WoW and I

My history with the World of Warcraft has been a love/hate one. At times we have been as close as two newlyweds on their honeymoon, at other times we have loathed each other, pretending the other didn't exist. Well, perhaps that isn't fair on WoW, but I have certainly felt that way at times.

We first met in 2005, maybe six months after the game was first released. I had been a big fan of Warcraft III and so the idea of getting to delve deeper into the world of Azeroth was an exciting one. My twin brother and I went out and bought a copy, eagerly installed the game, and then made our characters and dived into the World of Warcraft.

I was a lowly dwarf hunter with my best friend (wolf) Loki by my side. Leveling was an agonisingly slow experience and I almost gave out in the early 40's. However we pushed on, hit level 60, joined a raiding guild and had a great time in Molten Core, Zul Gurub and Ahn'Qiraj.

Come 2007 we were very excited by the release of The Burning Crusade. Those first steps through the Dark Portal and seeing the skies above Outland were phenomenal. By this time I had changed to playing a Feral druid, and was having a good ole time. Some friends from Vanilla, my brother, and I, all got stuck into Karazhan together. It was my first experience main tanking and raid leading, however after a while I became burnt out and stepped away from WoW; it was affecting my studies very badly and I needed to get myself back on track.

Since then I have returned to WoW at the beginning of each expansion and then left it, for various reasons, part way through. While initially I left because of my horrendous WoW/life balance, I have generally left other expansions due to burning out from raiding. I tend to put in alot of hours at the start of an expansion, to be as prepared as I can for raiding, but after the first tier I would find raiding a chore rather than fun. My aim for WoD is to avoid making this mistake. With that in mind however, I still want to achieve things while playing, I still want to spend time trying to improve, and I still want to play and enjoy the game. So my hope is that by blogging about my experiences, and by setting weekly tasks for myself, I can actually continue playing through the expansion and enjoying all it has to offer.

I'll detail in a future post where I am at currently, but for the moment I have these things that I want to achieve by Sunday 18th January 2015:

1. Complete my PvP set for my warrior; I need a Cloak, Bracers, a Ring, and a Trinket.
2. Finish my stables quests; Advanced Husbandry & The Stable Master
3. Complete my Sea Scorpion Angler achievement.
Bonus: Level my rogue to 96.

Let's see if I have I underachieve this week, or if I smash my goals by making them too easy!