Blogging Challenge Day 3: My First Day Playing WoW

As I've mentioned, I started playing World of Warcraft in 2007.  The events leading up to that fateful first day are simple but fairly comical.  One of my roommates got a ten-day trial from a coworker sometime in December of that year.  Against the advice of our other roommate and me, he rolled a dwarf hunter and started adventuring in Azeroth.  The two of us watched him play with some curiosity, but on the whole (it seemed) we were both uninterested due to stories we'd heard about how WoW could "ruin lives" and consume people.  It was then somewhat surprising to me that the other roommate came to me one night and started trying to convince me to play.  As we all sat in the living room of the home we lived in, I recall actually being talked into playing Warcraft, slightly against my will.  This moment was preceded and probably precipitated by, ironically, the Warcraft episode of South Park.

So, there we were, huddled around our laptops, about to embark on this potentially perilous journey into a game only one of us had played.  From what I had seen of my friend's experience in WoW, I decided to play a hunter.  For some reason the ability to tame and control a pet was very appealing to me.  I'm pretty sure I spent an hour trying to come up with a cool name for my character, but in the end I settled on Lighthawk, which was a gamertag that was born from my Starcraft days back in junior high.

I logged into Lighthawk tonight so that his armory would be available.  As you'll see, I hilariously had no idea how to gear a hunter.  That first night (which was indeed a very long one) of playing involved a whole lot of the three of us running around Teldrassil trying to figure out questing (read:getting lost.)  I think our greatest fascination was with comparing max crit sizes.  Since we were all on trial accounts, we had to find non-trials to form groups for us to quest in.  I remember specifically that by the end of that session we had stumbled upon Darnassus.  Somehow we had become aware of the concept of rested XP and we were fascinated with the prospect of finding beds to /sleep in before we logged out.

Those two friends no longer play, which saddens me.  Some of my best memories in game involve both of them.  Fortunately our friendships have always been based on more than just our common bonds in gaming.  I'm very fond of that memory with them and I'm happy this challenge gave me an opportunity to reminisce and share it here.