My days as a Mage in World of Warcraft - Noob Status

I played a Mage in World of Warcraft off and on over the last 6-7 years. I've been in top raiding guilds, farmed Arenas and Battlegrounds when they first came out, farmed Honor when it was introduced in massive battles at Tarren Mill, or just spent the day in Orgrimmar selling enchants, and pioneering selling enchants with my own mats.

Watching the original trailer still gives me a nostalgic feeling.

It all started actually back from a game called Everquest, one of the pioneers of MMORPGs. I played Everquest with a friend from high school. I had bought the game, but never played it due to it's online requirements. I gave the game to a friend who was into computers and games, then later saw him playing on "orc trainer hill" in the Crushbone zone. I witnessed him pull adds and get dropped so fast I busted out laughing. That convinced me to buy the game and get some internet hooked up. Later on around level 30 I met some players from San Diego and I joined their small guild. These were the guys that got me into World of Warcraft, as the fire from Everquest was dying out for us, and they were huge Warcraft III players.

I was about 22, around 2004, just moved from Las Vegas to middle of nowhere-Michigan to work in a paper mill (interesting choice?). Working 12 hour shifts 4 days a week, then 4 days off of hard drinking, and then repeat. The only thing to do up there was shoot pool or hang out at the bar. It was just me and my buddy from Vegas, he's full blooded Irish, and I'm Scotch and German, so we didn't have any trouble staying at the bar to kill the boredom.

The game was released and I couldn't get a copy of it, no stores around the small town carried it, my best bet was Wal-mart and they never had it. This was way before I had online shopping methods. A few months after release I got ahold of this game and it was all over.

The change was immediate, I completely stopped going to the bar and stopped drinking so much. Instead, I was pounding soda and staying up late playing World of Warcraft. Not going to the bar so much actually put a strain on my relationship with my roommate, he suddenly lost his drinking buddy. Eventually he moved back in with his folks in Chicago, and I was still up in Michigan staying up all night and working 12 hours the next day.

I remember the first time logging in, I had made an Undead Mage. My buddies met with me at the newbie Undead area in Tirisfal Glades and gave me like 50 gold, and then I started questing and killing. Fireball, fireball, fireball!!! I got the guild invite while in Brill and later a guildie came by hauling ass on a horse and gave me some nice bags, the guildie that would later be my only Enchanting competition on the Horde side haha. Probably around level 15 now.

A few levels later, in gchat, major battles were going on at the Arena in Stranglethorn Vale. It took me so long to get there, the first time ever taking the zeppelin. I got there at the end of all the carnage, definitely can't use a horse at level 19. Skeletons and corpses were everywhere, tons of lines of gchat were taken up with "get the healer!!!" or "get this guy off of me!!!" messages. Who would have thought months later, all of that would be organized into a point system, special maps, and I would be the one screaming to "CATCH THAT DRUID!!", good old Warsong Gulch all-nighters. =)

PVP had always been a good lure for me. I didn't PVP much in Everquest, usually I'd end up getting demolished by bards constantly and couldn't level up. I played Shadowbane for a little bit, and even though I hate point-and-click movement style, the PVP system was fairly fun. Warcraft got it pretty well figured out, the Mage was the most fun class to play in my opinion. Being that fragile, you have to stay on your toes constantly, good stuff.

The guild apparently was one of the tops on that sever, always doing Molten Core and talked about being the first on the server to kill the first boss, Lucifron. That was a big push for me, so many people playing a video game and you can get a public type of bragging rights, when normally you could only do that with your friends on a console. Always seems nerdy or lame but we do the same kind of stuff in real life haha.

I leveled completely 1-60 with a friend I met in-game. We were both starting out, both Undead, he was a Warlock and I was a Mage. We played on a PVP server, so having a constant extra person with you was a good idea, and it made for some pretty awesome fights if more than 1 person tried to gank us. That was a pretty good combination, fear was awesome while I blasted everyone down. Eventually my PVP chops were pretty sharp, which made for some great stories later down the line.

Good ole Drama!!