Mary Sands

World of Warcraft: wind, fire, all that kind of thing! (older article)

Last night my husband and I watched Big Trouble in Little China, starring Kurt Russell and Victor Wong. I'd already known that World of Warcraft references this movie, as well as other movies, games, books, authors, you name it. But we still laughed when Egg Chen described the "six demon bag" (also a trinket in WoW), as having "wind, fire, all that kind of thing!" There's also a scene in the movie where they are swimming amidst dead people hanging--the hall of the upside-down sinners--which is also part of an upcoming instance called Kharazan.

WoW is full of pop culture references. Entire websites are dedicated to such allusions. The development team at Blizzard probably has a good sense of humor to include so many references, and I think these things, on top of the lore and graphics, are why I have enjoyed playing WoW so much during the past couple years. When I found out that the three bankers in Stormwind are named Olivia, Newton, and John, I got a kick out of that. Make Love, Not Warcraft, a South Park episode, had me laughing all the way through. I'm always on the eye out for subtlety. Hemet Nesingwary, the famous hunting camp NPC in WoW, is an anagram of Ernest Hemingway. Two other NPCs in the camp are Sir S.J. Erlgadin and Ajeck Rouack; you guess the authors whose names have been scrambled here. Yes, it is definitely these things that I love about WoW, while it still is a game full of all the elements of myth and legends and fantasy that I enjoy.

See this link for more references.

I was going to write some kind of article reviewing the game, but the game is too dynamic for me to feel comfortable reviewing it at the moment. Just when a rare few people had reached the status of High Warlord by poopsocking in battlegrounds, Blizzard put forth the 2.0 patch that allowed the rest of us to earn that status in a reasonable amount of time, and thus get some very nice gear and armor. Too many things are changing at the moment, including the fact that in January, Burning Crusade will offer so much new content.

I would like to talk about wind, fire, and all that kind of thing, or at least talk about my history of playing various characters over the past two years. I've always been of the mind that while indeed I have played for hours occasionally, I can never take the game too seriously to the point of raiding five nights a week or feeling tough about any kind of video game accomplishments that I may have made. I have been able to invest in characters and walk away from them, no problem, because face it, they aren't real! Instead, I've reveled in the silly, while still managing to progress my character at a reasonable rate along with friends and strangers.

My first character was Esmerelda, a night elf hunter, on Mal'ganis. Since I have read Something Awful for the past five or so years, I have also mostly played video games with people from there, and heard from a friend that Goon Squad had rolled on Mal'ganis. Little did I understand, this being my first real MMORPG, that they had rolled horde. I mean, I really didn't know what horde was or alliance was at first. Goon Squad and its various splinters, particularly Elitist Jerks, were big in number and ganked the hell out of us on the alliance side. I was playing with real-life friends, and we were all very naive and probably didn't even "get it" that we could actually start all over. After all, we had invested an entire month into the game before we realized the terrible server we'd rolled alliance on. It was only much later that we realized a month is nothing in the game of WoW. I did stop playing the hunter and rerolled a priest, simply because we realized as a group of friends we'd need some healing in some of those instances everyone was talking about. I'm surprised we actually made it to level 60, among small come-and-go guilds.

The captions to the following pictures are below each picture.

I barely remember being in Fury's Edge, but I think we had a guild of about 10 regular players, plus myself, husband (Sill in the picture), and our friends Ross and Nse.

Back when I started playing WoW, I had a terrible computer and not much memory, which meant that landing in Iron Forge put me into an idle sort of state for half an hour until my screen moved again and I'd find that I had landed in the pit or the lava. Good times. Above is a picture of my husband's old character, the gnome with Marge Simpson hair, falling through the world--one of Blizzard's bugs at that time.

I lost most of my pictures from Mal'Ganis days due to a reformatting of my hard drive. Morgan (husband), Ross, Nse, Wayne, and I all went to join a new server, Maelstrom. We joined Famiglia Luigiano. On the horde side was another goon squad, Famiglia Mariano. The idea was to be mafia types and play the auction houses and do some funny cross-faction events. I rolled a warlock named Carmen. She had blond hair and blue eyes, a gimmick married-to-the-mob style Michelle Pfeiffer type. Too bad the guild splintered later, because the funny was potential.

We ended up as Goondock Saints. The horde side guild eventually joined a guild named Cult of Ythrl (also goons), and their various reincarnations and splinters have confused me since, but I know that there was later a Famiglia de Ythrl, and then some of those guys rolled alliance on Altar of Storms. Then some of those guys transferred over to Goondocks (GDS) after some of our guys transferred over to Shaman Trainer on Zuluhed, another goon guild. The original Mariano and Ythrl guys are still around, though some have now splintered into The Fun Police. I myself eventually quit GDS because it seemed full of drama at the time. But while I was there, it was mostly fun, including the black chicken of death!

