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Friday, May 13, 2011

Blogger Boggle & 20 Days Of... (Day 4)

Looks like the Blogger back-end took a crap yesterday and Google had to roll-back all the posts to Wednesday morning, which ate my last entry. I'm sure they'll restore it at some point, but it also ate one of my drafts which I was planning to post today...

This might be the first thing that makes me consider either self hosting or moving to Wordpress. But for now I'll stick with Blogger as I generally enjoy the Google tools quite a bit, and am a huge fan of GMail and Google Documents in particula

Anyway. Next week I'll start posting a few raid-guides I've been working on. For today, let's go continue along with the 20 Days Of... which I haven't updated since March. Oops.

DAY 4: Your Best WoW Memory


I could go on about the night we got the Lich King, or Firefighter, or the founding of guilds, or nights full of amazing Roleplay, the night I solo tanked a 25-man raid for the first time... but I still think my favorite night of Warcraft was the night I humiliated myself.

For several years, I was completely oblivious to PvP and had no idea how it worked. I would queue for Battlegrounds but I was that guy who just sat in the middle and tried to kill players like it was an FPS with no goal other than to whittle the numbers of the opposition. One night, a few friends asked me to go into a Warsong Gulch with them to be a flag carrier.

They were having trouble with bad carriers, and wanted me to come in with my tank spec and carry for them. I was told I wouldn't have to do anything except carry the flag - they would keep me free of snares and handle the opposition. I thought it would be fun an I went in.

And the game begins and we dash to the opposite side, my druid healer friend asks me to follow her while the rest of the team waits below, and we get into the enemy room, I click the flag and we run out the tunnel where the rest of my guildies are waiting to escort me.

"Okay, let's go," says Riley, our GM and hunter, and I go, yes, let's go.

And I prepare. First, I swap to Crusader Aura. Then, I click my mount button. It casts and I run like the wind. As the Horde rushes past me, I keep going, grinning with glee - I'm going to get back to the base untouched!

Vent is quiet for a long, shocked moment, and then Riley says, trying very hard not to burst out laughing, "So, now we know why Saif doesn't carry flags."

I didn't live that night down for a long, long, long time. People still bring it up after nearly two years, and it makes me grin like a ridiculous fool. While it wasn't a great victory, it was a central moment in reminding me just how closely knit our friendly the game can be, and how social it can get. These little stories that last for years become stories like we tell each other about our youth, or college years - these stories become the foundations of friendships that last.

At the time, I was very much at a cross-roads, between guilds, socially isolated in game and that moment kind of solidified my place with a group of people I still call friends years later. And that is my favorite Warcraft memory.

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