grind that mayorship back, muiltiversal hand of Winstead restored 2 days later.

rip one day later, lol, 8.18 DEV citizenship revoked.

Thankfully I had enough aoe threat to keep him safe, and he had an instant heal he could throw at me during that 1 second window to keep me alive. It was glorious.

As usual, we pulled the entire farm and.... were chain Frozen for at least 5 minutes. We were laughing so hard in Vent we cried. We each had a 1 second window to act every 5 seconds.

We were joking around in Vent as we did this, not paying too much attention...

...until we came across the farmstead to the east of Andorhal. There, unbeknownst to us, the Frozen Ghouls had an attack that would freeze your character for up to 5 seconds.

One of my favorite memories from this time was leveling Yeonsuul in the Plaguelands, with my friend Khurlighul. He was playing a Priest, and we were just going from farmstead to farmstead rounding up every undead mob we could find and aoe'ing them down. 15 v 2, np.

I played very casually in tBC. Well, casually for me. I fell in with old friends who had also been left behind by the old vanilla guild, and we spent most of our time running dungeons.

And there was no going back.

Yeonsuul was a name bastardized from a character in a Korean film (I think) called The Bodyguard. The heroine's name was Yeon or Yuon (I forget), and she was played by an actress with the last name of Soo. So the name was an easy homage to a great character in a movie.

I threw my first Avenger's Shield.

Now homeless in game, and with no push to keep my previous characters levelled to raid, I started leveling my two new characters. I had friends that made Frost Mage play look so badass, I started with my Mage first. However, on hitting level 25 on my Paladin something changed forever.

Before tBC came out, I was able to find a pre-released character generator for their two new races. Dranei for Alliance (which was tempting) and Blood Elves for the Horde, which ended up being my choice as all of my friends were Horde.

I spent hours designing 2 new characters for tBC release.

It could have been either as I never felt like I was accepted there, so not being a part of the guild was not a huge emotional hit for me.

The Burning Crusade was a big shift in many guilds, as raids went from 40-man content to 25-man. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, I was one of those cut from the raid team. I don't recall if they kicked me and others out of the guild, or if we just left.

We ended up killing the boss the next time we faced him on our third attempt. I was pretty proud, though I didn't tell anyone what I did. It may have just been happenstance we got the kill that night, but maybe not.

In researching what I could do to push myself harder, I discovered the Hemorrhage build. It was a decent build that wasn't impressive in it's own dps, but enhanced the damage of all physical classes attacking the boss; warriors, rogues, those accursed hunters - all of which we had a plethora of.

I know this because the frustration I felt getting beaten on dagger drops by Hunters haunts me to this day. F you, Click.

I think it was Noth that was my breaking point. We had wiped for a few days trying to kill him, not having the dps to beat the enrage timer.

Imagine going in to the FOURTH RAID tier using Blue weapons. Such was my struggle in Naxxramas. I may have had a purple dagger at this point, but if I did it was a welfare one from one of the lesser 20-man raids and was not a significant boost over what I had.

We were able to get them down to health levels comparable with Umbra tanking. And I really wish we could've killed them, not to spite Umbra (he was a terrific guy and taught me a lot about warlocking), but for my own sense of pride and glory.