By July of 2007 I had been playing World of Warcraft for a year and was heavily addicted. I had yet to participate in a real raid. A few months prior I finally left Order of Odin to join Paragon. Towards the end of June a few of my friends ran a dungeon with a Dwarf warrior named Chuunks and his friends from a guild called Forged Alliance. Forged Alliance was getting into raiding and needed more people. Joining a guild that had experience raiding seemed easier than trying to build one from scratch and the Forged Alliance people seemed really nice, so most of us in Paragon joined Forged Alliance with our main characters, leaving our alts in Paragon.
At some point, a month or so later - I don't recall exactly when, Paragon basically crumbled away to nothing. A few of the Paragon people who'd joined Forged Alliance either left the server or left Forged Alliance and re-joined Paragon. The leadership in Paragon wanted to try again to field our own raids. The problem was, a lot of us liked Forged Alliance and enjoyed raiding with them.
The Guild Master of Paragon, Gwynhwyfar and her husband, Edanne, took it very personally. One day Gwynhwyfar mailed me in game to complain to me demanding to know why my friend Paul's wife named one of her alts the same name as Gwynhwyfar's husband's alt. I was baffled as to what the problem was and how I got drawn in to it. Gwynhwyfar talked to me a few nights later and was considering disbanding the guild since a lot of people were playing more with Forged Alliance. I thought this was a bad idea because there were still people in Paragon who only had characters there and didn't raid. We also still had most of our alts there and I felt Paragon kept our little group of friends together. I talked her out of it, or so I thought.
A day or two later I logged in to a few of my characters to find that they were guild-less. A quick check with a few other friends confirmed what I was afraid of. She went through with it anyway. Paragon was no more. I was annoyed and a bit sad, but moved on and joined the rest of my characters to Forged Alliance.
July 19, 2007 - It took a long time for me to complete the Karazhan attunement questline. For a long time I was unable to get past the Shadow Labyrinth portion. Every group I went in with would wipe on the second boss. Once I finally got past that, the rest wasn't as bad. The final leg of the quest line, shown here, in Black Morass, took two or three tries before I completed it and was able to enter Karazhan.
July 19, 2007 - Thandrenn and his crazy armor and weapons. Highest level alt is my warlock at 58.
July 20, 2007 - At the old gates of Grim Batol. I remember going here a few times before Cataclysm, finding only a bunch of red dragons and wondering what was inside and if they'd ever open it.
July 20, 2007 - Ah, raiding Tarren Mill. Back before South Shore was leveled, raids on Tarren Mill (and on South Shore) were common and pretty fun.
July 20, 2007 - At some point the Horde finally gave up and just left.
July 23, 2007 - El Pollo Grande! Had to defeat this guy as part of a Warlock questline.
July 24, 2007 - Marshal Windsor! One of the most notable questlines in WoW. This guy is still there in Blackrock Depths to this day.
July 25, 2007 - Hitting level 60 on my warlock while killing the Emperor in Blackrock Depths. Didn't even plan it this way. Epic!
July 28, 2007 - While doing a quest in Tanaris, Paul and I ganked some random Horde lowbie while passing by. He switched to an Alliance alt to harass me. Keep in mind this was still when you could not have both Horde and Alliance on the same realm if it was a PvP Realm. So he had two accounts. Kinda rare back then I think.
August 2, 2007 - My warlock's first step through the Dark Portal. Still amazing and a major milestone for a character. It was my first alt character to get there.
August 4, 2007 - The final stage of the Warlock epic mount questline. Paul, Uncle Terry (I can't recall whose Uncle he was - not mine), and myself along with help from John and Marina set out and pooled our efforts so that all 3 of our warlocks could complete the lengthy questline. I still have the special items on my warlock for starting this event in Dire Maul. And it still works.
August 4, 2007 - After surviving the waves of demons, the Dreadsteed comes out. We defeat him, turn in the quest and get our mounts.
August 6, 2007 - Another toon and more Fel Reavers. It appears to be coming right at me.
August 9, 2007 - My first real raid. I was scared shitless. I even thought about trying to get out of it. I was off-tanking with Mahnalor and was afraid of totally screwing up. This is the beginning of Forged Alliance's Kara Group 2.
August 9, 2007 - The respawn timer of the first boss' trash was only 15 minutes. So if we wiped - which we did a few times - the trash would respawn after 15 minutes from when we started. On a couple of the rough first nights we actually had to re-clear that first trash. Inconceivable now. Despite that we managed to defeat Attumen the Huntsman.
August 13, 2007 - On with the show! Group 2's first time at the Opera event a few nights later. And it's Wizard of Oz!
August 20, 2007 - Clearing trash on our way to the Maiden of Virtue. Look at Mahnalor's Sun Eater. Despite much farming of Heroic Mechanar, I never got it on Thandrenn. My Hunter got one though.
August 23, 2007 - Forming up on raid night. On a PvP server. If there were Horde guilds there and they outnumbered us, this was usually the result. Until everyone was there, we'd just wait for them to leave or pick off stragglers that left the main group.
August 27, 2007 - The Shade of Aran killed Group 2's momentum many nights. We walked the Walk of Shame back from the graveyard many times because of him.
