Hawkflight Studios

The real loot is the friends you make along the way

I was roped into multiplayer online gaming as early as 1994 by my high school friend Miguel. Back then we played games known as MUDs, text-based role-playing games. We started on Mystic Isles but ended up spending significantly more time on Genesis LPMud. While I played these through my college years, I had friends who were playing the early MMOs such as EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot. I was not interested in these though due to not wanting to pay subscription fees.

^{Celebrating our first Blackwing Lair clear} After college, I finally succumbed and bought Final Fantasy XI. I only lasted about six months in that game though. I heard World of Warcraft would be coming out at the end of the year, and while I was a big fan of Blizzard having played all WarCraft, StarCraft, and Diablo games extensively, I again, was reluctant to pay for a game that I'd have to continue to pay for. My future wife however, surprised me with WoW as a gift for Christmas 2004. She also gave me Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, so I didn't actually install WoW until late January 2005.

I had always been an avid role-player when joining these games and I intended that to be my focus coming in. I was well familiar with WarCraft lore and was ready to add my story to the rich environment. After a humble beginning as a Night Elf hunter that didn't know you could control your pet, I switched around classes and servers a few times, until I found a group to RP with and a class I enjoyed. When I reached 60 for the first time, it was on a rogue. These were the days of Southshore/Terran Mill grind fests and I would struggle greatly trying to get involved in fights.

^{My warrior with Darcy's rogue in tow} It wasn't too long before I got fed up. I rerolled to priest because I saw how much fun they were having dotting everything and killing people from safety. I wanted to get back to the fights really fast though so in making the priest, I put role-play concerns to the side and just powered through leveling. This was my main through Vanilla which I was able to get most of the way through AQ40 before burning out on raids as well as grinding to Field Marshal with the top PvP group on my server.

Despite that though, I was unfulfilled on my RP so I made another character which I played in my down time. I made a paladin with a rich back story. The guild was an RP guild and at the time I made this character they were just getting started. I had gotten in a mild argument-discussion with a newer member about what color tabard we should have. For some reason she thought grey was a good color or grey/white or some other nonsense. One day I happened across her as we both were questing in Goldshire and I decided to have our characters make amends and she turned out to be a lot of fun to role play with. She and I would go on to become great friends and we still are today. Hi Darcy!

^{My current main: Kess-Lightbringer} I continued to play over the years, bouncing from Alliance to Horde and server to server over multiple characters. Darcy followed me a couple times but soon I'd see her more in real life than in game. I had periods where I PvP'd heavily and pushed over 2200 rating. I killed all of most of the raid bosses through Cataclysm while they were relevant on the hardest difficulties including all of the Ulduar hard modes. But after 8 years in the game and seeing most of my friends quit, Mists of Pandaria lost my attention and I quit.

I returned when Warlords of Draenor released but couldn't get into it at all after hitting max level. I didn't bother coming back when Legion dropped due to the bad reputation WoW had after WoD. However, towards the end of Legion I was looking for something to do and another long-time WoW friend had resubbed. I decided to give it another shot. Although that friend didn't stay subbed long, I found a new guild and made some new friends there. I've (mostly) stuck with this guild over the last four years and hopefully have some more long-term friendships from the experience.