Reflecting On An Era

Well today is the final day of Burning Crusade with the release of Wrath of the Lich King at midnight tonight so I figured it only fair to blog about it.

I can't compare BC to the original WoW as I came into the game just after BC came out. I did come from being a GM in Everquest so I could compare to that but EQ was a first generation MMORPG so it's just not like comparing apples to apples.

Anyways I am happy that I decided to try WoW after retiring from Everquest. It didn't take long until i was hooked on it. I knew from the start that I wanted to tank(because i was a caster in EQ) and after talking with friends that played I knew that a druid was the way I wanted to go(of course at the time BC was new so they didn't know how tough it would be on me to tank as a druid but hey). It took me a little while to level to 70 simply because I was working out of town for the whole of the summer I was trying to level. Once I hit 70 though I knew I wanted to raid(well I knew I wanted to raid when I started).

Because of the nature of EQ(a new expansion every 6 months and 72 man raids) I was in a guild that was always behind the 8 ball as far as progression goes. I decided that this time around I just wanted to be a follower and get into those guilds that were on the cusp of progression. Boy did that not happen. Drenden, my server, didn't even have a guild at that level. Our highest guild killed Illidan around 2.4 and killed KJ after 3.0. Sure, I was able to raid but things weren't happening at the pace I had hoped for.

So I ended up(through a random sequence of events) taking matters into my own hands and against my previous wishes I ended up being GM of a guild. At the time we were all noobs who had done some Kara and started Gruuls. Once No Vacancy turned into a raiding guild we got Gruul down within a week and moved on from there. Sure, we were a guild that was behind the 8 ball but our hopes were to catch up to everyone as fast as possible and we set a goal of killing Illidan before the expansion. That was January, meaning we had a lot of work ahead of us.

Fast forward to today. Illidan did not die. We came close. So close in fact that last night we planned for an extended raid in BT to clear everything so tonight we could work on him. Blizzard killed our last chance. Am I unhappy, sure. But it's not at my guild. I am proud of No Vacancy for sticking it through to get to this point. We had a very uphill battle to get to this point in progression and at least we can say we got to this point. In the end we got ourselves up to top 10 guild on the server and a pretty good reputation. And we did it without the help of others. We had a policy to not bring in pugs and we learned each and every fight as it came to us. No one ran us through the fights or did it for us. We did it the (albeit nerfed) hard way and succeeded.

Now we are starting anew. The only time we'll be behind is because of ourselves. We can finally be right up there competing with the top guilds on the server. I am looking forward to being the GM of a guild that is not behind everyone else but is leading the way in stride with everyone else.

So BC taught me how to raid and how to lead a guild better. Lich King will do more of the same but BC gave me the basis for which to build on. I love being a GM and from the looks of it I am going to love being it even more in the future.

What were your memories from The Burning Crusade? Name your three best and three worst memories from it. Mine are:

Best:

1)Taking NV from Kara noobs to end-game raiders
2)Gaining a ton of friends in the process(and even meeting up with them at various events)
3)Learning how to be a better leader through my guild and my officers

Worst:

1)Coming up just short of our goals
2)Letting myself get burnt out from time to time
3)Zombies! I hated those fracking zombies! I actually had to use my Teleport:Moonglade most of the time.

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