my introduction to world of warcraft

I was in a college dorm when the World of Warcraft open-beta started up. It was an interesting experience since about half the people on my floor and the one below had all decided to roll up on the same server and it looked kind of interesting. I didn't really feel like signing up as my laptop could barely handle Warcraft 3, and the game looked like it needed a bit more horsepower.

My roommate was hooked. From what I remember looking over his shoulder at, he was in one of the first endgame raiding groups. Playing the game through headphones on a laptop crappier than mine (how you tank with only 4 fps I'll never know). Regardless he seemed to enjoy himself.


A little too much.

As finals approached, he spent one of his last days up all night playing WoW and "studying" at the same time. His final was at 8am, and I think he eventually fell asleep at 7am for a "quick nap". I eventually woke up at 9am, and remember distinctly saying out lout "*yawn* it is 9 o clock". Prompting an "oh shit" moment from him, where he had an hour left to get to and do his final.


I didn't really have anything urgent to do that day, so I left the dorm room for a while, and when I came back at 10:30, he was right back on there, playing WoW, talking to his mom on the phone explaining how missing half his final wasnt a big deal at all and everything was fine. It was like he had no remorse for his actions at ALL. The following semester he was still playing WoW, but I didnt notice as that semester was a huge blur for me as I was basically staying up every night til 1-4 am working on various math homework in a study room. Theres a huge gap in my memory of anything happening then between midterms and finals.

This basically killed any desire I had for playing the game. Any time I saw a picture of it, heard of anyone playing it, my mind instantly conjured up that scene. However, eventually I stumbled onto the lore behind origin of Azeroth and the Burning Legion, and became fixated on it. This eventually led up to the discovery of things like the Old Gods and C'Thun, and then other raids entirely. Finally I decided it was worthwhile to

Originally I was only interested in playing only a Blood Elf, as they had the coolest lore backstory. So by the time the expansion pack was announced, with Blood Elves as one of the new races, I decided to take a plunge and see what the game was all about. Thats when I borrowed a friends laptop with the game and tried it out a bit, and got instantly hooked after killing a few kobolds.

Why I play a Human on Alliance is a different story for another time.

vanity guilds are awesome

Back when I was still a newbie, I was in a vanity guild with a friend of mine, who liked immature humor, and I hated all the ridiculous guild names I kept seeing with words like "Knights" "Shadow" or "Of The Light" -- with the O and T capitalized, and I swear I remember seeing some ridiculous guild called "Shadow Knights Of The Light" while levelling my main and it made me gag -- so we created our own guild, if only so we could have a name in brackets.

We ended up deciding on "thats what your mom said", as "thats what your mom said last night" was too long, and probably to risque for Blizzard to allow. The all lowercase was my idea, because I was tired of seeing prepositions being capitalized when they werent the first word in the guild name. Another benefit of the name was that it was as long as a guild name could be, and so those who didnt turn off the guild name display option would be drawn to its length.

Anyway, got quite a few compliments, and a few negative tells. Most of them were simply "reported for your guild name", and I got to laugh at them behind my computer screens for having dirty minds. However one moment that still clearly stands out for me was I was standing by the Scarlet Monastery meeting stone waiting for more people, and some guy had just finished summoning somone, turned to me, paused and gave me this whisper:

"I would have invited you to our SM run, but your guild name is so awful I'm putting you on ignore."

I tried to whisper him back with "lol" but by then I was already ignored. Then I strated to laugh out loud for real.