A Year WoWing Azeroth!

As of today I've been playing WoW for a whole year! It's been an interesting journey with both highs and lows. I like to feel that I've WoWed Azeroth as much as it's WoWed me, but I'm not so sure. For this one year of playing post I'm going to talk about what I've achieved and a little about where I'd like to be this time next year.

The beginning...
As I've mentioned in previous blogs my first experience of the game took place over a year ago. I had a mage on my boyfriend's account that I occassionally played and I got her to level 85. Anyway, I was getting into the game and really enjoying it (it was something different to the usual games I played such as Zoo Tycoon and Theme Hospital). For Valentine's I got my very own WoW account and I was super happy - I had everything up to and including Cataclysm.

I started off by re-making my mage. She is an exact replica of her original self - hair, face, piercings, the lot. Sadly, having leveled her alter-ego (i.e. the original) so recently I decided to leave her and create a new character. I had so much choice - so many races and classes not to mention the number of character slots! I liked how the Draenei looked and my hunter, who is now my main, was born. Since, I have been leveling and making new alts which brings me to talking about...

The Squad!
Currently I have a squad of characters of varying classes at varying levels. In a recent post I looked at the professions I have spread across them. Below I've included a diagram of my characters which depicts their overall importance to the squad and in-game progress.

Top to Bottom, Left to Right: Hunter (main), Mage, DK, Shammy, Druid, Warlock, Monk, Bankingbob (my banking alt) and Moochew (my Horde Paladin who's still looking for a new home).

I'm fairly happy with my squad of characters and how far each has got. I'd have liked to have a second level 90 but I've been busy with other things. I'm currently working on leveling my Mage but she's so damn squishy!

Deleted!
In the past year I've only deleted one character. Well, technically that's a lie - I've deleted several that I've rolled to help someone get an achievement and countless Hordies whilst searching for the right Horde server. What I mean is that I've only deleted one that I consider to be a character that I played properly. My poor Priest just wasn't for me and she was treated terribly! I did try to like her but nothing worked. I didn't quite get the play style and I hated the Human look. I nicknamed her 'The Bitch' and then I realised it was time for her to go. I've managed to find an old screenshot of her though...

The Bitch! Not sure what I was doing in /s.

Highs & Lows
There has been a lot of highs and a few lows during my time in Azeroth. High's include reaching level 90 on my hunter, maxing out some professions, getting some brilliant mounts (more on that here), pet battling etc. I feel like I've achieved a lot considering my extremely slow pace of doing things. Nonetheless there has been some lows - like lots of dying, failing to know what to do and general frustrations associated with blindly running through a world full of nasties (both NPC and human-controlled characters).

How I've Progressed
I, personally, feel that I've progressed a lot in the last year. Yes, I still run aroud blindly killing things hoping they won't kick my ass and that they are the mob I want to kill and that I'm not slaughtering things for nothing. But I now know what a 'rotation' is and not only that but I kinda have one for most of my characters. Yes, the amount of damage I do is sometimes a bit all over the place and not very consistent but it's not as erratic as it once was. I've also learnt some handy tricks to avoid taking loads of damage and dying - like Misdirection.
More importantly, I have settled into the game, got a little bit of confidence and am no longer afraid to do things alone. This may seem a bit weird now (and I do look back and think how silly I was) but I was very afraid when I first started playing. I didn't do dungeons because I was scared that I'd mess up and people would rant and hate me - I just didn't want the pressure in a game! Now, I do dungeons on my own, dabble in a bit of PvP and am generally much happier doing things without someone holding my hand. I'm uber happy about all of this and now I can fully enjoy every aspect of the game that I do without fear or worrying.

 

Year Two
It's been a good start to year two of playing WoW. Ealier I got the achievement Justly Rewarded for earning 30,000 gold from questing (see above). I do have some in-game plans for the next year - such as getting my Mage to level 90, generally leveling my alts, continuing my pet battling quest and going after yet more achievements.
Something that's taken a back seat numerous times is finding a new home for Moochew and making her some Horde friends. Unfortunately, there's normally something more important to be done (like dailies) but I really hope that by next year I've located a server specifically for Horde characters. You never know - I may have switched to playing Horde most of the time!