Two Thousand and Ten is upon us. Icecrown Citadel has only been out a few weeks at this point and because it wasn't all opened at once, only the first 4 bosses are available. Patch 3.3.0a is current.
January 3, 2010 - Sometimes if I ALT-TAB out of the game while in flight and then come back, the textures take a few seconds to load, resulting in crazy screenshots like this.
January 19, 2010 - Forged Alliance downs Lord Marrowgar 25-man. Backstory time. When Ulduar was the current content, Forged Alliance was having difficulty filling 25-man raids at times. Eventually we found another, similar guild to team up with to do joint raids. It worked out decently at first. Problem was, the other guild was growing fast - by absorbing other smaller guilds. Eventually they were able to do their own 25-man raids and promptly ditched Forged Alliance. In a bit of poetic justice however, growing pains caused by absorbing those other guilds resulted in culture-clash and the other guild disbanded shortly after. Most Forged Alliance members were pretty upset at this betrayal. We still had a stable 10-man group running though and shortly after started another. Eventually after a month or two we were able to begin running our own 25-man raids again. We tried out a few weeks in Trial of the Crusader 25-man to get gear and practice. Then as seen in the above screenshot we were able do go back to kicking ass in current content.
January 20, 2010 - Me and my Tanking wingman, Arnold. Almost in matching gear too! Good times.
January 21, 2010 - Until seeing this screenshot, I had forgotten the shenanigans that could be accomplished by the Goblin Rocket Pack. Shenanigans, tomfoolery and repair bills.
January 21, 2010 - The first quest in a legendary quest line. The NPC Linken and his questline were references to Zelda and took who around the world and back. At the end of the series of quests you had to face an evil fire elemental at the top of the volcano in Un'goro Crater. It is easily one of my favorite and most memorable questlines and was something I did on every toon leveling up. Sadly it was removed in the Cataclysm expansion.
January 24, 2010 - Group 2 completes The Undying! Another group of us had tried to do this a few months prior and had gotten as far as the last phase of the last boss before someone died.
February 1, 2010 - A few months before (Patch 3.2) to this Blizzard finally removed the restriction preventing people from having both Horde and Alliance characters on the same PvP server. I decided I'd have an easier time playing my Horde Hunter on Destromath, but I needed a character slot. So I moved my little gnome mage, Carabini, to Echo Isles so I'd have a decent toon to play with my real-life friends. There he ran into a devilsaur and was eaten.
February 2, 2010 - This Naga was found in the water just off the southern coast of Tanaris. She was removed in Cataclysm since she was part of the The Scepter of the Shifting Sands questline.
February 3, 2010 - I kinda miss the Gunship fight. It wasn't complicated or challenging, but it was FUN.
February 8, 2010 - With the release of Patch 3.3.2, a new holiday event was added for Love is in the Air. Epic necklaces, a pet, rare mount and cool helmet. Good times.
February 8, 2010 - The updates to the Love is in the Air event, the Royal Apothecary Society decided to lay siege to Crystal Song Forest. To spread the love or something.
February 15, 2010 - So I'm heading up to the top of the Storm Peaks to visit the Lunar Festival Elders when NPCScan starts going off saying the Time-Lost Proto Drake is nearby. It is a very rare mob that drops a mount. Many people routinely patrol the Storm Peaks just for this mob. But I've found it and no one else sees it yet. I swoop down out of the sky and find a close spot to pull it, on the side of a mountain. I kill it just a few seconds before another Alliance player flies over to congratulate it. Had I been a few seconds later, it'd have been me grudgingly congratulating him.
February 21, 2010 - Before the Cataclysm revamp, it was possible to get under Stormwind City. Sometimes by mistake, sometimes intentionally. I don't remember how we did this, but it was pretty fun.
February 21, 2010 - Doing some more exploring of Azeroth before the Cataclysm revamp, focusing on the areas between zones. This was between Searing Gorge and Dun Morogh.
February 21, 2010 - The end of the world?
February 27, 2010 - Ashenvale!
March 9, 2010 - Dalaran shenanigans. With lower player populations and no more joint-faction cities, this sort of thing is very rare anymore.
