Plus, they'd be places I'd never seen before. Places to explore! Ah! How excited I was when my moment arrived. Back then, entry-level raid dungeons were only 10-mans. In the original iteration of WoW you had Upper Blackrock Spire, and for the really old school players, they had Stratholme and Scholomance. For Burning Crusade, we had Karazhan.
My first night raiding was very interesting, although it was really nothing special. I was in the second raid team of our guild, which was mainly newer guild members looking to raid. We didn't progress as fast as the first group but we managed our own very well. Eventually as time passed our coordination and skills would improve, as well as our equipment. Our team was solid. We'd talk all kinds of trash in our Ventrilo chats and play music as we kicked ass. Wiping was expected. We simply dusted ourselves off and carried on. Change the strategy up a bit.
I also decided to try my hand out at tanking instead of being a damage dealer all the time. I found it pretty admirable at how tanks would stand there and take the damage while his/her team did the pelting. I started on building a new equipment set not too long after I started raiding. It wasn't too long before I got the hang of things.
Once both raid teams were equipped enough from Karazhan we'd finally unite and form our 25-man team to take on the next step: Gruul's Lair. It was a simple two-boss dungeon with not too much trash mobs. Eventually we would go on to conquer both bosses but that was as far as we were going to get. Eventually things didn't continue as they had originally and the guild would go on to crumble, but a small majority of us went on to reform as a new guild, which did decently until that fell apart a few months later.
At the time I was feeling pretty burnt out with the failures to progress and took my chances with one of the top guilds on the server after being approached by their guild leader. So I took my chances. I was primarily recruited to be one of the guild's offtanks and one day a friend from our crumbled guild asked me a question I'd never forget:
"Are you sure this is what you want to do?"
Those who knew me well enough then knew that I did not roll a paladin just to be a healer, as the class had been "pigeon-holed" into from the very start. As a hybrid class, the Paladin was meant to be able to perform all three of the basic roles expected of players in the endgame. Damage, Healing and Tank. Paladins weren't good damage dealers, their tanking ability was sub-par but their healing was decent enough to make worth bringing to a raid. It angered me to find out this truth after I'd started the character, but I was glad I did eventually. As a Paladin, I just wanted to be helpful on the front lines while being supportive, as a holy warrior is meant to do. You wear plate armor for a reason, do you not?
Tanking was something that suddenly became interesting to me after being a melee damage-dealer and watching our tanks do what they did best, which was something I found very admirable and respected them highly for. Good tanks didn't come by very often and you needed someone worth his salt to tank the most intimidating of raid bosses. I wanted to be able to do just that in the case a raid needed the extra help.
My answer to that question was a yes. I didn't mind putting my tanking ability on the front line, even it meant handling additions to a fight or a secondary raid boss. Eventually that didn't work out too well as a recent recruit who'd transferred from another server was chosen over me as they were better equipped than I. I was quickly running out of options for a decent raiding guild at this point.
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