A couple of weeks ago I realized that I've never written about World of Warcraft. I've been playing the game since it came out off and on, and I believe I'm nearing an equitable amount of time played with EverQuest. Maybe I've never written about it because there are so many other people writing about it. Or maybe it is because I don't think it is as original. At any rate it is past time.

I first played WoW in the open beta and created Narsse, a night elf rogue. I wasn't too impressed with the graphics, finding them somewhat primitive and quite cartoony. I leveled up to level 12 I believe with Greg in a weekend, consuming all of the starter night elf content and moving on to the second area, Darkshore.

When the game was released I picked up a copy and made another night elf rogue, Narsse. I wasn't going to do the night elf content again because I disliked the night elf starting area. It reminded me of the Smurfs with its bright, busily colored forest. I instead decided to travel to the human city and level up with one of Greg's characters. I ran through the starting area and took the boat to Darkshore. Then I took the next boat to the Wetlands. I ran through that and Loch Modan to the dwarven area. I died a couple of times, but just resurrected at a graveyard and kept going. Then I took the tram to the human area. Due to exploration experience I was now level 3.

I did the starter human quests and purchased a cat pet as soon as I had 50 silver. I would guess I was one of the very first people in the game to have a pet. Greg and I quested through Goldshire and over to Westfall. We skipped most of the instances as we played because at first it was just the two of us playing, and we had been severely burned playing with other people in EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, and other people. We also assumed instances were the equivalent of EverQuest dungeons which utterly sucked for a couple of people to try to do.

I got Narsse leveled up into the 30s before I got tired of playing and went back to EverQuest, EverQuest 2, or didn't play anything for awhile. Honestly I don't remember. At some point I got my friend Alex playing, but he ended up leveling on a different server.

Eventually I came back to the game to play with Alex and started another night elf rogue named Narsse on his server, a PvP server. I only got to like level 14 before switching back to the original Narsse. I think Greg was playing on another server then so I created a human rogue named Narise to play with him. I got her up to level 20 or so when Blizzard opened up character transfers. I moved my original Narsse to that same server and started playing her again, leveling up to 40 or so before the first expansion, Burning Crusades, came out.

At this point I had a pair of rogues and like a level 12 gnome warlock on the server where we were playing. Alex started playing again and transferred his characters to the server also. My friend Randy started playing too. Since Alex, Randy, and myself worked together we talked about WoW a lot which kept it in my mind and kept me playing. I soloed and leveled with Greg up to 57 and then Greg, Randy, Alex, and I went to Outlands to do some questing. Jeff may have been with us too, but I don't think he was playing then.

After doing a few quests Greg and I spent most of a weekend doing old world content, primarily Silithus. Which was horrible. That put me at level 59 or 60. I went through all of the Burning Crusade zones and normal instances with Greg, Jeff, Alex, and Randy. We did pretty much all of them once and didn't go back. I think we skipped one instance, and that was it.

Randy played like a fiend and leveled up a character on his old college roommate's server so he could start raiding with their guild. We didn't have enough level 70 people on our server to raid, and hadn't had good luck joining other guilds. Eventually, we all decided to transfer our characters to that server so we could see what raiding was like. We'd kind of done as much as we could with the gear available for five people at level 70 via heroics, quests, and PvP.

Narsse was level 70 in PvP gear mostly, and Narise was level 38 or so. Narise was taken on the new server and got renamed to Iriomote. We started raiding with our new guild, QUX. It wasn't long before Randy, Alex, and myself were pretty well decked out in raid gear and gear from the new Isle of Quen-whatever. Karazhan was a fun instance with some entertaining fights. A few months before the Wrath of the Lich King expansion came out we started raiding Zul Aman also, clearing it a few times. I don't remember if I ever got any gear there. Alex, Randy, and myself kept up with the Season 3 Arena PvP also. Just before the season ended Alex and I finally got our 2 man team above the first cutoff of 1575 rating to be able to buy rating required gear.

Wrath of the Lich King came out, and everyone was consumed with leveling. I leveled Narsse at my own pace. In other words far slower than all of my other far more focused friends. That was just as well though. This way the guild could start running Naxxramas before I was there and get some decent skill in place before I joined them. I kind of lack patience for people who keep dying to stupid things in the game, particularly when I subsequently die. That actually worked out pretty well because we ran through Naxx relatively well.

Just before level 80 I was pretty discouraged and almost quit though. Narsse's damage per second was terrible compared to every other DPS class at the same level. At 79 or 80 though the upgrades to the skills were amazing. My DPS went up a massive amount, putting me on a par with other classes.

I've been level 80 for quite awhile now and have as good of gear as I'm going to get without more raiding or doing lots of arenas. Unfortunately, I have other things to do and haven't been raiding, or playing at all lately.

Around the time I got Randy playing I also convinced my girlfriend Serena to start playing. She quickly leveled up once she decided on a class and ended up the leader of a very large, very drama-filled guild. Eventually she escaped to another server and started playing horde, leveling up a couple of characters there to 80. I started a blood elf rogue named Narsse and tried to play with her, but she outleveled me in short order.

At this point I have a level 80 Narsse in Naxx 10 man, Naxx 25 man, and other mixed gear. I have a level 49 horde Narsse, and I have a mid-40s Iriomote. All three of the characters I actually play are rogues. 80 Narsse has always been assassination tree. 49 Narsse is subtlety tree. Iriomote is arms specced. I also have a level 20 warlock, a level 55 unplayed death knight, and a bank alt or two.

I wasn't planning on this being a history of me playing WoW, but that's what it appears to have turned into. The next post will be about what I like and dislike about the game I think.