“Create a Character” – isn’t this the most difficult part of any role playing game? I sat at the screen deciding what I wanted to be. In a world where you can invent a new personality, a new entity, and have endless possibilities, this would be the first important stepping stone to creating my new identity. I knew I wanted to be on the Horde faction. There we two factions that were at war for centuries, the Alliance and the Horde.
When I began, I saw the blue banner of the Alliance as the “good guys”, the humans, dwarves, gnomes, and night elves. The Horde had a red banner, and races such as orcs, trolls, tauren, and undead. The Horde seemed like a fun place where anything goes. My friends were on the Horde, and they definitely looked more badass and savage to me, so it was a big yes. I read up on all of the races within the Horde and asked my friends’ advice on what races would be good for an assassin-type class. I settled on my first main character as an undead rogue, for the “Will of the Forsaken” racial trait. This trait allowed you to remove yourself from stuns and snares, available on a 2 minute cooldown. For a class that is very agility-heavy, needing to run around and backstab enemies constantly, this trait was a good boost for any rogue in player-vs-player (PvP) combat.
Now to choose a name for the character I would be mainly playing for what ended up as the next 3 years before I started a new character. Historically with other games, I had gone with Devilishsoul, so I decided to keep this name as it seemed to suit a devilishly sly character such as a pickpocketing, backstabbing, assassinating rogue. Thus, Devilishsoul from Kalecgos was born.
That first weekend, I played quite a bit. This was before the now-way-too-easy modern days of leveling up. To level a character to level 60 took several months; 3-4 months minimum for most people. Before the end of the weekend, I had surpassed my friends and made it to level 21, exploring the Ragefire Chasm and Wailing Caverns along the way. There are 5-man dungeons, still in the game today, however Ragefire Chasm has received an overhaul and is different nowadays. It was an interesting dynamic, playing in a dungeons with 4 other players. One tank, one healer, and three players focusing on damage dealing (DPS – damage per second).
For the first time in my video game history, people worked together, chatted together, and banded together to take down baddies, all in the name of the Horde. That isn’t to say it was all sunshine and roses between people. This was also a time when people were new to online games, a new avenue to say whatever the hell you want, all while masked behind a computer where nobody could hurt you. There would always be the rage-machine guy typing with no punctuation and IN ALL CAPSLOCK
PsySlayer69: LIKE WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GUYS DOING CAN YOU HURRY THE FUCK UP I DONT HAVE ALL DAY I HAVE TO GO FOR DINNER IN 20 MINUTES WILL YOU STOP DYING TO STUPID SHIT IF YOU RUN INTO ONE MORE PACK OF RAPTORS AND WIPE US I SWEAR TO GOD IM GOING TO FIND YOU AND MURDER YOUR FAMILY.
Yeah, it seemed there was always that guy in your group. Then, you’d also have the oblivious guy who has no clue what they are doing, as if they just started playing games yesterday for the first time in their entire life. Buddy is over in the corner looking at the walls of the Wailing Caverns and down into the puddles of water while you are popping Evasion trying to dodge-tank a group of raptors that the healer pulled because they stood too close to the patrolling group.
There was also the guy who has no idea where his corpse is. When there is a wipe, instead of following the other players to the cave entrance, he will go venturing into the mountain ranges trying to go directly to the corpse. This guy will take 20 minutes before you have to kick him out of the group and find a replacement all over again. Nowadays, most convoluted areas show the corpse on the map to where the cave’s entrance is, not where the instance portal within the cave is, until you have entered the cave itself.
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