Where do I come from? Part 3

I have been doing some work and taking care of personal crap, and now we can go back to the last installment of my history so we can get to some nitty gritty.

As we entered Wrath of the Lich King, we were totally ready to be at the forefront, the core of raiders were amazing and ready to take on anything WoTLK had to offer.  However, the difference between BC and Wrath was not the core of 15-20 it was the others that filled in the raid to keep us afloat that were our X factor.  When the right people were on, it was great and amazing and we killed things, but these were also not progression raiders as I knew the term from my BC days, and even now.  A progression raider is someone who is there to step up and keep working at stuff they may not get the first try, the first night, or sometimes the first week.

The situation we were in led us to a real road block with Sarth 3D and a few other of the more difficult achievements we had on our plate like 6 min. Malygos.  We eventually did get the group together to get both of those achievements as they were still the current tier of content, and I will still wear my Twilight Vanquisher title with pride from time to time because of the work I had to put in to earn that one.  So with everything done, I really only had the ability to hone my skills as an Affliction warlock, which landed me top numbers amongst the guild for several encounters, outside of Thaddius since I had to use a swiftness potion to make the jump on my old computer(yeah it was sad).  Then we heard about T8 and I was ready for the Secrets of Ulduar.

Ulduar is sort of where the wheels really fell off for NGW as a guild.  The core raiders wanted to attack hard modes, which were sort of new to the game still while we had the slot fillers wouldn't log in because they knew we were doing hard modes.  This caused a rift amongst the guild and created cliques and it really brought down morale, and eventually we got through Ulduar normal mode but without enough time left before ToC to sink our teeth into hard modes.

When ToC came out it became the same situation as it was the whole expansion...we would breeze through the easy stuff and then ToGC would be on the schedule and we either had no one around or people wanted to quit when it got a bit difficult.  This eventually led me to talk to Shadrilin and see what his thoughts were on a move.  He was sorta OK with the idea but looking would be difficult with our schedules.  Then I caught swine flu and had nothing but a whole week of free time to take care of finding us a new home.  I eventually stumbled upon a very similar guild, same schedule and goals as NGW in BC had.  So I gave it some time and thought and when NGW made the decision to move to a 2 hour raid schedule per night I knew it was no longer the home for me, and to the dismay of some of the members of the officer core and raiders at large, I left for Completely Different, with Shad to follow me shortly after.  Now CD was on Terenas, a much smaller server and Horde, so I was glad to make a real big switch.

With CD, I was a bit quiet and just did my job until my app period was up and then I started to get to know the members and I made great friends with a group of people.  This group of people were happy to work on content that was challenging, and we got to 4/5 ToGC but due to a cycle of apps at key positions we never quite got to Anub enough to push us over the hump.  Then at long last, we were ready to assault the Frozen Throne.

Currently we are pushing through hard modes and are 8/12 ICC 25 HM, next time I get a chance I will post some discussion on current specs and how to properly gear/play them. 

Until then, don't clip your DoTs and remember where your summoning stone spell is.

-Benzie

Where do I come from? Part 2

Back to the story, away we go.

Now right before level 70 I joined a small guild that raided mainly Karazan and if enough people were online we would take a shot at Gruul's Lair.  I was not with my druid and rouge friend yet because they were already working on Tier 5 content and trying to break into Tier 6 and I was still thinking I was hot shit in my 3 epics and blues.  Once I first stepped into Kara for the first time, holy hell I was hooked.  I am not only a sucker for a fun game, but I am also a giant lore junkie.  The epicness behind the story of Karazan made me drool and want that much more, especially with the interaction with NPCs that I was familiar with from Warcraft3.  When our guild was unable to crack into Serpentshrine Cavern due to a lack of bodies the guild fell apart and I eventually found myself at home with Nethergard Watch.  I will be honest, at the time I was a terrible warlock, not only with my gear but also my ability to work with my class mechanics, but because I knew this druid named Shadrilin and gnome rouge Melbu in real life, my app was accepted because at the very least I could be "Moar dots!" and we could see if I could hack it.

My "audition raid" was a quick Karazan run with various old members of the guild to see if I would be able to fit in with the group dynamic that NGW currently had, and needless to say I was a bit nervous but fit in fairly well with people who I thought I was only playing a game with, but would eventually become good friends with.  My biggest memory of that whole raid was when I was asked to watch a certain video of an adult nature to see if I could handle the crass humor and I couldn't stop laughing.

