Where did I come from? Pt. 2

The reason I'm starting out with these "Where did you come from" posts is because it seems almost mandatory. It's kinda cool to see where these people come from and what road brought them to the game in the first place, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. Let's continue where I left off last time.

If you remember, I had just hit level 70 in Burning Crusade sometime in August of 2007. Melbu and I joined a guild called where we started raiding Karazhan after we followed our in-game Holy Paladin friend, Androly to the guild. They were looking for healers in particular but we were able to coat-tail our way into the guild and start learning what this whole "raiding" thing was. 

Kara was my first raid ever, and I was playing as a Feral Druid offtank. The first boss I ever did? Moroes. It was exciting - there was so much going on, my little Laptop that could was having a hard time displaying all of it. I loved it and progressed the whole way through Karazhan with them until we got to Prince Malchezzar. We hit a dead end with Prince, and at that time, I had found myself to be an Officer of our little 10 man guild. Things were not going anywhere, and I had heard about these things called 25 man raids, and I really wanted to see one. Androly, Melbu and I took our leave from and applied to a guild called Nethergard Watch (NGW). With Nethergard Watch, our applications were processed by a goofy guy named Brudarik, and the conversation really took off whenever we started talking college football. He was a Minnesota Gophers fan and I am a diehard Penn State Nittany Lions fan, so we joked around and eventually Melbu, Androly and I were accepted. We were taken to a Karazhan for our first run by one of the officers named Isle. Now, in retrospect, I am willing to bet Isle was high as a kite for that raid, but everything went well and they decided to bring us to their Serpentshrine Cavern raid one night. I was able to participae in the guild's first kill (and my first progression kill) of The Lurker Below and I was hooked.

At this time we had begun our Junior year of college, and one of my roommates saw the game and was interested in it. He began playing a Dwarven Warrior named Kbyakuya (gesundheit) and eventually got to do most of T4 and some T5 by the end of Burning Crusade. You couldn't gear up someone who was behind in progression back then, so he bided his time until Wrath of the Lich King. We also had our other friend catching up to us at level 70 by this time (Carretta) and since we were in need of ranged DPS, we dragged his ass along and he eventually got enough gear to become semi-useful. And by semi-useful he eventually became our Warlock tank for Illidan.With 3 real-life college friends in our guild, I convinced my brother to finally pick up the game so he would stop playing around with my alt priest and just get into it. He made a Druid named Alaunos, and still plays with me on Terenas.

Having real-life friends play the game with you is really awesome, it's loads of fun to sit around a table and PvP with eachother and raid and, of course, drink. With this group and NGW, we cleared all of Tempest Keep, SSC, Hyjal (my God, Archimonde was a bitch.), Black Temple, and killed Felmyst in Sunwell Plateau before Wrath of the Lich King hit shelves.

Things were going pretty great with NGW, lots of in-game friends to be had there, lots of great players, and we actually got together in August of 2008 for a "social". We all met up and went down to Atlanta Georgia for various shenanigans one weekend, and I had a kickass time. Eventually things started to slow down and we all began to lose interest in the game. We were growing frustrated with the brick wall that we had hit with Trial of the Crusader - partially because it was the worst instance EVER designed, secondly that we ran it in 4 different modes, increasing burnout drastically. It was also summertime and most of our in-game friends had left or moved on to bigger and better things, and when NGW decided to change their raiding schedule to 2 hours, 3 times a week...I knew it just wasn't what I was looking for in a guild anymore.

So whenever Carretta got Swine Flu, he spent his quarantine looking for a new home for us. Faction transfers had just become available, and I had actually started out as Horde and expressed interest in going back several times. That's when we came across . A 3-day 25m raiding guild that worked to progress at the same rate as everyone else on a schedule that was much more conducive to my life at this point. I graduated college and knew I wasn't going to have the time that I had while in school to keep gaming and contribute to society, so this was a perfect match. I bid my farewells, and we moved on to join Completely Different. They were a much more seriously focused group of people, who had no interest in a hardcore schedule but also had no interest in raiding casually.

Carretta (now Benziez), Alaunos, Kbyakuya, Brudarik and I all transferred, but KB and Brudarik have since quit because they got crit by Real Life for over 9000. We've been with CD from when they were 1/5 ToGC up until now when we are 8/12 HM ICC.

Here I am now, ready to Blog away about Feral Druids going into Cataclysm, but occasionally you'll see me write about Enhancement Shaman, as they are my second love.