One of the things in WoW that always bothered me was the tasks and achievements that were trivialized and forgotten about after a new expansion was released. I think everyone has a tale about something they worked REALLY hard at to get their hands on .. then had an expansion come out and someone just picks it up and goes “oh cool” and moves on. I’ll fully admit that I am one of those players in WoW that does the old “I remember the days when we had to work for our epics!” while I shake my cane and rock in my lazy boy recliner. WoW has changed dramatically over the past 10 years – when I started playing epic items were something that really meant something and that you really worked to have them. Today the term”Epic” doesn’t really describe the gear in my option as they’re tossed around like they’re candy. Stepping stones for the next tier of epic rather then the long sought after reward.

My first real WoW guild was an alliance guild called Damage inc. Hellwolf will remember this guild just like I do as he started playing shortly after I did and eventually joined the same guild. I left the guild shortly before Hellwolf hit 60 and began to get involved with the end game content we were running. Make no mistake – we were a feeder guild. We ran the 1st tier instances every week and every week we’d lose our best geared members to another next tier guilds. It was a sad state. During this time Dire Maul had an unbelievably rare drop of a special book that started an epic quest chain – I was one of those lucky lottery winners that actually managed to walk out with this gem! The quest chain was long and incredibly difficult, forcing the player to run a tier 2 raid (Onyxia) and basically dance around praying not to get knocked into the whelp caves and toasted by Onyxia herself. As I mentioned; my guild was not a tier 2 guild. So when I was ready to do this portion of the quest chain I was stonewalled. I was forced to stand on this quest for months and months until I managed to beg my way into a raid spot in another guilds onyxia run.

Onyxia was/is the single most stressful raid I have ever been a part of. Not only had I never even see this raid – but I there wasn’t even enough data online at this point, remember this is even before WoWhead became the go to place, to tell me that if I screwed up would I actually get a second chance. In my head this was it – I had one shot. To make matters even worse back then no body would waste a precious battle rez on a scrubby off tank – most guilds didn’t even use an off tank really! So I had to focus on learning the encounter on the fly and stay alive for it’s entirety while remember to do my quest … which for the record was written very vaguely! After everything was said and done I did manage to stay alive and walked away with my new treasure: The Quel’Serrar. It was my defining moment in WoW. I got to stand around in Ironforge and be the ONLY player that had this weapon – and it had a glow like it was enchanted …. even though it wasn’t!!

How about you? Have do you have a story like this that has always been a thorn for you?