World of Warcraft - pew pew!

 Yes it's true - I am a geek and proud of it!!!!
I love games and I love playing them on the PC so much, I went and bought an Alienware last year :D
I would LOVE !♥ !♥ !♥ ! to go to Comic-Con or Blizz-Con.
One day.

I wondered... if anyone, never having raided with a large group of people from all over europe in an MMORPG (online multiplayer game) - would be interested to read about it from someone who has.
I like to think I looked at the world of MMO's from a slightly different angle from the common gamer
Well, I'm a girl for a start!
So maybe my experience is worth telling.

Since I was knee-high to a pixie- I've loved all things fantasy.
Alice in Wonderland, Narnia, Middle Earth, Wizard of OZ, The Magic Faraway Tree were my favourites places to visit growing up.
J R Tolkien first introduced me to the concept of elves - a humanoid race that looked almost human but for their extra sensory perception, cat-like grace and beauty, slender alien features and great affiliation with nature.

Blood Elf

I was hooked and loved nothing more than to be immersed in a good book featuring this race of wonderous beings.
Imagining what their homes were like.
Enjoying that some writers wrote about elf like characters spending their ethereal lives singing their magic into trees and animals, whilst others conquered dragons and rode them into battle.
I feel inspired when I immerse myself in any of these tales and will always wish I had been born an elf :P


Azeroth (the World of Warcraft) is immense. I've levelled quite a few chars up since it been available to play
- so I've a bit of history  with it.

check out those rides!

I made a night elf ' Tigone' the first time I played (pronouced Ti-gon-ee) -
I think I had just seen Antigone at the theatre and loved the sound of saying that name so much I lopped off some letters and named my digital char.
As I ran about the night elf starting area - I marvelled at all the little touches that threatened to get me addicted completely - the little dream catchers the night elves decorated their homes with; the sparkly, glittery wisps that floated magically by and omg coming across the first npcs (non player characters to you gaming noobs) that were mounted on large cats. Wow- It was awesome.
When you die, you just run back to your body, heal up and go do more quests and get nicer clothes to wear etc etc etc It got me hooked!

My boyfriend refused to play an Alliance char :S
There are 2 sides in Azeroth - Alliance (Night Elves, Humans, Gnomes and Dwarves)
and the Horde (Undead, Trolls, Tauren and Orcs)
He wanted to play something mean looking; a character that has a jaw or eye missing; that played air guitar when you typed /dance. He chose to be Undead.
-  tbh I didn't really understand it -I wanted an elf, colourful and pretty :D
All I knew was I had to change sides or I couldn't play with him and I had to do it onto a bloomin PVP server.
PVP = player V player. When you leave your factions starter zones or main cities, your char becomes 'flagged' (gank- enabled) ,  meaning any Alliance players could attack me if they wanted.This isn't enabled on PVE servers = player v environment.
With this an option on PVP servers, the gaming world came up with the word 'gank' to describe what happens when you're minding your own buisness out exploring wild Azeroth, picking herbs or making a cup of tea/ loo break etc... and a rogue appears out of nowhere behind you and backstabs you to death!
Well, other classes also gank obviously, but as a priest ( my preferred class) it was always rogues that had a go.

So I changed side and took a horde char - Nemyeshi. My troll priest. I intended to join a guild and do some raiding and it seemed the game was short of healers at the time. Being a priest, insured you got into any party and being over 25, insured you got into any guild :D

Here's how opposing factions appeared in PvP - tempting angry red.

Being a priest also meant you got ganked all the time - so I couldn't really be free to explore the world of Azeroth alone without protection. I hate PVP, it makes me nervous, so I whined a lot to my poor boyfriend Dave, when I got ganked .
Also, when you had been out of the starter zone and became 'flagged' (gank-enabled) it took 30mins for your 'flag' to wear off even if you went back to your city. I got ganked a few times in my own bank by stealthed ninja rogues and had to run a long way back to my body - grrrrrrrr-
hehe

Here's how your friends look- names in green are PvP flagged.

-If you really want to hear more gank whines - go look through the millions of forums about it on WoW sites. The solution - don't play on a PvP server if you sucks at it like me :P
Like I had a choice!!