This is when we did Scarlet Monastery with the Luigianos, before the splinter.

One successful gimmick event we had was something to do with a cross-faction wedding, which we held in the Gurubashi Arena, down in Stranglethorn Vale. It's one of the few places (outside an arena in Dire Maul), where everyone, even of your own faction, can fight each other. Anyway, I'm there in the dress. I even held a bouquet. There was something about Spark, a long-time mage in our guild, being married off to the Tauren cowdaughter from the horde side. Or something. I honestly don't remember. This marriage had no lasting effect. Hardly anyone in the Luigianos even showed up; I think our brother guild, Marianos, was better at organizing events than we were, because a bunch of them showed up.

Here's me, Morgan, and Ross dancing on a roof in Booty Bay. In all our glory. Nory (Morgan) was one of the best priests we had, and I'm sure GDS probably misses him. Gunn still plays in the guild.

Much later, after all the splinters and everything, and after I had gone on to a new (and current) goon guild, I organized GDS to go help the remaining Ythrl guys who were doing a "There is a Cow Level" event in Westfall. Like I said, the Ythrls were more into gimmicks than we were, but for whatever reason, on this particular day a lot of people in our guild showed up to join in the fun. Cow Level is a reference to Diablo 2. Anyway, I went on my old priest from Mal'ganis, who I'd transferred over, so that I could mind-control people and buff them with fortitude. I'm dancing there in the middle of the field, surrounded by cows.

Oh Dante, what won't you say. This is the sign one sees upon entering Deadwind Pass.

You haven't played enough WoW if you haven't seen the mighty devilsaur of Un'Goro Crater. This is my current character Lollie, at a younger "age" or level. Obviously, I avoided these things, especially as a priest.

Anyway, GDS went on to get to level 60, all of us, and we started doing raids together. This is a screenshot the very first time we killed Drakkisath. Man, he seemed so very hard back then!

Proof that indeed Old Ironforge does or did exist, though I have never been there.

I'll have you know that the guy who made this character (Hasslehoff) is named Wayne, and in real life he works on movies, has long blond hair, makes excellent stir fry, and tries to throw a D&D game each Sunday when he gets a day off. He is also fond of chicks from Thailand.

Confucius say, he who stands in Stormwind looking toward the sky receive many private tells from lonely night elves looking for love on an RP server...in bed.

One time we did the dumbest thing and made an alt guild that had something to do with Pokemon, and paraded from Iron Forge to Orgrimmar. There was lots of bitching along the way. Of course, Maelstrom is a PvP (RP) server, so we got killed and it took about five hours to pull off this gimmick.

Most people went to bed, but three of us kept dying on the way to Orgrimmar. Even after dying on the zeppelin a million times, it took approximately 20 tries to reach the mailbox. Should I have done something more productive in real life that day? Perhaps. But this is proof of my great courage.

Sometimes the other faction raided one of our big cities, but at least they were higher than level 1!

The picture above tells a story of many things. Morgan, Ross, Nse, and I were doing some quests in the Blasted Lands, and were pretty oblivious to our newly splintered guild at this point. We'd tried to kill Allistarj, not having the quest to kill her, and inadvertently kited her back to Nethegarde Keep (i.e. we ran away, and she followed us back there). We tried to hang in the background while the guards took her on. I think she eventually despawned. Meanwhile our guild leader was kicking a bunch of pubbies we'd allowed in for raiding purposes. He didn't log in for a long time after that, and Lucia became our new guild leader. I love Lucia a lot, and think he makes a wonderful leader, and still miss playing with him. I think Barili was drunk that night though.

It was easier for our level 60s to parade to Orgrimmar during the Winterveil event. We meant to only spread good cheer, but I think Exor here was mad that we distracted him from a duel in which he was obviously losing. We certainly didn't attack him. We died eventually, even after going all that way to tell our horde guys "Merry Winter".

I think my favorite time with GDS was grinding Timbermaw reputation and absolutely owning all the camps because we had an entire raid.

Night elf males do this sort of disco dance, like Night Fever or something. I'm looking on while some of the guildies tried to sexy up Stormwind. We had just killed Onyxia.

Once we all got to 60 and had some nice purple gear from our raiding, we decided to go kill everyone in the Crossroads, including the wind rider master.

Ragnaros is the final boss of MC, and he's a big mean fire thing who I am watching with my mechanical yeti by my side to save me.

