My WoW Story

I’ve written all about yoga, but not much about WoW. I actually spend more of my time playing WoW than doing yoga. I raid in 25-person raids every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday, and 10-person raids every Thursday. The 10s come and go, but 25s are consistent. I can miss whenever I want to, but I don’t usually want to. :)

Brad bought WoW in December of 2004, right after we graduated from college. Then in January he started working full time while I was looking for a job. He’d play this stupid game from when he got home until it was bed time if I didn’t get mad. WoW and I did not get off to a good start.

We came up with some compromises to make us both happy. He played when I was asleep or watching Gilmore Girls. He used to get out of bed really early on weekends so he could get play time in before I woke up. hahaha What is this game? Crack?

This went on for a while as I dabbled in various hobbies, rolling my eyes at what he wasted his time on while I did productive things like making a messenger bag with my sewing machine. Then one day in February of 2006 I really, really wanted to play Donkey Kong Country on Super Nintendo from beginning to end. It was one of my favorite games as a kid, and I wanted to play it again REAL bad, and I wanted him to play with me. Eventually I proposed a compromise. I’ll match the time you spend playing DKC with me hour for hour playing WoW with him. He agreed.

Oh crap, why did I agree to this? I guess I have to do it now. He helped me set up my WoW character. It was really important to him that I enjoyed this game so he did his best to figure out which type of character I would like to play. He knew I’d want to be pretty, so he put me on the Alliance side instead of the ugly Horde side. I loved Cyclop’s ranged attack in X-Men, so he figured I’d like to be a hunter. He wouldn’t let me name my Night Elf Hunter “Flutterby” because it didn’t go with the WoW theme, and this was important to him (eye roll). Flutta was born.

I started to get into it and was up to level 5ish when he said, “At level 10 you get to tame a pet.” “OH BOY, I GET A PET!!!” That was the point of no return. We took the slow track to level 60 because I cared way more about pwning noobs in battlegrounds and playing with alts (other characters) than actually leveling. Around this time, we were planning our wedding. Several tasks were put off because I had some Warsong Gulch flag capturing to do.

In January of 2007, the first expansion The Burning Crusade came out, increasing the level cap to 70 and adding a new race, the Draenei. Since we’d been too busy battlegrounding to level to 60 (we were in the 50s by this time), we decided to make some Draenei. I wanted to give healing a try. It seemed like a neat role, and I’d read that priests were the best healers in the game. Also I was bitter that I’d let Brad talk me into naming myself “Flutta.”

Flutterby the priest was born. I had a lot of fun with her. I healed Brad along as we quested. He told me to stay shadow spec (the spec to do damage not heal) to level, but at low levels you can heal fine as shadow when needed. I really enjoyed healing. Around level 45ish I went against Brad’s advice and switched to holy spec (the only healing spec of the time). It was GREAT! Wow, healing is easier when you’re character is designed for it. Silly Brad.

Some of our real-life friends were really into raiding since level 60 and kept begging us to “finish a character” so we could raid with them. I finally leveled Flutta to 70 in June of 2007, and started raiding with her. It was fun, but boringly easy to raid as a hunter. The only way to do decent damage as a hunter at the time was to have a certain macro that you just mashed over and over again. It was nice to see myself doing the most damage in the raid, but it didn’t really feel like an accomplishment since I didn’t think at all. I just mashed 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 yawwwwwwwwwn.

So I quit raiding for a while and levelled Flutterby to 70. About that time, I decided that the raiding guild I was in before was a bit too serious about WoW. They’d yell in vent (voice chat) at people who messed up or weren’t good enough. They usually weren’t yelling at me, but I didn’t enjoy that negativity in my ear all the time.

I raided as Flutterby with a new guild without Brad because he didn’t want to raid after the negative experience with the first guild. After a few months I convinced him to join the guild with me, but they decided to transfer to another server, and we had real-life friends on this server, so I didn’t go. I joined the first guild again, but was eventually kicked out of the guild for not logging in for a few weeks (This kick was when the Guild Master was on vacation, a lot of people were kicked, it was crazy). There was a lot of drama among the officers over that…which eventually led to the guild disbanding.

Meanwhile I joined a mostly alt guild that got stronger as the former guild fell apart. I put it a lot of work planning progression for that guild and logged in one day to see that Brad and I were officers. Neat. That Guild Master got more uptight the more we progressed and wouldn’t delegate anything, So as that fell apart, instead of trying to fix it I decided to switch to a non-PvP server, meaning players couldn’t kill each other in the game unless it was in a battleground. Killing each other was nuisance and not much fun, especially since the server was out of balance in the other side’s favor.

Brad went on a mission to find a good guild on a PvE server, and he did, and that’s where we’ve been playing since November of 2008 when the latest expansion, Lich King came out. Flutterby's name had to change to Beckster because Flutterby was taken on that server :( We’ve been consistent raiders as long as they’ve been raiding level 80 content and have become officers. Lately Brad’s the raid leader as the regular raid leader has a newborn baby at home, and I’m the healing leader as the former healing leader is the wife of the regular raid leader. I don’t think she wants the healing leader position back, so I think I should get used to it.

For a while, I wasn’t that dedicated to healing lead duties because I was just filling in, but after several months of leading raid healers, I think I’m the official heal leader now. I’m getting used to being in charge and tactfully telling people, “You failed, do it right this time.” :) I’m also doing more research and carefully planning out healing strategies in advance as much as possible. I’m really enjoying raiding with this guild, and I still can’t believe it’s possible to be in a guild that is not mean when things go wrong. I love it!