This blog is about whatever happens to hold my interest at the moment. I tend to throw myself into a hobby for a couple years, then move on to something else. As I write this, my principal interest is World of Warcraft a.k.a. WoW. However there are no guarantees that I’ll still be writing about WoW in six months – I may well take up underwater basketweaving as my new hobby of choice.
I’m thirty-something years old, married, and have three kids. I work on computers and cartography in a small agricultural consulting business. I live out in the boonies – the nearest McDonalds is roughly 40 minutes of highway driving from my home and the nearest town is about 4 miles away.
Since at the moment I mostly blog about World of Warcraft, I’m going to focus on that for this page. I’ve been playing WoW since February 2006.
Current main toons
Retired
Toons I have played
I tend to play a lot of different characters in World of Warcraft. Here is a brief summary of those I’ve played and a little about each of them.
Mardin was a gnome mage around level 15. He was my first character. For some reason I decided that I wanted to play a priest instead, so I wound up abandoning him fairly quickly and moving on to my next toon.
Dorane was an undead priest. She was the first character I leveled. I got her up to about 35, but then Jaimie got her own account and we decided to level toons together. She was abandoned at that point.
My first character on Andorhal was Ali, a human warlock. I played him with Jaimie up to about level 20, then we tried out another pairing. As of this writing Ali is level 61. He’s fun enough to play and if Andorhal were still my main server I’d probably play him more often. As it stands, he will likely never reach 70.
My second character on Andorhal was Reall, a gnome rogue. I could not get the hang of rogues to save my life, so Jaimie and I made up another pairing. Eventually I ended up going back to play him. What I did was practice on mobs that were a couple levels lower than me until I got the hang of playing a rogue. He’s currently my third highest character on Andorhal at 42 and I’d like to level him again.
Flint, a dwarf priest, was my main character on Andohal. I’d missed my priest buffs from Dorane and I wanted to play something I knew so I made him. Jaimie had decided that gnome mages were for her, so she rolled up Tinder. We played this pair for a long, long time. Flint is retired now as I don’t want to raid and there’s really nothing else for him to do. Basically the death of our guild, Legion of the Dragon, killed Flint and Tinder. If I someday decide to get back into raiding on a PvP server, Flint is my most likely candidate.
R�ve was my night elf druid on Andorhal. He was originally made to play with Jaimie’s Emeraude, but Jaimie didn’t like druids, so he wound up soloing a fair bit. He’s up just past level 40. I enjoyed playing a druid – the ability to shift to whatever was needed for a given situation was great. I’m hoping to start up an all-druid group on Quel’dorei.
Herne was my dwarf hunter. It was fun to play a hunter and have mobs die all around me. He tamed Old Smokey in Loch Modan, renamed him Andarta, and has stuck with a fuzzy bear ever since. He’s just over level 40. I’ve moved my hunter thrills over to Arthemis on Quel’dorei.
Myrddin was my gnome mage. Jaimie liked the class so much that I felt that I really should try it out. It was okay, but mages really aren’t my thing. They’re as squishy as priests but without being in a support role. He’s around level 37 and isn’t likely to be played again – currently he’s serving as my bank toon on Andorhal.
Lun was my gnome warrior. He was mostly arms spec and fun to play – I was going to raise him to be a tank but it never really got that far. He was the one who showed me all the abilities that a warrior has at his disposal. He’s at level 40 and might be played again if I decide to go back to Andorhal.
Padraic was my human paladin. I had seen Anath do amazing things with his paladin – lots of pre-Burning Crusade tanking when paladin tanks weren’t supposed to exist. I played him a decent amount and he was fun to play. Again, he got lost in the crush of alts around level 36 and now I’ve moved on to Andromache on Quel’dorei for my paladin game.
Taliesin was my draenei shaman, created around the time of the Burning Crusade’s release. I never really got the hang of him. Jaimie powered him through a couple of instances for gear, but he really didn’t get played much. He’s around level 19 and not likely to be played again.
I was sick of being ganked on my low-level alts so around January Jaimie and I made characters on Nazgrel. We were regularly playing horde on a PvE server with with Justin, Faith, and Dave and felt that it was silly to have two PvE horde servers to keep up with. So Artimis and Andromache moved from Nazgrel to Quel’dorei, with Artimis being renamed to Arthemis in the move. Now Quel’dorei is our main server.
Arthemis is my blood elf hunter. She started out paired with Jaimie’s Arala, but we ended up running our two hunters together up to 70 for maximum killing power. Arthemis still has her springpaw lynx from level 10, Arge, as her pet. For some reason none of the other pets appealed. Arthemis was my second level 70 – I’ve run a few instances with her, but mostly she does dailies and disenchants. I actually went into Kara with her once for the Attumen fight and didn’t do too badly. It helps that I’ve been twinking her out as much as I can without doing many instance runs.
Andromache is my blood elf paladin. She’s the one who started out with Diannia, Jaimie’s hunter. She’s my farming toon. I have a lot of fun with her, watching 5-6 mobs four levels higher die from beating themselves to death on her armor. I’ve tanked most outland instances with her on heroic and regular. Paladin AOE tanking is lots of fun – however it can be rather limiting when compared to warrior tanking. There are a lot fewer “oh crap” abilities to draw on.
Tristam is my tauren warrior. I love trying to keep my DPS-happy squishies alive – it keep the game exciting. He’s a dedicated tank. He is also the GM of our guild, Sleep Deprived. I have now tanked all of Kara multiple times with him – hopefully we’ll be getting into Zul’Aman soon. If not I may start bringing Andro in to keep things interesting.
Anzu is my tauren shaman. I recently dinged 32 with him, and man what a difference that level 30 ding makes! From what I can tell, shaman are the polar opposite of paladins – give me any one mob, especially a caster and I’ll slaughter it. Give me lots of mobs, especially melee, and I’m in trouble.
Merddyn is my blood elf warlock. I had to make one, blood elves just demand to be warlocks. I’m none too thrilled with his name, but since he’s paired with Jaimie’s Vivianne he had to be named some variant of Merlin. He runs with Jaimie’s shadow priest for a lot of dot-fear-win fun! He’s at level 35 and we will get to leveling that pairing more Real Soon Now.
Emerys is my baby druid. I’ve gotten him up to 26 and have been having fun with him. So far the Horde druid experience isn’t much different from the Alliance druid leveling I’d already done on Reve – we’ll see how it goes when I get past 40. Emerys is headed up to supply me with a third tank so I can tank with all three tanking classes.
AAAAANNNNDDD that’s all folks! I have a couple level 10ish alts here and there but I haven’t played them seriously so they don’t count. I’ve played all the classes in World of Warcraft and I have a really hard time deciding which is my favorite. At the moment, I’d say that I would be least likely to play a mage and most likely to play a paladin or a druid if I were starting from scratch. If I were starting on a new server again, I would make a hunter for the fast leveling and so that it could bankroll my other toons. It’s the people that make MMORPGs fun, so I would be happy to play any class if I had a solid group to level with.