A good place to start would be “I am Dwarf; Fear me!”
Admittedly it’s an inaccurate place to start – my PvP skills are sadly lacking, and I’m very much PvE-focussed, so there’s not much to fear if you’re not a mob – but it’s a fun place to pretend to be. And in all accuracy, it should be “I am Dwarves. Fear Us.” The picture’s an old favourite, though, from my first experiences as a raider - albeit not the brightest crayon in the box (I mean, a raiding rogue specced combat maces?).
Anyway, back to the questions at hand. Who am I, what am I doing here, where exactly is ‘here’?
First, Who. I’m KiwiRed, your (usually) gracious host. I’m from sunny (well, today it is) Christchurch, in New Zealand. (It’s kind of like Australia, but without the deserts and assorted poisonous wildlife)
I’m a life-long gamer, and first dabbled in the early days of computer gaming with a Sinclair ZX-81 hooked up to a black and white TV. All I’ll say about that (rather stressful) period of my life is that the practice of spending an hour typing in a game from one of the imported computer magazines that featured games you could type in, only to lose it all when you accidentally touched the wobbly 16kb memory expansion module (the machine only had 1KB as default) causing it to reset the computer and wipe all your effort, was character-building. And gave me a head-start when Windows became popular.
A little later I graduated to an Amstrad CPC 464, which was a marvel (to my young eyes). Not only did it possess 64KB of memory, it was also wonderfully free of wobbling ram modules. (I still remember Roland In Time very fondly)
A Commodore 64 followed, at a later date, with much more gaming of all descriptions. It was also my first (very brief) introduction to BBSes at the time, but due to the cost (and lack of speed – 300-baud modems were very much not the fastest of beasts) it wasn’t something I was able to explore to any real extent.
I dabbled a little with various consoles for a while, but before too long, I picked up my first IBM PC-compatible pc. While it doesn’t sound like much now, the 486DX4-100 was pretty grunty (to put not too fine a point on it) at the time. Sure, it was second-hand. And was actually upgraded from a 386. But to a technophile like myself, it was shiny and new, the two most important criterion for a new gadget*.
Many small upgrades later, I’ve gone from my humble 486 to a slightly heftier system which can run pretty much any game you’d care to mention (and the ability to use three monitors is truely blissful).
But I digress. (I’ll probably do it a lot – feel free to call me on it, if I get carried away)
I’ve been playing WoW since Christmas Day of 2005, when I splashed out on a copy as a gift for myself. Many characters came and went before TBC was launched, and the furthest I progressed at the time was an Undead Rogue who peaked at level 47.
I re-rolled a Dwarf Rogue on Dath’remar, and Pringlerouse was born. (Sadly the oldest screenshot I have is from 2007, with 44 days played on him, so no ‘baby photos’ to show off – which might actually be a good thing, considering)
Next up was a hunter, after some curiousity about how easy they would be to level. And Kringlelouse came into being. (And yes, it was very easy.)
Dinglemouse was next, in an effort to do my part about the great Dath’remar tank shortage of the time. Sadly, I never really tanked much after hitting 70, as she was just too under-geared compared to my guildmates – there’s no holding aggro when you’re wearing mostly blues, and the dps are in T5.
After a while, I was curious about what it would be like to play a rogue with the BoP crafted items from Blacksmithing and Leatherworking. Being unwilling to give up the investment I’d made in Pringle (who had maxed out Enchanting and Jewelcrafting), Ringleprouse and quickly leveled her to 70, and she replaced Pringle as my main. (Pringle had only made a couple of tentative ventures into Gruul’s Lair, and retired into much profit as a bank alt.) Ringle was my main for the remainder of TBC, and experienced everything up to Felmyst in pre-3.0 Sunwell.
Mingledouse was next, an experiment to see what it was like to level a priest. (And it was indeed very easy, especially when she was respecced as Shadow). After a false start with the Wrath launch, where I first leveled Ringle to 80 before decided I wanted a change from playing a rogue main, and a second false start when I leveled Dingle to 80 before realising that the guild was already tank-heavy (and I’d not get enough raiding time to make it worth the effort of gearing her up), Mingle was next to 80 and became my Shadow Priest of Inconvenient Doom.
The desire to complete the set (which is to say, a Dwarf of each class – just don’t ask me about Death Knights) led to rolling Binglerouse, my paladin (who is currently retired at 70 in Ironforge.) She was easy and quick to level as Prot, but it felt like it took forever.
The next was Tingleflouse, my druid and token non-Dwarf**. She reached 30 before I heard something that derailed her progress, and led to another dwarf leveling spree.
Finglethouse is last in my character list, another priest. This was due to a guildie making the comment “You’d have to be insane to level another priest.” Some challenges are impossible to resist. She hit 80 a few days ago, leveling as discipline pretty much the entire way. (As an aside, I love the Bind on Account items – they make gearing up leveling characters a lot less expensive)
I’m currently raiding on Mingledouse, and doing pretty well for myself. My guild has cleared everything to date, including Sartharion with 3 drakes up, and we’re now trying to get 6-minute Malygos for Heroic: You Don’t Have An Eternity and The Immortal.
So that’s “Who” and “Where” covered, at least in passing, so it’s time for “What.” My initial plan is to delve into the murky world of addons, with set-up guides, reviews and tips about both established ones and some new or novel ones that I may stumble across. Discussion of various classes may also randomly occur (possibly more priest-centric though, with that being the class I raid with), and the things that trip you (or me) up when you have a number of alts to keep you busy.
For now, though, I think it’s time to hit “Submit” and start deliberating on what my next post will involve. Possibly kittens. Or configuring Chatter.
/wave
*. Some would argue that there is a third criterion, that it should be too expensive. Usually this definition comes from the spouse or parents of the technophile in question.
**. If Dwarves could roll additional classes I would be very very happy.
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