Worldwake

"All ends in obliteration- love in hatred, life in death, and light in empty darkness."

The name 'Worldwake' was chosen specifically for it's meaning. When broken apart and rearranged, 'in the wake of a world' is an appropriate summation of my perspectives and opinions in regard to this journal.

My World of Warcraft experience has been as follows;

- Began playing in January of 2009, roughly a year and several months ago at the time of this entry.

- Leveled a mage first, paladin second. I now have the following classes at 80: Mage, Paladin, Warrior, Rogue, Death Knight. Shaman in his 60s.

- Raiding experience of Trial of the Crusader onwards. Did a Naxx 10 full clear back when it was still in style, but rarely if ever did Naxx 25.

- Beyond my current raiding guild, the only raiding guild I had been in previously was lax and rather non-serious about progression.

- Tried to arena back in s5 and haven't tried since, not due to lack of motivation, but lack of teammates who actually care about doing well and learning their class.


As you can clearly see, my experiences in WoW are few and far between. I am not an 'old school' player. I have no experience in things like Molten Core, Naxx40, BC raids and so forth. Therefore, all things considered, I am truly not much of an authority on writing about the raid or endgame aspect of World of Warcraft. However, my MMO career did not begin with WoW, it began with Final Fantasy XI, one of the 'middle' MMO games ('middle' chronologically. 'First' games were those like DAoC, Everquest, Ultima Online). The following summarizes my experiences there.

- Five-year veteran. Began playing shortly after North American release.

- Averaged 35+ hours a week, placing me in the 'hardcore gamer' category

- Seven jobs at max level, covering all major aspects of the game (tanking, healing, magical DD, physical DD) -- Paladin, Warrior, Ninja, Summoner, Black Mage, Ranger, Dark Knight

- Member of one of the more successful endgame linkshells (guilds) on the server. Cleared Bahamut v2, Beastmen Kings, KSNM99 Wyrm with two parties, etc

- Main tank for Limbus, Proto-Ultima/Omega, solo for the most part.

- Cleared Nation missions, ZM, CoP up through Apocalypse Nigh

- Cleared Odin in T4 Einherjar. (And won an Adaberk)


Since my experience in one area clearly exceeds the other, many of my posts -- especially in the beginning -- will likely draw comparisons between my experience in the two MMOs. They were both successful in their own respects, and I intend to illustrate both the pros and cons of each through my own summation of events that occur in WoW.