KDS Gaming

I’ve been every sort of raider you can imagine.  In Vanilla WoW when I was just a baby Undead Lock in the good ‘ol World of Warcraft I leveled up and instantly became hooked on raiding with a small guild full of fun people who, for the most part, were not terrible players.  I stepped into Molten Core fresh to 60 and I was in love.

At the time I was only 18 in real life, and finishing my 2 year degree in college.  I had no real ambition to jump into a career, nor did I care to really continue on with college.  Irresponsible?  Possibly.  But that was me after spending my 11th and 12th grades of high school in college instead.  I had a jump start on life and I really didn’t care to take advantage of it.  Go figure.

Sometime after grinding through Molten Bore week after week with that first guild I found myself craving more in the raiding world.  I found my way into a hardcore raiding guild.  I was in awe at the amount of dedication and drive it took to succeed in this guild.   It wasn’t just about raiding, it was about all of the farming for raids.  The killing of bosses in smaller instances, such as ZG, in order to save an item that when turned in, gave the zone a buff… ultimately in order to stack multiple badass buffs on your raid. Only to quickly port back to an instance so that you could work on that last boss for 2 hours in hopes that every last buff would be enough to boost your raid just enough to get that server first Nefarian kill.

I was one of the hardest  of hardcore raiders once upon a time.

In BC I ran a guild with my fellow author to this blog.  That was the best experience I have ever had with WoW and raiding.  All of the people we came in contact with along the way who enjoyed the guild have told us more than once, the same thing.  I loved it.  It was a very dedicated job though.  And I say job because it was exactly like having a job.  We managed to be a faction first kill guild for a little while, even though we basically took in people who had never raided before and taught them how to raid.  I loved it though.  It was fun to show people that they could be a hardcore (I say that in easy-mode BC hardcore terms) raiders and enjoy the content just like any of the assholes who managed to find their way into grinding raiding guilds.

We were pretty dedicated and serious when we ran the guild.  Sometime after starting that though it became a chore dealing with server drama and a lot of the guild members found themselves conflicted.  Many had grown inflated egos after tasting real raiding and sought out other ‘hardcore’ raiding guilds, and after awhile it just became a drag to force things to work.  I didn’t want to drag my few loyal friends and raiders along, making them wait until I could hopefully fill in spots for raids every night, so I called it quits.  My reign as the token female guild and raid leader on the server was over and I gracefully stepped down and let everyone go.  I was good though, I basically took everything from the guild bank, including gold, and gave it out to guildmates as they asked for it or needed it.  There was nothing selfish about the move to step down, it just simply was time to move on.

It was a sad day.  But I was happy to have a break from leading for awhile… and the other guild leader had already begun his journey into our next adventure, Alliance raiding. (Prior to this, we were both always Horde raiders.)

So I took a break and disappeared from the Horde on my server.  I went from playing an Undead Lock to leveling a Gnome Lock.  It was a welcomed change.  And over the course of leading a guild on this server we had befriended MANY Alliance players.  It was only natural that I made a change for the better and rerolled. (Oh the things we did before faction swaps!).  Eventually it became clear that the guild all of my friends was in could use another lock.  I offered to level my Gnome in hopes that my experience as a raider would outshine my lack of gear as I wasn’t even 80 yet at the time.  They accepted me and I took on the challange to level as fast as possible.

So yea, long story short - I leveled up and got back into hardcore raiding, from the Ally side of things.  This lasted for awhile, but things grew tiring when the guild began to turn into a lot of bitching and moaning about this and that.  We were dedicated and successful and it was enjoyable, but eventually it was time to take a break.  And that we did.

I finally got on with a real life.  I got a job and started getting consistant hours.  I had to stop raiding all of the time in order to grow up and be an adult.   I never have found my way back into hardcore raiding since.  Not that it’s that hard anymore, things have changed so much since the Vanilla days that it’s easier than shit to raid all of the time and still keep up even if you have zero time to grind or otherwise outside of raiding.

I’ve been casual, I’ve been hardcore.  I’ve seen all the old and most of the new.  I’ve loved it and hated it, followed and lead.  Now the question is, what will I do next?

