Cataclysm Beta Giveaway

When I was a bit of a noob I recruited a friend and that was probably the best thing I could have done for myself in terms of continuing to play WoW.

I was ignorant and wasn’t reaching my goals of level 80 so I decided I needed something to make this a more enjoyable experience so i recruited my next door neighbor who is about my age who I’ve known for 6 years now who used to make level five characters on my account.

He seemed to know what he was doing right from the beginning so I had no worries about where this would lead.
I had a level 26 shaman that I wanted to level but my friend did not have a character to level with my shaman so I made a warlock and named it Frankles because I was only going to level my friend’s toon so he could level with my shaman. I didn’t really have very good experiences with that shaman while leveling it alone so once my friend and I reached level 26 I decided I would just continue with my Warlock.

I had an 80 DK already but even though my Warlock was only level 60 when we were done with the RaF I knew he was my main. I tried gearing on a server that was not to great at making things dead but that did not turn out so well so I transferred to Korgath and I currently hold a spot in my guilds core 25 man which is successfully on its way to the Lich King.

My friend and the competitive drive to out gear each other has made me a better player and is proof that this game is not intended to be played solely and The fond memories of staying up late just to reach our goal are what keep me playing today.

Thank you for this contest. I love the memories that it brought up. I've never shared this story with anyone (not that it's a bad story or anything.) Sorry for no TL;DR.
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Back when i was a complete noob, I couldn't grasp A LOT of WoW concepts. I had spent my time reading and just looking at screenshots when it came to WoW before deciding to play, so when i joined the game i had a completely wrong point of view of it. I imagined battlegrounds as giant war damaged fields where and alliance meet in the middle and simply fought to the death. I didn't know there were "flying mounts". I thought you could talk to a flight master and loan one of their gyphons/bats/etc and use them however you wanted. I thought engineers were forces of natures that could destroy as they want as long as they defended their own inventions. I thought that warlocks were able to travel the world as they please, summoning demons and controlling demonic disturbances, and i thought that rogues could sneak into dungeons/banks and rob them, or even rob other players.

Prior to actually getting the game, i imagined myself stealthing up a giant dome and lowering myself into the middle of it, and lockpicking some sort of treasure box. Then i would sneak back out in the same way and stealth out of the area, come across players, and pickpocket all their money and escape into the woods.

I also imagined myself as a warlock riding a zeppelin into one of my imagined battlefields. I would fly above the crowds and man the cannons, dropping land mines and bombs on the horde. When they turned their air forces against me, i would hop on a gryphon and fly myself into close quarters combat, forcing the horde to kneal before me and my immense power.

So yeah, i had a LOT of misconceptions about WoW.

One of these was the graveyard system. The way i interpreted it, after you died you would have 6 minutes to get back to your body before it triggered a "rot" effect. After the 6 minutes was up, your body would slowly decompose from full flesh to decomposed, with bones sticking out and the whole nine yards. What helped to reaffirm these suspicions is when i ended up finding a picture of a dead human, and then a dead forsaken. I mistook the forsaken as the dead human's body after letting it decompose for a bit. I thought it was one of the coolest things ever.

Fast forward to me playing WoW. I've still not yet seen a LOT of stuff, so most of my misconceptions have yet to be corrected. I get to orgrimmar (i rolled an orc rogue to pickpocket and dominate), and im amazed at the scenary, mounts, and players in general. I'm on my way to the drag and low and behold.

A skeleton.
On a god damn raptor.
My mind was blown.

Naturally i try to run after this person because I'm a complete noob, but then i figure out how to whisper him and ask him "Hey, how long did you have let your body rot to get like that" or something along those lines. The player doesn't understand, of course. So some messed up conceptions later he understands what i mean. I was saddened by his response though. "It's an item man, but i wish WoW was that interactive" We ended up having a good conversation and I kept him entertained with my misconceptions and he kept bringing down/increasing my hopes for WoW by confirming or denying my ideas and fantasies. Something about my demeanor attracted him, and he ended up hooking me up with my first (and free) item enchants, and got his guild leader to invite me to the guild.

I stayed in that guild for a few months and experienced several WoW changing things. I did my first instance with a few of their alts. I got hacked by a keylogger while in the guild, and one of their officers helped talk me through it. Never been hacked since then. I met a member who helped motivate me to hit level 70 even when i was getting discouraged by my own leveling speed, and i even got verbally b*tch slapped by one of them when i was getting out of line (I ended up getting butthurt because it was one of the people i liked the most, and i took taking an involuntairy break from WoW a few days after. I hope he didn't think it was because of him.)

I learned the most about WoW and even about online interactions and expectations from those people and that guild.

I know you probably don't remember me, but if you read this and your name was a variation of Potassium(with an ascii letter someone in there) and you were a troll rogue on server Skullcrusher Horde US, this one goes out to you man.

