In a way, I miss playing World of Warcraft.
You see, back when the game was still relatively young, it was a major phenomenon that spread across the entire world. At seven million players strong and growing it was one of the coolest games you could ever play. I initially jumped on the bandwagon in November 2006, sometime during the Thanksgiving weekend. My brother had been playing since October and eventually I was able to get a free 10-day trial up and going. Needless to say I immediately went out and paid the $20 USD for an account key. I went straight to work leveling my first character. At the time, the level cap was 60- but the game's first expansion was around the corner, set to release in January 2007. I tried my very best to hit the level cap in the hopes of getting my feet wet in one of WoW's 40-man raid dungeons that'd I heard so many epic stories about through veteran players.
Those were great times. Surprisingly I was able to manage both school and playing this behemoth of a game until my graduation from high school. When I started playing I spent HOURS in front of the computer screen questing and dungeoneering in the smaller 5-man ventures. I was 16 and brainwashed. There was so much to be done though. My goal in the game was to become one of the mighty veterans who teamed up to defeat huge monsters and proudly wear the stylishly designed Tier armor sets many of the level 60s wore, and if possible, dabble a bit in Player-vs.-Player mode for a ranked title. How I'd envy those with a title.
Eventually I hit the level cap, but it was a bit too late, the expansion had dropped the week before my crowning achievement and I now found myself needing to spend another $40 USD if I ever wanted to keep up. I went the rest of January just milling about until I'd saved up enough and by the time February came I was in the newly opened Outland area and questing my way to the new level cap, 70. I managed that in about three weeks' time, and I'd settled down in my then-current guild as a resident veteran.
I wasn't quite happy anymore though. I was faced with now spending my time as a max-level character in a guild that didn't do much and my original intentions were to tackle the endgame. Back then, one needed to be in an established raiding guild if they ever wanted to tackle the endgame. This meant you needed a headstrong guild leader, someone who called the shots in raids and made major decisions that moves the guild as a whole forward. Sometimes the guild leader would leave the responsibility of raid leading to a high-ranking guild officer. Then you had your class leaders, one member of each class in the game who were also guild officers who core/part-time raiders consulted when they needed to itemize their characters in order to maximize performance in raids. Your core raiders were the people that pretty much showed up to every raid that was scheduled and the ones who are the most tight-knit in the guild. If you had a large enough group of core raiders, nothing was impossible.
Of course, my guild was nothing like that. It was basically a friendly, casual guild. I had many friends there, and I'd been in the guild ever since I began playing. Leaving wasn't going to be easy. Fortunately for me, there were other guildmates who I'd leveled with who also wanted to move to greener pastures. We all banded together and said our farewells. It was a pretty eventful day.
We tried to form a guild of our own at first but it didn't work out too well, and that is where we split ways and joined different guilds. Luckily for me I was able to join up with a fellow guildmate from my first guild who joined another one earlier on before he'd hit the level cap. He was an exceptional player himself and pretty much helped me get my feet wet with the new and current endgame.
And so began my WoW career as a raider.
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