World of Warcraft®

Here I am!

No but seriously!

Some of you may have noticed, and by some I mean about four of you, that I have not been around recently. Don't worry, I haven't quit, I'm not on some extended break and I'm not dead, incapacitated or mellowed out.

I am on a break of sorts, yes. I do have the intention of coming back, I just don't know when. I've got one of them year passes so it won't be a case of me just vanishing the week after posting this.

Anyway, I thought I'd explain my recent lack of attendance to you all. However, I wanted to avoid the usual flowery crap people spout whey they make this kind of post, but I may still come of as a nonce after all, it's 5:26. It'll be easier if I tell you my history with Warcraft and World of Warcraft thus far.

I first played the game Warcraft 3 at about the age of... 11. Maybe 10. Or 12. That's right. Some of you will be putting 2 and 2 together and working out I must be around 4 and then realising that doesn't make sense. I am 20, 21 this year. Hi!

Anyway, back to our story. I played and very much enjoyed Warcraft 3 and it's expansion pack. When world of warcraft was release I was 13. I had no idea what an MMO was, I also had no idea I (My parents) had to pay for it every month!

As I was saying. I had very little idea of how the game worked. There were no real in game tutorials save a series of instructions that told you how to play the game (What?). So I did have to read the manual. Which for those of you who still have it, will remember it's about as thick as your middle 3 fingers side by side.

The game was truly awesome to me. I don't mean the "Wow awesome hot dog man" (See Eddie Izzard) I mean the kind that takes your breath away. I started with the Orc Warrior, Garonak on some pvp realm (Didn't know what pvp stood for). About two weeks in to playing the game I reached the Barrens (Yes people. That's how long it used to take... when you had school for 6 hours a day anway). I thought the Barrens alone were massive. Thinking about how large the rest of the world was, that was awesome.

Anyway, it took me about six months to reach sixty, partially through poor skill on my part, partially because it was a real ordeal back then. No flight path in Un'goro, no mounts till 40, 100gold was seen as being wealthy. Having an epic mount made you cool. Having an epic mount from a faction that was not your own made you god like.

Anyway. TBC eventually came out. I would have been... 14-16 by that point probably. I leveled Garonak to 70 over a pain staking few weeks, despite being arms spec, in pve I might add, i was picking my upgrades based on which had the most armour. I grew a little bored of TBC however. Outland was notably smaller than Azeroth and with flying mounts, it lost that GIANT WORLD feeling, not to mention I was a little older so had to start paying my own sub!

I quit my 3 month long sub plan. However, a week or two before it was due to expire, I remembered that I had never been a Draenei or even seen their starting area. So, I hurried clicked on the new character screen and then Draenei. The Draenei that appeared was a female, with arched horns, and bangs hair, who was a hunter! I called her Vashnu.

I leveled through Azuremyst and Bloodmyst. I got drawn back in. It occured to me that this time I was the Alliance. I had a whole new GIANT world to explore. Vashnu was on the Sha'tar by the by.

Eventually, I joined a semi-rp guild called, The Exodar Vindicators. An all Draenei guild. I stayed with them from about level 11-70. I had dipped my proverbial toes/hooves in the role playing community, but still knew little of it. It wasn't until one day I was kicking about Hellfire Peninsula, that I saw Niblit and Northwall looking for more people to help them with the group quest, Overlord. Being a gentleman I rushed over to help them.

When I arrived I found them to be "IC" which I would later find meant in character. I told them I had a level 70 friend who could help, and they politely pointed out that OOC chat should be in double brackets. Niblit made a pun of measuring power levels with gnomish tech.

From that moment on I started paying more attention to be in character. I encouraged our guild to take an active role in the community and tried always to role play when I found people interested. Eventually, sadly, I had a falling out with our new guild leader who wanted to start inviting non-draenei into the guild. However, being so popular with the guild, this sparked a revolt, causing many members to simply leave without saying anything. And so my time with the Exodar Vindicators was over, as was the guild!

I stumbled upon Northwall the next day, who had taken an interest in my role play, and invited me to join a role playing guild he was a part of called Horizon. The name struck me as silly but that was all that was silly.

I had gone from a casual role playing guild to one of the servers big hitters. Along with guilds like Athanatoi, Guards of Elwynn, there were more but it's late/early, I forget!

I felt so humbled once again. A tiny insignificant person in a guild full of people that had role played to the max from day 1. Revane, Northwall, Volun, Neveya to name a few! I stayed with Horizon, mostly, for The burning Crusade. We saw weekly, often daily, role play events from what felt like a massive community of role players. Cross guild events happend almost every day and Horizon itself almost had a mini guild war with Holy Templars, which is now Vanguard of Vigilance.

