So, I quit playing World of Warcraft seriously about a year ago but I continued playing casually for another six months, casually running 5-mans and doing bits of PvP in my spare time, though, I am no longer paying my subscription. I was a hardcore raider during TBC and did a lot of 10-man instances with my friends in early WotLK but my main passions were always PvP and Roleplay. When WotLK turned up, I was excited - I started my Death Knight, powered him to 80 and then... well, that's when the disappointment and alarm bells started ringing. Basically, WotLK sucked for me. It was easy and boring and on the servers I played, it killed off roleplay.
Cataclysm is now on the horizon and, despite myself, I'm pretty pumped. My housemate was playing on beta and so I saw bits and pieces here and there before he got bored of it and I wasn't especially impressed, it's only two months away from WoW that's got me excited about starting again. To be brutally honest, I haven't enjoyed WoW fully since TBC - things were much simpler back then and I find myself looking back very fondly. This is partly due to having had some great Roleplaying experiences more than because of the game being so much better then - I think I just notice the game's flaws and failings more when I'm missing an aspect of the game that isn't dependant on game mechanics. I don't -hate- WotLK but I just found myself enjoying the game a lot less than I ever had before, leading to my quitting to visit Sweden (And a very dear friend I've been roleplaying with for three years who had become my only reason for playing the game) for a month.
I can't really stress the impact World of Warcraft has had on my life enough - my four best friends - two of whom I now live with, one of whom who has just invited me to stay with her in Sweden for a month and the final one becoming my cybergoth-brother - are all people I met through my time playing World of Warcraft. I had some great fun with the game, the roleplay, the forums and the people WoW has introduced me to - my quitting was never going to be a long-term thing so, as I started to see more of the new content, I started getting a feeling of excitement that I haven't felt for almost all of WotLK.
To celebrate this new excitement, I decided I was going to start a new character, a new race and a new class on a new server. Defias Brotherhood has a reputation as being the only truly active RP-PvP server and, as some of my friends have rolled there, I've decided that I want to join them, levelling a new character entirely from scratch - no heirlooms, no gold from my main, no boosts from my friends and a lot of fresh faces to roleplay with. This blog will be my place to vent my thoughts and feelings about my new experiences, be they in regards to roleplay, PvP, PvE or the new content and changes to the game - You'll notice the extremely amusing (Yes, sarcasm) druid-related name for the blog and yes, it was of my own creation - I'm witty like that.
The first post in my many blogs is often the one I find the most irritating to write. I have great difficulty remaining both entertaining and informative - in this case, I am most likely failing at both - whilst still trying to make my reasons for starting the blog clear. I guess I'm making this blog to do several things and with any luck, I'll achieve them, though, I suspect my audience will become very niche as I progress.
Firstly, I want to talk about druids. I haven't played one before aside from on the PTR and I want to be able to keep my thoughts here to look back on as I adjust to playing the class, both through my levelling experience and whilst finding something to do at level 85. I haven't decided on the spec I'll be playing yet but I'm not especially interested in feral - I've played melee dps and tanks before and I find the tree and playstyle the least interesting of those available to a druid - so I'm leaning towards balance or resto right now (Possibly dual-speccing to both now that the option is available much earlier on with the lowered cost).
Secondly, I want to talk about RP. Roleplaying is certainly my primary reason for playing WoW and, when you find the right people, it can provide very emotional, deep storylines to be involved in. It also allows you to meet some great personalities - from the people you roleplay intimately with, becoming good friends (or enemies) in character and even better friends out of character and the people who roleplay terribly or cyber constantly but provide hours of entertainment. I'll try and avoid using names wherever possible (without permission, basically) to stop anyone getting any unwanted attention or causing offence but hopefully, there's an audience for sharing great roleplaying experiences, bits of interesting lore, nice places to roleplay and, perhaps, guides for people new to roleplaying.
Finally, I'll be talking about the game as a whole: What I'm doing, why I'm doing it, how I'm doing it, my opinions on it - things like that. I haven't played through the 4.0.0 content at all so the talents, abilities, zone changes... well, everything that changed to prep us for Cataclysm will all be new to me. I don't know if I'll be raiding or PvPing at 85 (Hell, I might not even make it that far) and I don't know what spec I'll end up playing or who I'll end up playing with but, whatever happens, I'll be writing about it here.