We eventually killed him too. Also, this was back in the good ol days when Sighon and Geranimo were still around. In fact, everyone in my party I think eventually either left or took breaks until BC. Violins should be played.

I can't remember what was first: MC or Onyxia, but I think possibly after we had ZG down, we began the 40-mans simultaneously. It was fun for a while. Then to me at least, the fights weren't very challenging. But I do appreciate running these things with the Saints. Back when they were cool. They ended up pretty much disbanding due to terrible officers and terrible attitudes.

Killing internet dragons with blue beams is wonderful. I like this picture. What a fantastic photographer I'd be, if only I had a camera and stuff.

I stopped playing in GDS actively around this time, when the Scourge invaded. In fact, I had already started on a different character in the goon guild "Ol Dirty Blunderbuss," a much more laid-back guild on the horde side of Duskwood.

Here's one of the few pictures I took of AQ20, though we did make progress through the entire instance. I think this was the first time GDS had gone in, and thus it was of course exciting to see, considering this whole content in Silithus was still quite new in the game.

Another last time with GDS, killing Kazzak. Whee! Internet dragons are something to write home about.

A Halloween disguise!

I made a priest in the Ol Dirty Blunderbuss guild because we really didn't have any priests back then other than bank alts. I think I'm still the only priest who has ever actually leveled in this guild, but I like healing. I think it's my favorite class so far! Also, this is a picture of a zeppelin in a rain storm. Who knows why I take these pictures. Notice Miva is talking in guild chat. I hope she comes back to the guild someday. As her officer note says: More like "Leave-a".

The new server I'd rolled on (Duskwood) is a PvE server, meaning no active player-vs-player killing in the game outside certain arenas and battlegrounds. I enjoyed this aspect of the game, because I could do quests in a timely manner without being killed all the time. I think after a while I did miss PvP, so I've done a lot of battlegrounds, much more so than ever before on Maelstrom or Mal'Ganis.

Hello, epic wolf!

Here is my wolf. Here are a lot of dead turtles along the coast of the Hinterlands. Who could be massively killing these things? I think it's time for an awareness group or something.

I am not sure which character this is, but I think it's my alt Candie, who is a druid. I really love playing druids, but can't seem to find the time or hurumph for another alt.

Here is my horde priest Lollie looking over Booty Bay. I think there is a bird out there, and an island. Yes. Goblins everywhere, who rip you off!

This is a picture of my husband getting shot out of a cannon from Thunderbluff, during the Darkmoon Faire.

Here were are, our Blunderbuss guild, running a couple people through the Deadmines. I am playing as my druid, that cat there. I think the Deadmines is ultimately more fun as horde, simply because you can raid it and just go for sweet loot.

Did you know that part of the fallen hero of the horde quest--that quest that sends you everywhere, including up to Azshaera--gives you some felhunters to sniff out some kind of crystal or poop or something? Anyway, it wasn't until this character that I realized those felhunters don't do a very good job at helping you find whatever it is you're looking for, but you can summon them all at once.

This is the second character I've gotten fishing up to 300. NEVER AGAIN.

You're not really horde unless you get behind the Auction House in Orgrimmar. My bank character always gets a lot of whistles too.

This is our raid on a UBRS run. I am always taking Noggenflogger elixirs. Manzanito is our guild leader, and a good guy all around.

Hello, my name is Mary Ellen? I have just been transported from the Waltons to Thunder Bluff, and now I'm flying somewhere on this wind rider.

Here's my other druid on the alliance side of the same server. I really don't play her much, just to get stuff from the auction house for reselling.

This is why I love my guild. Not only do we help with Hinterlands elite quests, which everyone is tired of doing, but we have dance party USA at the same time!

Here were are in Dire Maul. Tribute runs are so much fun. Too bad nobody is that interested in them anymore! It's good to be the king! /Mel Brooks

The Onyxia chain quest for horde is more complicated and tougher than the alliance one is...though jailbreak is a pain in the butt. Here we are completing the Test of Skulls part, all disguised in our dragon outfits. It is true: you can duel when you are disguised as a dragon.

Some of us 60s were bored and ran a couple people through Wailing Caverns one day. Then actually this quest bugged out on us for some reason, but this picture is one reason I love Ol Dirty Blunderbuss.

The first time ODB went to ZG, we really didn't have enough people to do much, but we did kill Venoxis. Buckette is the druid saying DO YOU HAVE STAIRS..., and Buckette was one of my favorite players before he took time off for real-life things. I hope he comes back someday!

I'll end this picture journey of my pre-expansion days here, with a peek preview of the Caverns of Time in Tanaris, which is now open. They sell cheese and good water there, and it's also big and pretty

 

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