One time a group of my friends and me were bored, so we took a bunch of alts/mains and did the whole Onyxia pre quest together. Started out killing the dragons around the world, had some RP fun in Theramore (we were horde so) and kited some guards to Brackenwall Village, I stupidly attacked them and they went for me but our tank taunted them off me and went for him instead and we held them hostage for about 20 mins before releasing them (I lie really we killed them)

After that, we went to the cave by Onyxia's lair (the quest that turns you into Dragon guards) and posed there for some screenshots. Moved on with our pre quest and went into Blackrock Spire, had some whelp issues in the whelp room (friends brought level 60 ish alts) but we had 70's there to help them out and it went fine after we killed the whelps. Also think we managed to bug 2 of the bosses and had to die in order to reset. After we had killed the General we all did /flex and took another screen. We traveled back to Rexar in Desolace and found a nice spot next to some water which we setup a campfire and chilled out. I wore my RP gear (red festival suit, pointy red hat) and got some noggenfogger. Being a Tauren Druid with that gear and noggenfogger makes it look the cutest thing ever

We jumped in the water to cool off after a long day and to this day it was the best day of 5 years in WOW, I am so happy that I had friends to do that with and now Onyxia pre quest has been removed, it feels even more special.

Back when i was level 30 or so i ran into a couple of allies(i was horde) in arathi highlands, by the gate. I was by no means any sort of pvp pro, but i was proud to say i beat them 2v1 as a mage vs a hunter and warrior. I continued on my business and ended up running into them again killing trolls i needed for a quest. I waited until they pulled, then pyroblast to the facce and fireball/scorch spam the hunter down.

Figuring they wouldn't try to mess with me at this point i continued to quest in the zone, when i was killed out of nowhere. I looked around and could not find a culprit. I ran back to my corpse and bam, dead again. This time the rogue that had killed me earlier decided not to use vanish right after, dancing on my corpse. He was joined by the hunter i had killed, while the warrior was still dead on the ground. I put 2 and 2 together and figured out the rogue was the warrior's alt.

I called for some help in general chat and basically a full out BG-scale war started up in Arathi Highlands. Players bringing their mains and alts from all over. I remember at one point the horde base got attacked and EVERYBODY ended up fighting at the horde base. It was epic getting on a ledge and landing some fireballs before i got one shot. I made a lot of friends in that raid.

After the pvp died off i started feeling sad, until talk of horde banding together to go mess up some alliance spread in general chat. Long story short we ended up slaughtering all the way to stormwind before we got wiped out at the gates and sent back to EASTVALE LOGGING CAMP, where most of the raid respectfully disbanded.

Sadly, i don't see much of world pvp in general these days. Anytime I get ganked, i always jump to /g and /1 and try to start a chain pvp reaction, but alliance side on korgath isnt as active in world pvp as it used to be. Hoping Cataclysm can bring it back with tol barad and focus on old world again.

Two hour window before contest closed!

This is really the story of how i got into WoW.I was using xfire's new live video streaming option when i found someone streaming a private server. I hadn't seen WoW videos much before then, so i asked them questions about it. They got me interested. When i asked him why he didn't just play the real version, he said he was planning on getting back and playing with friends. The next day I've gone out and made myself an account, and i find the guy on live stream again. I thank him for inspiring me and ask him what he server he plays on. I check it out and it's actually sort of good, PvP and OK population. I roll on the server and tell him I'll be ready to play with him when he gets on. I download xfire's messenger and we add and talk to each other.Around this time i discovered the scroll of ressurection. I suggest we try using it to get him back in the game. Luckily enough, it works! He starts playing immediately, and i meet one of his friends. We're all pretty low level so it
makes for interesting questing. Thanks to him, i learned how to make gold efficiently on a new server. He advised me to pick up fishing and farm eggs(around christmas time) and i found out about Deviate Fish and small egg inflation. I made 40g(BALLIN at level 15) easily and was ready to save up more.

Around level 20, he introduced me to two more friends of his. We all decided to head into shadowfang keep. One of the friends is sort of a jerk, but its sort of funny so i don't really have a problem with it. We get to arugal and down him easily enough, and my robes dropped! (gnome mage) I roll need and then...so does my friend. I call him a **** since i know he's joking around, but then his other friend rolls need as well.And wins.I was pretty peeved since i really wanted the robe, so i asked him to ticket it for me. He said no and laughed at me. It all went downhill from there, resulting in pretty hostile conditions between me and the guy because of one piece of loot. The server was relatively small so we encountered each other a lot and even when i had gotten over it, he still gave me crap about it. Overall the experience sucked and it made me shy away from social interactions with people for a little bit. However, i learned from that. I was able to take jokes less seriously, as well as loot. I never really set my self up like that again. Not in terms of looting, but in terms of vulnerability.

In short, i e-manned up.And it was pretty worth it =)

yeah, i totally forgot about timezones and also sorry for off-topic

I'm getting impatient hehe. Can't wait for results ;p

so is it over or will there be other contests?