Vlaming

So I had just gotten WoW and installed it. I got to about level 6 or 7 on my rogue. Whip had sort of been watching me and eventually asked if she could roll a character. I stepped aside and the Whip rolled a night elf hunter. She was hooked. I was hooked. Most of our downtime was spent playing World of Warcraft. We took shifts playing since we only had one computer. Sleep schedules were fucked. We both faced a fairly large problem though. We were both new to MMORPG's and we both rolled classes that were highly represented in the game. I remember when the game first launched about 40% of the game population were rogues and hunters, We struggled to find groups for anything and we didn't feel comfortable enough at the time to run our own stuff. Not to mention that we were both fairly terrible. I was stuck on a D2 way of thinking. I literally wore the Cow King's Hide (http://www.wowhead.com/item=13009) thinking that it was amazing. I also stacked stamina as one of my major rogue stats. I also didn't really understand the benefits on stealthing. At least all of Whip's gear was "of the monkey".

Our Warcraft III guild, UCA, had ended up as alliance on the Skullcrusher server and that's where we were, but the guild was quickly becoming fragmented. Members slowly left to join guilds that were doing end game content. I was level 60, but had probably run Strath, Scholo and BRS once each... maybe twice. I didn't really understand the concept of group roles, such as tanking, healing, etc. and a lot of the people that I knew were joining guilds that were doing MC. Guilds that really didn't have a need for more rogues and hunters. Not that I really knew what MC was tbh.

Epic shot of Vlaming being sneaky in AV: Check the key binds. Bask in my awesomeness. I will also admit that not all of those skills are max rank. I had a problem. Every time I leveled I would hit up the AH to buy the next level of greens that were available to me.



I found myself leveling up a mage on the side. I still found that there was a lot I wanted to do with the game, but wasn't really sure where to go with things. Also about this time Whip was reaching level 60 and she wanted to do a lot of end game content, but found the same frustrations that I was having. There was something else that we both had to deal with though.

We only had one computer, and both of us wanted to play on our off time. Our weekends were literally spent rotating on and off of the game with each other. We ended up scoring a second computer and a second account. Whip started from scratch. After being unwanted as a rogue and a hunter I ended up rolling a priest and she ended up rolling a druid. We started getting a bit more experience running instances. These characters only made it to level 50 though. We eventually found our true callings on a different server though.

To see the horde side of things I rolled an Orc warrior on the Dark Iron server. His name was Douglas. I'm not sure what attracted me more to him in the beginning, the fact that he was a warrior, or the fact that I named him Douglas. This turned out to be the first of many warriors I would get to max level. Whip decided she'd make a character to join Doug and rolled Ketsa the orc shaman. This is the shaman that she plays today.

A screenshot of a freshly rolled Douglas, pimping his copper gear on top of the Org Bank:



Dark Iron was a new server at the time. I think I was running an SFK and I got whispered to join a new guild.... so I joined. I asked them to invite Whip. The guild was called Bloodpact. This would actually turn out to be the first guild that we'd see end game content with. We did a lot of 10-15 strath, scholo and BRS runs with this guild and moved into MC and also ZG (which was newly released at this time). Our guild was pretty terrible, but we didn't care because we were actually raiding. I think we got the Bat boss and Spider boss down in ZG and cleared MC up to Garr. Magmadar was a 2-3 week ordeal for us, and killing him felt rewarding, even if we lol looking back on that today. In MC, I think I was the 4th or 5th tank, and Whip was responsible for out of combat rezzing. We were pretty bad, but we were also fairly ignorant to it. Another interesting fact was that our guild leader muted everyone on vent during a raid so that only he could speak. It's not like I knew any better. A few weeks into raiding Whip and I take a week off for Christmas and visit my parents. We come back and half the guild is gone and the guild leader is telling the guy in the picture below that he was the new main tank.



I'd like to think that I was in berserker stance for a reason other then the fact that I was bad. It's also a shame that I only had 7.5g on my main character. Yes, we hung out in a channel called "beer". The guild leader went back to an old character he had on an old server and the guild pretty much died off. A druid that Whip and I both knew had the guild leader pass leadership to him and asked Whip and I to stay and keep Bloodpact going. WHAT WOULD WHIP AND VLAMING DO!?

OMG MOAR CLIFFHANGARZ!