From Humble Beginnings...

Since this is the first post to this blog, I think it only reasonable to start from the beginning of my story.

To be honest, I don't remember how I became interested in the game World of Warcraft.  I know that it wasn't from a friend as I didn't know anyone else who played the game when I first downloaded it to try it out.  It wasn't one of the catchy television commercials staring Mr. T. or William Shatner.  I didn't start noticing those until after I was already entrenched in the game.  It might have been a tailored advertisement on the side of one of the web pages that I visited at the time, but I'm not positive that (a) they were that advanced at the time or (b) I was as open with my love of fantasy gaming online as I am today.  Whatever the reason, about 5 or 6 or maybe even 7 years ago, I downloaded and installed the game client on my desktop computer.

Upon starting the game, I was enthralled by the opening cinematic.  The dwarf hunter, the night elf druid, the undead warlock, and the tauren warrior all spoke to me and my love of all things fantasy.  It brought me back to basement games of Dungeons and Dragons when I was a kid and rekindled a flame long reduced only to embers and long thought extinguished.  I should also mention that I was not a fan of Blizzard games and I knew nothing about the world of Azeroth (or MMORPGs) before delving into the World of Warcraft. After that opening cinematic, I met with the character creation screen.  I fell into the trap of thinking the Alliance to be the "good guys" and the Horde as the "bad guys", so I concentrated on Alliance for my first character.  I read the descriptions of the classes, decided that a nature loving druid was in line with my nature loving personality and set about creating my night elf druid, named by the computer randomizer, Ularlia.  Looking back on the name, not only was it nearly impossible for my human compatriots to pronounce the name, it might have been a tad feminine for my bear/cat feral druid.

As time went on, I found myself playing different roles in the game.  At a very early age, my PvP flag naively set to "on", I became a decoy for a higher level player who was trying to flush out a Horde rogue that had made it his duty on that particular day to make life in Astranaar hell on all citizens and visitors.  I died swiftly by invisible blade and experienced a corpse run for the first time.  I also tasted the blood of war on that day and it led to weeks of alternately defending Astranaar from Horde invasion and returning the favor by burning Crossroads to the ground.  My travels took me to the human capital of Stormwind and the dwarven mountain city of Ironforge, the main place of rest for my adventurer after long days of questing and dungeon crawling.

My first guild was named the Praetorian Legion on the Hydraxis server (this was the server suggested for new players) and I stayed in that guild until many of the players left for greener pastures the likes of which I could not fathom at the time and the guild dissolved into nothing.  One of the best things about Hydraxis was the active forum community.  Players like Rakanishu (later known as Kellei) and Bustycops kept me laughing with their witty comments and encouraged me to try my hand at forum life.  I suppose that for a long time nothing happened until I moved the character to Zul'jin...wait, according to my character search, that isn't true.  While on Hydraxis, I found a great guild of like minded people named "Phoenix" and learned more about the intricacies of the game, i.e. my place was most likely that of a healer.  What I do remember of Phoenix was that it was a great guild filled with awesome people that became swallowed by a larger guild filled with less awesome people and that sent me on my way to Zul'jin.  Like much of those early years, only snippets of time are genuine memories.  Most of this part of the history is ephemeral at best and most likely complete fiction.

Zul'jin led to a name change, "Liaiden", which was a combination of my two sons names at the time.  Zul'jin also came with a great guild, "Ohana", filled with some utterly amazing people.  "Ohana" means family and that's exactly how the guild felt.  I met people in Ohana that I still consider to be some of my best friends.  We still keep in touch via Facebook and here's the wild part.  I have never met a single one of them in real life, though the offer stands if I am ever in their neck of the woods.  Even though I met my wife online, I still underestimated the power of the internet to bring people together.  That is a mistake that I'm not going to make again.  Whether it is a silly online game that gets badmouthed by people who have never played it as "addicting", "time wasting", or both or Facebook (also derided by many), I know that you can meet a lot of fantastic people online.

I recently came back to Azeroth after another of my lengthy hiatuses from the game.  Liaden is still on Zul'jin, though the server has undergone some changes.  It has a large population of French Canadian players and Ohana is a small guild that rarely has more than one or two characters on at a time whenever I search.  I have yet to find more connections in the same way that I did those years ago.  Who knows, maybe the magic is gone.  Maybe it is just in a lull and will pick up over the next few months as I get back into the groove of the game and community.  Only time will tell.  I am enjoying the game and the story in a way that I didn't during my years playing through the Cataclysm expansion pack, so maybe my staying power this time around will be longer that it was with that particular part of the game.  I also learned about a podcast, The Instance, that has kept me laughing and given me the sense of community that I want from the game.  They have provided the inspiration to take this one time forum signature of "Jesus Was A Shaman" and attempt to turn it into something entertaining and maybe even informative.  Thank you for reading and I look forward to meeting and chatting with other players.