Over time however, many of these bigger guilds and community leading players left the game, server or their guilds. The community shrunk as the popularity of playing the new races died out. When Wrath of the Lich King came, a dimished Horizon, and indeed, a diminished server, trudged on.

Northrend was an easy 10 levels. I shot through it in about 2 or 3 days, would have been quicker but, shcool! And with so much of the servers role play diminished, save for /LFRP, I quickly found myself sliding back into the quitting phase, even so early into Wrath.

It was at this point an ex-guildy from Horizon, known then as Iliaster, now known as Cailaeth or Valiandsomething, said I should consider raiding, the world of pve. Admittidly the idea had always enticed me slightly, working together to take down big threats, seeing things not every one got to see, even the pretty armour!

With a tear in my eye I left Horizon and joined APC, who, eventually, promoted me to a full time raider. As Wrath progressed I noticed many more of the old names of the sever, which I guess now a days, I am an old name, leave. Either quitting, joining the Horde or some other form, the big guilds vanished, some renamed, and the players were gone.

By the end of Wrath, in all honesty, I had had enough of Pve. After Ulduar, which was godly, everything else felt a little "meh.". Yet, I stayed. I enjoyed the company of the APC family, which had it's own fair share of problems! What little role play I was getting was good enough.

When Cataclysm hit, I got sad. Although the new leveling content was okay, the lore was fairly interesting, the changes to the world were pretty cool and we had new raids, it still felt lacking. I think many will agree that generally, Cataclysm was and still is, unfinished. A fair few things like bugs, defunt NPCs and old quests still lingered and some still do, giving a very poor quality feeling for the game.

I wasn't enjoying the raiding content as much, and even reaching into late Wrath, I had a few issues with our guild leader, who to this day I will say was a pretty awesome chap even if I didn't think so way back when.

Over time APC itself had more problems. Too many shifts. People leaving and coming back. Officer changes. Differing opinions on how things should be done... this next part may seem very critical of a now, as far as I understand, ex-raiding guild and my apologies, this is just the way I saw things happening, still think you are a great bunch of people.

Eventually a few of these voices got together and put together a 10 man raiding group that raided together every week (Which to this day I still remembering saying "Sounds like a bad idea" :) ). This group eventually became frustrated with our lack of progress on bosses and heroics, often inadvertilly pushing us to save lock outs in favour of progress over farm, leading to hours of wipes.

The 10, well closer to 13 or so seeing as not everyone could make it all the time, eventually informed us they'd be leaving the guild to make their own. This would be a devestating blow to any guild, yes, but for us it was crippling. Most of these players were officers. And most of them were tanks and healers (The hardest to come by!). This guild would become what is now known as Daybreak.

Anyway they handed leadership over to me (Crazy!). Now I was good at PVE. I could move out of fire and pull decent numbers, I was no top dps but I could do alright. I had no idea about composistion, tactics and generally, raiding stuff. Well it was halfway through Icecrown citadel I found out you could install addons!

I held Guildmaster for about 2 weeks, before giving it to Ouranos. I simply couldn't do it. I took a long break from raiding, favouring role play again or even just other games. But even as I took my break I couldn't find that same old GIANT WORLD feeling. I made new characters on new role playing realms to try re-create it, but for what ever reason, they didn't work out.

I very rarely raided during this time, around about the time APC pulled back together and started hitting the Firelands, now as a 10 man raiding guild. I just couldn't get interested. Even on those days were I felt co-ordinated and raid ready, Firelands was just so dull.

I turned to role play to help sate my bordem. I tried to make a few posts addressing certain problems the realm was having, but quite often or not these were drowned out by blind optimism. I avoided phrases like "The server/rp is dead.". But it was discouring. Too often people turned away from the problem and prefered the "Well just last week i had an event." frame of mind. Or simply, when people started to say "Well Rp is dead" someone would throw a single event in the hope it would make people forget how poorly the realm was fairing.

I eventually made a come back. Raiding most days of the week, enjoying the PVE aspect, to a certain extent, again. When Dragon Soul came out I tried to make as many raids as I could. But, by this point I had lost all real interest in PVE.

My mind changed "Fight the ancient general of an army!" to "Kill various colours.". Even the spine of deathwing was simply, stand here, shoot that, well done.

And so I turned my attention back to role play. You may have seen a few of my posts, advertising events, encouraging role play, joining things!

But after many rejections, many role playing events were only 2 people showed up, many bad experiances, I again lost interest in that.