 My first proper raiding guild was called Mist. Led, mostly, by a few guys from Sheffield. The rest of the guild was made up of people from Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium and even Russia. We actually had a meet up with the guys a few years back in Sheffield. The Danes and the Dutch came over.

My guild forum sig

We did a lot of our raid organising through our forum - hence the guild sig above. People personalised their avatar and sig spaces with their characters portraits composed from ingame screenshots. I've seen some little cool animated gifs made from peoples chars. So creative!

Ragnaros - end Boss of Molten Core

I loved being a healer :) I would take it personally if my target died at times.
My heals healed a lot of digital wounds. I had an most amazing time raiding Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, AQ40.

Nefarion - Lord of Blackwing Lair

I will never ever forget that corpse run from the graveyard of Burning Steppes or Searing Gorge(?!?) through the Blackrock Mountain - or the pvp that occured every week before raids, between alliance and horde raiding parties. The paths would be litterally littered with corpses. And the treaties we'd try and erect through the guild forums to get our people inside and working on the raid  - rather than the hour or so spent battling the opposing faction. hah!
People just couldn't resist the lure of a red flagged player and that little sword icon that appeared when you moused over them - If you however somehow knew a player of the opposing faction ( perhaps it was a girlfriend of one of your guildies )
- you could get a priest to use Mind Control and they became controlled and friendly. You could buff them and be nice :)
Most times people just wanted to kill each other though ;)   lolz

Naxxramas

Then they brought out Naxx40man. It was an amazingly difficult dungeon - set on a massive floating crypt, populated by undead monsters, plague bearers, a frozen undead dragon and finally an angry lich boss. (a lich is a guy who's given up his soul to have uber magical powers and become undead)

PATCHWERK

It was amazing journey trying to break that place.
One fight sticks in my mind. Patchwerk was his name - a huge bloated patchwerk frankensteins monster type thing.
The guild 'ball breaker' at that time.
It took us a week of raiding to finally do it - with all possible buffs in game, the dragons 'Rallying Cry' and Zulgurub buff (if you played it, you'll know what I mean). We spent from 7pm to almost 11pm for 6nights, trying to kill him, dying, running back, eating food buffs and potions and trying again.
Can you imagine the taste of victory after all that effort and time??
40 people screamed over their headset for a good few minutes - their victory cries when we finally took down the Patchwerk and I remeber having a lump in my throat.
Yes it was sweet and I got a nice pair of shoulders :D
When I reflect on it now, we as a group of people (40) managed to solve the puzzle of the fight together.. online. Speaking to each other on Ventrillo. Working out, by dying and trying again, just what was required of each individual player in conjuction with the rest of the team. Claiming victory over the fight... it's a pretty amazing feeling to have been part of that team when it worked out.

I could almost write a book detailing my journey through that place with the group of people I was with. Good times. It was an intense experience. Am priviledged to have been on the journey

I am become Shadow Death

Then.. Blizzard gave Blood Elves to the Horde :D

I no longer wanted a flappy footed, craggy toothed troll - I wanted an elf. Along came Aminee - my soon to be shadow priest. My current character, when I have time to play.
The game mechanics started to become a little more mathematic and complicated. You almost had to become one with the keyboard - if you wanted to progress with the games current new content,   you needed to have ze skillz.
 having skillz = have every action you can do ingame, bound to the keys around the 'wasd' movement keys... and be able to press them instantly and timely according to the fight.
Some people spend a hellova lot more time practising this art than others - those with more time in RL (real life) become very good at it and are much sought after as party/raid companions. The best guilds usually had more people of this nature.
It became harder to become accepted into these guilds. Most 'hardcore' guilds required you to fill out an online application form and asked that you gave up a lot of your free time in RL for WoW.
You were required to endure of long hours of focus.
These guilds tended to be the first ones to complete new dungeons and some became known in the forums and subsequently respected across realms. When Blizzard (the dudes that make WoW) opened up cross realm transfer - people moved servers for a chance to be in a respected guild. I remember people moving server to play with my Naxx 40guild, A Few Good Men.
You get very attached to servers and players on it. When I eventually tired of raiding after Naxx 40, I moved server with intent to cut online ties in order to spend less time ingame.
You form and become part of a community of people you've never met in RL life. It's hard to say goodbye.
It's a very social educating experience.