March 10, 2010 - Shiny new level 80 mage. Back then I often recycled my player names on each server. At one time there was like 6 Drushalla's, 5 Lindze's, 3 Rebecka's, 4 Lenaya's, etc. I don't do that anymore. Too confusing. Carabini hit max level at a pretty good time. By spending a modest amount of gold and a few charitable contributions from a friend, I was able to queue for Heroic dungeons. After two weeks or so of farming Heroic Dungeons, I had a complete set of epic gear. Not top-end gear, but good enough to get into raids.
March 14, 2010 - SUFFER MORTALS, WHILE YOUR PATHETIC MAGIC BETRAYS YOU!!! Group 2 downs Sindragosa. A pretty rough fight at first. I think it took us 2 or 3 weeks.
March 14, 2010 - Oh hai Lich King. We're in your base, killing your dudes.
March 14, 2010 - His sword is bigger than two of me.....
March 14, 2010 - At some point we decided we wanted to focus on just the Lich King. With the new Raid Lockout Extension feature, it was possible to resume Lich King attempts from the previous week. But we didn't always have a strong enough group. So I ran my Warlock into our instance one week to save her. And then each 10-man raid night, if we had a strong enough group, she'd extend the lock out, we'd run in and then I'd switch. Boom, we could go straight to Lich King. If not a strong enough group, we'd just start on a fresh raid ID. We preserved our Lich King-only ID for probably a month before we killed him.
March 18, 2010 - Wrath of the Moonking!
March 20, 2010 - One of the lesser known quests in Icecrown involves going to Shattrath City and enlisting help of the Naaru.
March 26, 2010 - Poor Archavon, so lonely.
April 4, 2010 - Seeing a Scarab Lord even back then was extremely rare. After playing for 8 years, I've only ever seen 3.
April 4, 2010 - Dun Morogh.
April 15, 2010 - For a few weeks there was an addon for WoW that made use of 3D overlays to allow players to "draw' things on surfaces in the game. The drawings could be shared via channel automatically, so it was quite common to see many phallic objects in Ironforge if you had this addon running. This tech also allowed an addon called AVR, which drew markings on the ground during boss fights to tell people where to go or emphasis boss abilities.
Blizzard thought this made fights too easy (even though players still had to see, identify the markings and then act upon them) and disabled the tech with a patch.
April 15, 2010 - Soooo many ghouls...
April 18, 2010 - The old Stormwind Auction House during a Horde Raid. The Horde really hated those Auctioneers...
April 20, 2010 - The Mirage Raceway. Flooded out in Cataclysm. Sorely missed. Rest in Peaces.
May 6, 2010 - After 7 or 8 weeks of attempts on The Lich King...
May 6, 2010 - Finally! Don't release!
May 6, 2010 - Group 2 downs the Lich King!! And in comes Tirion Fordring to try to steal the credit. Probably one of my proudest moments in World of Warcraft. An epic journey with a great group of people.
May 6, 2010 - Arthas may be dead, but there must always be a Lich King...
May 14, 2010 - Westfall.
May 21, 2010 - The Wetlands!
June 5, 2010 - I believe we're violating a few laws of physics here...
June 22, 2010 - Patch 3.3.5 - "Defending the Ruby Sanctum" was released.
June 22, 2010 - Selfie with the Lich King!
June 24, 2010 - When not killing the Lich King over on Destromath, I'd often play over on Echo Isles with some real-life friends. They had pretty much started when Lich King was released and hadn't really experienced any earlier raid content. So I'd often guide them through old stuff such as Molten Core. Third time through, the Right Binding of the Windseeker dropped for my friend, Velistra. The next week the Left Binding dropped. This led us on an epic journey to complete the weapon.
July 1, 2010 - The new patch included a small raid called The Ruby Sanctum and Real ID. Now players could talk with friends on other servers.
July 13, 2010 - Eventually Forged Alliance's raiding team dwindled again to the point where running 25-mans was no longer possible. Coupled with the expectation that Group 2 wouldn't be running much anymore and an increased desire to play with my real-life friends, I moved Lindze and later Thandrenn to Echo Isles. At the time it seemed like a good idea and for a long time it was, but in retrospect I probably should've just leveled up another character on Echo Isles. But that is another story.
I took more screenshots in 2010 than any other year, before or since. A lot happened then and it was probably the busiest time in World of Warcraft for me. At times I was raiding 7 nights a week - 3 10 mans and a 25-man. Lots of progress in Icecrown Citadel, and then the pre-release events for the Cataclysm along with the Cataclysm Beta.
Thusly, the 2010 post will be a 3 part feature. Part 2 will cover August through October.
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