for me, and eventually I gave that idea up. I was back to trying to find that new guild, with people that would already listen to the guy that actually achieved this crazy impossible thing… So I was pugging, a lot, again.
Mostly I was pugging on my mage, I got really good. Nothing teaches you how to play WoW like pugging, and I’ll tell you what it is: People who run with the same raid team every week, don’t know their weaknesses. They don’t know what the rest of the team is doing to compensate for them; not only that, but the people doing the compensating, don’t know it either. That’s just how they learned to win. This is also why a lot of people who raid really well with their raid team, hate pugging- Because it shows just how useless they are without their teammates there to take care of the stuff they didn’t know they were missing! (Those are the over geared lightweights that leave in a huff.)
Puggers, though, learn how to fix the problems; All the problems.
Okay, so my timeline above might be screwy here. I remember around this time I was puggin 10/25mans a lot with my mage, but I was also tanking Halls of Reflection, which was one of the 5mans that came out before ICC, with my pally… Maybe it came out at the same time, this was several years ago, I’m not sure at the moment. At one point I moved my forsaken Horde priest, to the Alliance, and I taught myself to heal. I was crummy at first, but eventually I got it worked out, and I got better and better until I was golden. I spent a lot of time in dungeons. In 25mans, though, I ran Shadow. I was just more comfortable as DPS.
Eventually I found a new raid team! Yes. Finally!
I was running a 25man ICC, three nights a week! And with a real raid team! It was great. I actually wound up healing on my disc priest, (once people find out you’re a good healer, it’s hard to ever run damage again) which was great, and eventually I was tanking 10man ICC with an alt group on my pally.
Unfortunately, this didn’t last long. The whole damn raid team suddenly decided to leave my server! This was the worst. We’d only made it up to like, Professor Putricide, when they decided they could do better with a stronger server. You see, we had a problem keeping all 25 raiders online for long enough to progress. It was understandable, people got to work in the morning, But Uhg! They wanted me to go with them! (That cost money!) I hated those guys for leaving. I left. /gquit Boom!
I was back to pugging, sigh, but at this point, a lot more people knew me, and I was a lot more comfortable both tanking and healing in bigger instances than before my stint with those guys. Yeah, I was pugging as much as I could for months on end. I really wanted to down the Lich King. I don’t know, at one point I set it as a goal, and I just could not let it go. I would do anything; heal, tank, dps, whatever got me a spot. The problem is, I really did have a crummy ass server. It took me forever! It took me so long… that all the progression guilds were pretty much done with it, so they were leaking players like crazy, which meant the few guys that still wanted to run raids, needed to find new players that could handle it.
So I was regularly tanking and healing heroic ICC! Which, on one hand, was actually annoying, those guys could have torn through normal mode, and I would have gotten my LK kill. Boom! Easy. But, because they knew I could do it, they would change it to heroic just ‘cause I joined the pug! On the other hand, I have some fond memories though, and I get to be like all, ‘Hey, I was tanking hICC while it was still progression.’ lol
Okay, as much as I was doing all that, those guys didn’t get me my LK kill. It was just hard getting a whole pug all the way to the end. Finally, I saw someone looking for 1dps , they had cleared the whole instance and they wanted to replace a low damage dealer. I switched to my mage, sent out a pst. Boom! Alarad vrs.The Lich King. And I was crazy high dps. Arcane mage, back then, was top of the charts and I was known for regularly decimating everyone else on the meter, including other arcane mages. And then he was dead. And everyone on vent was cheering and w00ting and hollering. This was everyone’s first time downing him, not just mine, so we were all happy. And then we all went our separate ways and I never talked to those guys again… Honestly, I don’t think I could name a single one of those players… but whatever, Cataclysm was right around the corner, and Deathwing needed to die!
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