There are so many other things about online gaming that you won't experience elsewhere.
The lingo for one.
*Woot - I love 'woot'  you can even give it more ooo's if you found yourself a little bit more excited than usual. wooooooooooooot!! it works! I use it a lot.
*Ganking, I've mentioned. However I heard that used recently in a couple of  Supernatural episodes. Do Dean and Sam play WoW :D   Bet they do!
*Pew pew - it's the noise lazers make ofcourse. Gamers use it, meaning - go kick ass!  hehe
*Epic - each piece of loot is valued usually depending on its origin. Items from difficult dungeons are far superior to items dropped from the creatures populating the outdoor areas. Most high level dungeons drop Epic items - color coded purple for epicness. and ofcourse there are Legendary items which are usually AWESOME and exceptionally rare! Legendary items usually required months of collecting rare materials from the hardest dungeons.
You can often tell gamers apart in a crowd, if they shout 'EPIX!!' when excited.
*Wipe - annihilation of the entire raid, due almost always to peoples game skills and focus being very low.
*Fail - usually said to the player who messes up and wipes the group. It this mistake was repeated often, the offending player would be kicked from the group.
*Imba - means imbalanced. An item that has stupidly good stats is called imba. Or a player that's very good.
*OP  - this is similar to imba - Over Powered

-My personal Favourite :D -
*Faceroller - a class that's been so buffed that it no longer takes skills to play - you can almost roll your face over the keyboard and still top the damage meters. Paladin and Deathknight players initially held this title.

And ofcourse I need to mention the abbreviations used in gaming hehe
No1 ofcourse
*AFK -away from keyboard. Being idle activates this and tells anyone who interacts with you that you won't be replying anytime soon :P
*AFAIK - as far as I know. You find youself saying that a lot when answering others ingame.
*IMO -In my opinion - also seem to say that a lot
*BRB - be right back - alerting your friends you have gone semi-afk and you're not ignoring them :P
*LOL - laugh out loud -
*LOLZ - more laughing than LOL
*ROFL- roll on floor laughing
*LMAO- laughing my ass off
 - these can also be combined if you are particularly amused :-
*ROFLMAO - rolling on floor laughing my ass off.

Isn't he cute?

Wow pets. You can get little non combat pets that just simply follow you about and look pretty at your side. I think I now have 65 little critters. I sadly spent many hours killing dragonkin to get the Azure Welpling (shown above). They still sell that on the AH (auction house) for 600g+ .
I really wanted the little murloc baby pet, Murky.. but you could only get it by going to Blizz-Con :(

Murky

If you wait long enough, he'll put on a top hat on and start dancing with a cane. It's the cutest thing!  :)

Egbert - my favourite pet. I got him during orphan week. He gets restless if you're standing about - and runs about wildly with large googly eyes ♥

Egbert

Here is a website that shows you all the pets you can collect :D

Warcraft Pets.com






Ooooh and of course - Mounts.

My Azure Netherwing drake --click to enlarge--

My personal favourite is the netherdrake. I have 2. It took weeks of daily quests to gain reputation with the npc that sold them. Damn those elusive netherwing eggs!!!

Green Proto Drake

I recently got a green protodrake. I love flying about on it - even though it's pretty ugly.

Darkmoon Faire

Once a month The Darkmoon Faire comes to town. There's little shops selling weird foods, quests and contests.
It was during the Faire that I saw the band.
They appear at 10pm in the Worlds End Tavern on the nights of the Darkmoon Faire. They're called The Tauren Cheiftans.They come complete with an electrifying light show and rocking kick ass song - 'Power of the Horde'. Be prepared to mosh along.


Link to a video made by wow fans  - I am Murloc - this is awesome! haha

The elf guitarist dude looks like a lady

/dance

Well, so far I've managed to flesh out a little of my WoW experience.
There's so much more to say - but not all of it will be documented here.

As Thrall, the leader of the Orcs, would say as way of a farewell..

"May your blades never dull"