I found myself logging in more to talk on /rpadvice and /g more than anything else. I logged off shortly before raids to give the impression I was busy. I cobbled together a few social rp events and more recentlly the Alliance Rp due (Part 3 delayed!).

Even these events struggled. Ulduar, the first event, was good. We had a good team of 10 role players. However there was a lot of bickering. So much moaning and even people moaning at me for taking certain people. I brushed these off and carried on.

Skybreaking was supposed to be the big one. An -open- RP event set in a safe area for level 1-85? Alright, even the low levels can come. Hordies can make alts and come. It was even open to people that wanted to RP civilians! The bulk of the event was supposed to be a social aspect. The heroes and civies rping with themselves and each other, meaning I could put a very loose plot into the event without too much bother.

Instead we got a handfull of people. Granted, these people were excellent, some had to go early, fair enough, and granted some people simply cound't make/didn't fancy it, fair enough. But out of the entire server, for only 5 or so people to attend? I won't lie, it was galling.

I wasn't sure whether I unpopular and no one wanted to attend my events, or if people were apathetic to the state of affairs. One was just as bad as the other.

I decided to simply make do, trudge through it as best I could.

And then Star Wars the Old Republic came out.

Now. I know, if anyone reads through this post and sees this line they'll say:

"Ah, so basically it's a load of rubbish, Vash has just quit to play ToR.".

Simply put that's not the case. Yes, I am enjoying ToR. It's proven to be fun, the role playing community is good and it still has a fairly giant world feel to it.

But it's not Warcraft. It's not the game I fell in love with almost 10 years ago. The people are not the same, not that they are bad people but I do miss some of you when I'm not online.

Anyway, I've been using ToR as a distraction since it came out. Keeps me occupied and out of trouble, because we all know when Wow players don't play, they go and sell drugs! Yeah!

I do still get pangs to return. That little "Oh I wonder what's going on at the Recluse." or the "I wonder if there's a march of the Horde coming up." I'll wonder what you lot are talking about.

So I rush to log in to find nothing happening and the only role play I get is two or three people whispering, mostly "Where have you been? XD" and a little role play, and some bickering over /LFRP as well as some silly argument in /rpadvice that least to someone kicking everyone else.

Anyway. That's the biography of my Wow time right there. Plenty more ups than downs eh?

What do I plan to do now/next? Well, I'll be cutting back on Wow time. Logging in only once or so every few days to chat, poke about for role play. I'll troll the forums too.

When will I be back proper? I don't know. I don't want to come out and say "Well I don't like this therefore it's wrong and I don't want to play it.". But the way the Sha'tar is at the moment? It's not quite a place I want to be. Maybe I'll faction change, server change or race change Vashnu. I would of course re-make her. There must always be a Vashnu after all.

For those of you who read all of this, thank you very much for your time. Feels good to even just type this out. For those that skipped to the last few paragraphs or are just here to grief, well done you.

This isn't good bye, it's "Right nipping out for a bit. 'When will you be back luv'?' Duno."

I'm the same as yourself now Vash, but instead of ToR I'm just trudging around trying to find things to do.

I was originally taught role player but a boy named Islwyn in the guild Defenders of Faith. I also was amazed by Wow, it's vast worlds and the community of people around you.

Horizon was where I first found my footing. I always remember running around Elwyn and seeing the name and for some reason I really admired the people within in. This was the same for the Auroua Wolves but Horizon was always the one for me.

Horizon introduced me to some amazing people, some I've forgotten the names of. My room, Revane, Vashnu and Idrill. You guys were the best even though I never saw eye to eye with Myrion, he was still a super good Rp'er. It'll always hold good memories for me, some I still think about now and wish things were different but that's for another time.

Thanks Vash, you've always been someone for me to look up to, always sticking to your Rp through and through.

Maybe me and you should restart Horizon! Get it back to the good ol' times!

Anyhow, if you decide not to come back. Thank you for all the good times. I really enjoyed reading your personal view of your Wow history. See you around!

Cattola will miss you.

I'm not going anywhere! I'll still be online sometimes! Just not as much!

Cool story bro

(sorry, someone had to)

What's a "Vashnu"?

Best wishes from "Valiandsomething". I'm not sure if it's a wise choice either, but whatever you end up doing... enjoy it.

What's not a wise choice? =0

Your face!



Also, someone apriciate my comment!

<3

Taking a break is what I referred to. While drunk.

03/02/2012 20:30Posted by Vashnu

What's not a wise choice? =0

Logging out naked with a rose in your hair. :)

People are often missed when they go away.

Why. Are. You. Naked? *frightened*

Where's Vashnu?!

On the forums.
Naked.

Don't forget guys, put your armour back on before logging off.