Thursday (11 Jul) - A Trip Down Memory Lane

Thursday (11 Jul) - A Trip Down Memory Lane

The time is coming to close the book on the Wild Family. As of 31 Jul, 2013, Happy and the rest of the gang on Happy's account will depart. Wild, Philly, JB, and a few others will still be around until August 8th, when the second account expires, and then that will be the end.

Wild has let what is left of his cabal know that I am leaving. That really came down to just Bd (Bloodknuckle) and Lady Hunter (Talatiana). By a seemingly appropriate twist of fate, Wild was unable to log into the guild website to say  my farewells to what few other players still remembered Wild. Just as well.

It may be just a game, but it was a passion and an obsession that consumed countless hours of fun stretching over almost nine years.

I intend to keep in touch, and continue the blog in one fashion or another. It's funny that endings often precede new beginnings. A friend of mine who I have not talked to in more than five years got in touch with me recently. He is getting married, and wanted to invite me to the wedding.

In all honesty, it will be hard to let go of the game. Funny, though, that it isn't the game itself that I will miss. More than anything, I will miss writing about it and sharing my thoughts and adventures with my friends. As much as I loved raiding, it was the retelling of those raiding adventures that I most looked forward to writing about. As much as I loved the Wild family characters, it was writing storylines for them that went beyond the game that I worked on the hardest. Those things are what I will miss the most.

Finally, I can't walk away without one more look back. I want to mention as many friends as I can recall, particularly those who made a significant impact over the course of this journey. I also want to list the things that I best remember about the game and the grander accomplishments.

The chronicling of Wild's adventures began on 22 February, 2005, with a post on the Sporting News forum site. "Any fans out there or am I the only baseball bat wielding Tauron Druid out there? Just started playing this online fantasy role playing game recently and am totally hooked." When this was posted Wild had achieved the lofty status of Level 8 and was still learning the game. Yes, I misspelled "tauron" which should have been spelled "tauren." Wild's family tales will end on 8 August, 2013, covering a period of eight years, five months, and a few days.

In between those dates, I had a hell of a lot of fun. I also encountered many, many folks who had a hand in Wild's success and enjoyment. It was Pete who first responded to my post. Just two days later, Pete had bought the game and created an Alliance gnome. Within a couple more days the World of Warcraft "addicts" started chiming in. There was Ed, with a level 59 Dwarf paladin on the Hyjal realm. He had started playing the game while it was still in beta testing. Bbrool confessed his obsession with a level 48 Dwarf priest on the Khadgar server. There would be many more.

Wild learned to "fly" at level 11. Not true flying, since that ability would not be added to the game for many years. "Flying" in vanilla WoW meant being able to buy passage on flying beasts that traveled between static points. It was the first time I saw the world from the sky, and it was awesome!

Wild didn't have any money back then. As the first character in a new game there was no Happy to give me gold, no guild to help me along, and I had no idea an Auction House existed. Wild's first great "tragedy" came at level 15 when Wild spent his entire stake of thirty silver to buy a staff from a local vendor, and then accidentally sold it back to the vendor for six silver. There was no "buy back" option then. I was destitute and had lost not only my money, but the staff I'd lusted after.

Other players started adding their own stories. A few, like Qsilver and Munich_man, called me "evil" for enticing them to try out the game. Remember, the forum I was posting to was the Sporting News Forum, and the purpose was to talk baseball, not WoW. I had begun to collect a following, though. NaturalDoc joined the conversation, lamenting that he was going to have to upgrade his computer to play the game.

I was surprised to rediscover that Wild joined his first guild on March 3rd at level 16. Wild also took part in the "wild west" pvp action in The Crossroads, back when it was common for Alliance players to take a ship to the neutral town of Ratchet and then ride to The Crossroads to harass and kill the horde defenders and any horde players that showed up to defend their town. Blizz has spent a lot of time and effort to improve pvp play over the years, but none of it compared to those days of combat at the Crossroads.

Wild's first bit of guild drama came on 12 March, just nine days after Wild joined. There was a falling out of some kind and half the guild left. I guess this was Wild's early warning that guild drama would be an ongoing thing. Funny,  I don't remember the name of the guild and never recorded it. For some weird reason I was reluctant to make direct reference to people's names, character names, guild names, etc, out of concern that something I wrote might upset someone. A lot of people I played with over the years will forever be called by their initials or a nickname instead of their real character name.

On 29 March Wild's guild was self-destructing, but Wild could not figure out how to leave it. I asked the guild leader to kick me from the guild and was instead made an officer. I later figured out how to quit the guild.

On April 1st Wild entered his first dungeon group. He was a level 24 and the healer of the group. The dungeon was Wailing Caverns, and it took us over four hours to complete. They don't make dungeons like this anymore.

Did you know that killing non player characters (npcs) was not part of the original game? On 19 April a patch opened the Honor system, allowing npcs to be attacked ala pvp style. For awhile no town was ever safe from marauding players attacking npcs, and of course, each other.

Wild joined his second guild on 9 May. He tanked his first dungeon (Wild, tanking!?). Wild also got his first Honor Kill (hk). Wild added his first new character (JB). On June 14th Judi began playing her own druid, AechTee. So many firsts in those heady days.

Happyface joined Wild's family as his "investment banker" (yes, I actually used that term in the post) on 7 July. Happy began his role mining the Auction House with the grand stake of three gold. It was all that Wild could afford. Wild had one goal for Happy. Make enough money for Wild to be able to buy his mount. Back then Happy actually bought gear and did the disenchanting into mats himself. On July 18th Happy proudly handed Wild the ninety gold he needed for his mount, a kodo mount that only taurens could ride. It took Happy only eleven days to go from 3g to 90g.

Does anyone remember Thotbott? That is where one went to get all manner of information about the game. It's successor is Wowhead. Remember Carrot-on-a-Stick? The diabolical, difficult quest rewarded Wild with a 5% increase in mount speed, well worth the tremendous group effort to get it with his guild.

Speaking of guilds, Wild switched guilds again on 31 July, making it his third guild. There was plenty of guild drama, although Wild had little involvement. He reached level 47.

One for the Books: On September 11th, 2005, Wild's server, Silvermoon, got it's first Horde Ragnaros kill, the final boss in the FORTY man raid called the Molten Core. The party went on well into the night and early morning all across the server.

Another one for the books: The Sporting News closed it's old forum board and I had to transition all of my prior posts to the new board as of 15 September, 2005.

That wraps up Part One of my walk through the past.