The decent into madness; how it all started.

So, I guess if you clicked on my blog, you probably already know what its about. But for those of you who don’t. Its about gaming. Not just any gaming. I like Nazi zombies just as much as the next girl (ok probably more) but FPS just aren’t my thing. This is a blog about love, life, and MMORPG’s. To be specific, it’s the story of the day to day adventures I encounter while playing World of Warcraft.
Now, I already know what you’re thinking. “But wait… you’re a girl. Girl’s don’t play WoW. She must be ugly or something. Why else would she sit in front of a computer for so many hours a day and spend her weekends raiding rather than going out clubbing?” I’ve heard it before, trust me. I actually hear it at least once a day. So let me get this out now. Yes, I am a girl. No, I am not ugly. And yes, I do have a life outside of WoW.
Let me start out with giving you a little background info. I started playing video games when I was very young, thanks to a father that wanted a son but got a girl for his only child. Mostly old arcade games, since that’s what my father was addicted to. Then I moved on to Zelda when it came out. I played as often as I could convince my best friends older brother that I’d be less annoying if he would just fork over the controller and let me do my thing. Then came years of being grounded and life was void of video games. (yes, I really was grounded for years at a time. My parents were strict, and I just kept fucking up.) But then, Bauldur’s Gate made its way into my life. Fitting with my rebellious nature, I was always trying to be evil. Until I realized it was damn near impossible to do anything in that game without dying if you were evil. I was horrible at it. I had no clue what was going on. But it game me a bug… a bug that I resisted in favor of boyfriends and drinking for a few years, but it was planted. At the age of 18, I did the stereotypical thing of fight with parents, move out, move back in, then move away for good. I joined the military. Six months after graduating from basic, at the age of 19, I got married to a guy I met in my technical training. Yeah, yeah I know. Dumb move. But anyway, and he was… a gamer. Upon settling into to our new apartment (my first one) my husband quickly set up shop in the corner with his crappy as hell desktop, attempted to play Guild Wars on a computer that couldn’t handle it. and spent many hours glaring at me maliciously as I surfed the web on my $2500 dollar beast of a laptop that was far too good for mere web surfing. (Don’t look at me like that. I sold my car to get that bitch before I even knew him.) Finally he had enough and informed me that if I didn’t put it to good use, he was going to. So we bought him a better computer and I started struggling though learning to play Guild Wars. This was my first taste at a real game.
Now, for all the gamers out there who are looking at their hot girl friends and wondering how the fuck they can get them to play video games, Guild Wars is the key. Its quick to level to the max, unlike WoW, where they’ll get bored before they can get hooked. And… the graphics are amazing. So, you’re hot girl friend can make an equally hot character and do what I did; play so they can get sexier looking armor. When I first started, I was all about the armor. I wasted so much money on dyes and shit that I’m pretty sure my husband contemplated suicide. Until I saw the 15k armor that guild wars offers. That’s when I started saving and playing hardcore. I wanted that armor! It took forever to get it, but I learned how to play my class in the process. I had a emo (For non GW playing people that’s a elementalist/monk) and she rained fiery death from the skies… and up from the ground. There is nothing cooler than watching this little petite chick contort around in a bunch of sexy ways that end in massive fireballs hurling from the sky and killing everything. To me, everything was new and exciting. But to my husband, it was getting old. He’d played it for ages before he met me, and he was worn out. So he turned back to his first love, WoW. I tried to hold out and continue with GW for as long as possible without him, but in the end I decided I’d rather play WoW and talk to my husband, than play GW and never heard a word from him. So I made the switch. Now, GW may be a bit more complex in the strategy, due to only 8 spells being available to you at a time rather than WoW’s you can have everything, but WoW was a challenge for me. My husband had recommended a caster, since I loved one in GW so much. So I settled on a priest, so I could heal when we were low level, and then switch to damage when we got a bit farther into it. I hated her. She was so… ugly and cartoonish. Nothing like the elegant goddess of fiery death that was my ele on GW. I hated the grinding and I HATED healing, but I continued to play based on my husband’s reassurance that it would get a lot more fun once I got into the higher levels. We played together every night and I struggled though learning how to deal with the more complex controls and various add-ons that my husband insisted I use. Around level 45, my husband made his fatal mistake.