I slowly worked my way through the progression content at the time by taking spots that they couldn't fill with anyone else and eventually earned a full time raider spot, even though my official app period lasted six months because I was poor and could not afford to enchant my weapon with the best enchant in the game.  I kept learning the finer points of warlock things from my friend in game friend Carthion, who knew enough to get me started but back then it was bind your keyboard to shadowbolt and smash your face on the keyboard.  I eventually began reading and doing my work to become the best I could be, and it showed in my performance as well as suggestions involved with boss encounters and ngwlock, the most epic private channel in guild(ask anyone who was allowed in it).

Over the summer of 2008 we pushed our way through Black Temple and Archimonde of Mount Hyjal as best as a casual raiding guild could and by the end of the summer we were working on the last boss of BT, Illidan.  After all the hard work I was doing, I finally was able to reap the rewards by being chosen to be the warlock tank, partially because I was the only warlock who was around enough but not the point(haha).  This was quite possibly my favorite point in my WoW career, mainly because my friend Shadrilin was not able to actually tank him after working his ass off the whole expansion because he was the only one who cared to build a fire resit set, something needed by two off-tanks.  I just like being able to literally poke the bear by saying that I was able to tank Illidan and he couldn't, but it is OK, he tanked the Lich King so he stopped his bitching.

As the expansion winded down Sunwell opened up and we were interested to step in there and see what we could do, and were proud of what we did because that is some of the most difficult content in the game ever.  At the very end of The Burning Crusade, Nethergard Watch ended 5th highest on the progression chart for Burning Blade, and before we could even blink we were sent to Northrend to stop the Scourge and end the Lich King.

Where do I come from?

I have been looking for a few new creative outlets and I have been looking for this to be something I can work on as I get warlock information and what thoughts I have on these things.  Now, for this to be able to be worth anything at all, I think we need to see where I came from in this game, where I am, and where I am looking to be in the future.  So let's start History of the Warlock: Part 1(bonus points if you get the reference).

I began my actual work with these games from Blizzard with Diablo2, mainly to socialize with friends I had met when I moved.  This is very important because I still see it as one of the most perfect online multiplayer games ever created.  The story sucked you in and gave you that absolutely epic feel and drive to get onto that ladder, doing hours of Cow Levels, and Pindle/Baal runs.  Brings a smile to my face to still think about that max level Necromancer with a full Trang-Oul's Avatar which was an absolute bastard to farm out and get my hands on.  As much as this was something I spent a lot of time doing, I myself did not actually do much hard core playing as Diablo2 was designed to be able to pick it up and and drop it whenever I needed to.  With that 56k modem connected to our phone line I could just drop the game I was in if the phone rang and it was an important call no harm no foul, just restart another game and wait for another group of people to join ya.  We didn't even have any sort of VoIP because the game was not entirely too complex, you would just farm things over and over with the same mindless mechanics, but I couldn't get enough. 

I then played around with WoW for a bit nothing serious or even past level 30 at launch but I knew the storyline from Warcraft3 and TFT and really wanted to get at it but because of other things going on in my life with high school I never had the chance to really get at it, so I got myself involved with Guild Wars.  This gave me a true idea of what a MMORPG could really offer me(if even on a small level) and I enjoyed sitting around running end game dungeons and PvP with my guild mates while bullshitting on TeamSpeak(I know it was bad) and just enjoying the social aspect of the game at large.  I quickly gave this up during my freshmen year of college due to running around partying and trying to figure out this independence thing with school.  I basically had my video game life at this point consist of Halo LAN parties on our dorm floor while drinking beers and yelling back and forth at each other for that weak ass head shot.

Then once again the world of Azeroth would give me a holler when I walked into a friend's room in January and him and his roommate were BOTH playing WoW.  I looked right at the kid I sorta knew from playing Halo and said "Well shit, now I have to reactivate my account." and he laughed at me and said how his friends from home set him up with the game and that he and his friend were leveling on Burning Blade, he was a night elf druid and his roommate a gnome rouge and while I had originally toyed with the Horde when I first picked up the game, I was OK making an Alliance warlock, so I went and reactivated my account and started leveling Carretta, my female human warlock on Burning Blade in January of 2007.  The server was pretty busy all the time, always able to pick up a group here and there if you wanted one, and me and my two friends were off, playing around in a few leveling guilds, and took a break for a bit while doing the college thing.  I was finally ready to start the end game stuff a year later.