After faction swapping my healer I’m wondering how healing is from the other side.  I’m finding very difficult to come across a casual-semi-serious raiding guild that would fit my RL schedule.  It’s annoying and I am wondering if maybe we could try our hand at running a guild again, now that it’s so much easier to keep up with raiding.  At least then we could raid on our own times.

It’s rough though, being an adult and accepting that if I want any amount of time outside of WoW and work, that I can’t just sit and play WoW all of the time in hopes of raiding again.  Hehe.

Being grown up isn’t half as fun as growing up.

I miss raiding.  We shall see what happens!

So recently both writers here faction swapped, from Horde to Alliance. We’ve both raided as both sides and have no misconceptions that problems exist on both sides nor do we think that “the grass is greener.” We did it for personal reasons and because we enjoyed the characters we swapped. With that aside, we’ve heard a lot of issues with faction swaps. We had our fair share, but all were contributable to something that was done by the user. Once the listed problems on the FAQ on the official site were dealt with, there were no problems and the whole process took just over 30 minutes, including the “Character must be logged out for 20 minutes” catch.

Having the same character, but having it look totally different and actually play different is a great thing. It adds new life to your character, new aspects to the game, and I must say, if you have nothing tying you down to a faction and want to make a good bit of gold, swap and redo all the quests you’ve already done. I lost about 1k or so completed quests in all areas, so that is a lot of free and easy gold that I don’t need to do anything to get back. I must say it is rather funny to see in the Feats of Strength tab you earned a PvP title years after the system was removed too.

In the server downtime today, for WoW, I’m sure a lot of people are going to be bored. I’d recommend checking out Aion personally. It’s not the same as WoW, that’s for certain, but it’s a welcome change. Right now the game is in open beta, and having played most of the closed beta of Aion there are a lot of good things that have come about for the game. Not to mention the cool aspects of flying that are built into the game. It plays a lot like AoC in that it has a semi-reactive system, but it doesn’t require constant input like AoC does. It is a great game with a lot of fun, I just hope that it will continue and have some lasting power once the “end game” phase comes out, the Wintergrap-esk concept of a raiding instance is not really that much fun when it’s the only option; that type of system works fine in a Warcraft like game where there are multiple instances and raids to do so that you aren’t required to control a certain PvPvE zone just to enjoy the game. Also, the crafting system is truely involving in Aion, it grants you experience, has some neat animations, and has a ton of quests to focus around leveling your professions; though sadly they are a bit overwhelming at first once you catch on it’s not bad at all.

I finally resubscribed to WoW last night, as well.  Blawle is right.  After being logged in for about 10 minutes I get my first tell asking me to heal some random PUG in whatever heroic.  2.5 months away from the game and I was already debating if my decision to start playing again was a good one.

I ran an instance with B and some friends on my priest.   Was fun, but I dps’d instead of healing.  Her shadow set is lacking so it just wasn’t that enjoyable for me.  B and I went and killed Onyxia together afterwards and that was actually fun.  Those are the little things I miss about the game.

I was asked last night if I’d be raiding again.  I doubt it.  At least not for awhile.  Not only do I feel I have better things to spend my few hours of free time after work each night doing, but the desire to do all of that just isn’t there right now.  I used to be competitive and wanted to be one of the best.  I enjoyed working hard and pushing through learning nights in order to be one of the few on a server with x piece of gear.  I’m not really anymore.  I hadn’t been even before we took our summer break from WoW.

So I logged over to my Gnome Lock for awhile.  I think I may finally level the little demon.  I started to a little last night before bed and I really do miss playing a lock.  I love healing on my priesty, but I’d rather just play her alongside B’s warrior.  With my lock, I can run around with B on whoever, but I can also go out and have fun alone in the WoW world, just me and my demon.  And apparently my over powered demonic form, too.

All in all, I’m giving WoW a shot now that crazy RL stuff has slowed down.  We shall see how this goes.  A lot of really interesting games are on their way to releasing soon, so I may find something else to get into.  As if I don’t already have enough stuff around the house as it is.

I guess that’s the down and upside to working at a video game store.