As I said, we were both military members and as such we lead a military lifestyle. That includes travel. I was sent on a two week TDY to another state, and he leveled without me. He leveled A LOT without me. I came back to find myself not even to see the dust of his passing. So I stopped playing for a bit. Until, once again, I decided I missed talking to my husband. (He was such a one track mind that I would have to whisper him in game if I need to say something to him, even though I was right across the room.) So I began the grind again, very much disliking it and annoyed with whoever the hell decided to come up with “this stupid mother fucking game.” Then something amazing happened… I saw the trailer for Wrath of the Lich King, and I saw the new class. Once again, I had a goal. I wanted a Death Knight. I wanted one bad. So I poured myself into leveling with renewed vigor to reach level 55 before the release. Then the WoW servers went down for 4 or 5 days before the release. I was about half a level away and I was pissed! I would race home every day over lunch to see if they were up yet. And every day I was disappointed. Eventually they came back up, right before release of WotLK and my husband and I went to the midnight release.
Now, as you can probably guess by now, I may be a gamer girl, but I used to be very anal about what I looked like when I went out. Not really because of me, or my feelings about how I looked, but rather my husband’s (ex now). I’m a good looking girl, I know that, and I do not feel the need to advertise it. On the contrary, most of the time I try to play it down and make myself look worse because of my job. I work with all men, most of them young men… young horny men. Its just stupid to go into my place of employment all dolled up, unless you want to hear comments about what you can be doing later that night every two minutes. But I digress. As I was saying, my husband used to get pissed if I did anything in sweatpants and a t shirt. Even if it was midnight and I wanted so pass out. So there we were at the midnight release of WotLK… and I’m one of five girls there. I am, however, the only chick wearing makeup and a skirt. They looked all comfy in their PJ’s. I got to feel awkward as we walked in. It was fun…. Not.
But we got our copies and sped home to try them out. That’s when I really fell in love with the game. My then husband played a paladin originally, but decided he wanted to give the new DK’s a try. He failed at playing one, declared them a stupid class and went back to his pally. I tried them out because they looked so bad ass (recurring theme, I know) and loved them. I made my Draenei DK and ran around raping face. Leveling was still a grind, but once I got to Northrend, everything became a whole lot cooler. The best part was watching my husbands face when he realized that my maxed out cooking skill would actually come in handy now, thanks to fish feasts, and that I wasn’t a complete dumbass. He, of course, was already 80 by the time I got to Northrend and was shopping around for guilds to join. He joined one, but by the time I’d made it to 80, had declared it fail and moved onto another guild to which he got me an invite. (This first guild went on to be one of the best raiding guilds in the realm but you know… they were “fail” lol)
The guild was Fading Light and the people were… cool. Our GM, Isra, was a pretty nice guy as were the other two founding members, Vitalian and Daedril. My husband had already made it into the officer rank, and I got a raid spot right away. Of course, I perpetually looked bad on the DPS meters thanks to Isra, who was (still to this day) the best DK I have ever met. But I pulled my weight and soon found myself promoted due to my non-raiding activities. Since Isra always put me to shame, I spend hours upon hours farming for our guild bank. This meant I was always broke because everything I got went to the guild, but it paid off. I was put in charge of the guild bank and recruiting for my efforts and made an officer of the guild. Months went by and nothing really new happened in WoW, or at work, but slowly my marriage started falling apart. This was not due to WoW, surprisingly enough. We were just too different. I was not interested in being his puppet and hanging onto his every word/demand and he was not interested in a wife that had an opinion… about anything. There were other factors as well, which I am really not going to discuss but needless to say he left me with no intentions of coming back. So I started the process of divorce and of moving on. Part of my process of moving on was abandoning anything and everything that had anything to do with him. That included WoW.
But that’s a story for later, since its late and I have a guild run to get to. I hope you enjoyed reading. (And guys I hope you enjoyed the tips on how to get your girl into gaming. It works, trust me!) I plan on covering some more of the technical aspects of WoW in the future, but I also want to cover some of the other things that go on with in the game (and the gaming community) as well. There are so many interesting things that go on in WoW besides killing monsters and such! Anyway, good night and leave a comment before you go. Let me know what you like and if there’s anything you want to hear about from a female gamer’s point of view!