August 30, 2007 - "Come Midnight, let us disperse this petty rabble!" We'll see about that.
September 5, 2007 - Forged Alliance attempts Gruul's Lair in our first 25-man guild raid. We had a few friends from outside the guild join in to fill our the raid. Despite several valiant attempts were were enable to defeat High King Maulgar.
September 8, 2007 - After slaving away in pits and mines in Netherstorm for over a month, I finally got my Netherdrake. Still one of my favorite mounts in the game and still one I use frequently.
September 17, 2007 - Group 2 vs. Terrestian Illhoof!
September 25, 2007 - Patch 2.2 - "Voice Chat!" was released. The big feature of this patch was built in Voice Chat for those that didn't have Ventrilo. Sadly the implementation of it was poor and it lacked features to the point some considered it unusable. The feature is still in game but I suspect many have forgotten about it.
September 27, 2007 - Ding 70. My first alt to max level!!
October 2, 2007 - Within a few days, by sheer luck I had almost a complete Oblivion Raiment (Warlock Dungeon 3) set.
October 7, 2007 - Paul and myself leveling yet another set of alts. There were so many alts.
October 16, 2007 - The first annual Brewfest! A few of my toons still have their Yellow Steins.
October 19, 2007 - Remember when Blizzard would update the Holidays? 2007 was the first year of the Headless Horseman being added. With epic rings and a shiny new mount!
October 19, 2007 - Before the Looking For Group tool, we had to ride all the way up to Scarlet Monastery to do Headless Horseman. Each person was able to summon him one time each day, but we had to run out of the instance and reset it before each summon. Since this was deep in Horde territory on a PvP server, that made things quite interesting....
October 20, 2007 - Some bastard has stolen all the water from the canal! Weird bug.
October 24, 2007 - The Crystal Caves in Un'goro Crater.
October 31, 2007 - Forged Alliance defeats High King Maulgar!! Our first guild 25-man kill. I still remember the loud cheer as everyone cheered in Ventrilo at the same time. It was such a feeling of accomplishment.
October 31, 2007 - Arriving in Winterspring on my Hunter. One of my favorite zones.
November 1, 2007 - Another toon through the Dark Portal. Look out Outland, here comes Rebecka the Murloc Slayer!
November 5, 2007 - I don't recall the exact date but at some point Kara Group 2's leader, Mahnalor, decided to stop raiding to focus on PvP. When he spoke to me about main-tanking the group, he offered this bit of advice:
"Main tanks get the girls. If you tell a girl you're main tanking a raid, she'll pretty much do you on the spot."
This turned out to not be the case, but I had fun regardless. Andy took over raid lead, I took over main tank and Jeff became our new offtank. It took a while but eventually we cleared Karazhan. A big accomplishment back then.
November 9, 2007 - Defeating the Shade of Aran was a huge step for us. That fight was torture. So glad we were when we finally downed him that Akumabarai there is bear-teabagging him. Good times.
November 13, 2007 - Patch 2.3 - "The Gods of Zul'Aman" was released.
November 24, 2007 - Placeholder Guild? Who is that? It was around this point that a group of friends - most if not all of them being real-life friends - transferred to Destromath from Haomarush. They were looking for a guild to join where they could play with others but still run together if wanted. That week we ran a 3rd Karazhan group and I was able to bring my Warlock to her first raid. I went pretty well and eventually they joined Forged Alliance. A few of them I became close friends with and keep in touch with to this day.
November 27, 2007 - The addiction of the newcomers from "Placeholder Guild" filled out our roster quite nicely and allowed us to field 25 man raids more frequently.
December 4, 2007 - Gruul the Dragonslayer fell soon after.
December 18, 2007 - Another toon through the Dark Portal! That's 4 now. Lenaya, Destroyer of Worlds vs. Outland.
December 22, 2007 - No special notes here. Just a pretty sunset.
December 31, 2007 - What did I do on New Year's Eve? Aside from the usual family dinner, I went up to Bash'ir Landing with a few guildies to participate in the event there. There's a vendor up there that sells special flasks for usage in Gruul's Lair. We farmed these regularly to give guildies a little boost in that raid.
As 2007 came to a close, WoW was on Patch 2.3.0. Zul'Aman had been added to the game for a little over a month. I had two max level (70) toons and another two toons now leveling in Outland. Most of my characters were in Forged Alliance, with a few in a little lowbie alt guild ran by Marina (Jazzmynn) called "The Rizzle Dizzle".
Thanks for walking down memory lane with me and let me know what you think!
By the start of 2007, I had about 5 months of WoW under my belt. I had one character at max level (60) and had several other low level alts, all of them in the guild called Order of Odin. Patch 2.0.1 had been released and we were about 2 and a half weeks away from the Burning Crusade being released. At this point I was mostly playing alts and going on guild runs through Upper and Lower Blackrock Spire, Blackrock Depths, Stratholme and Scholomance.
At this point I was playing WoW my second custom built computer, which I put together in April 2002. It was powered by an AMD Athlon 1700 processor, 512 MB of memory, nVidia GeForce 3 Ti 500 with a whooping 160GB hard drive. My monitor was an insanely heavy CRT with a top resolution of 1024x768. WoW actually ran pretty decently. It wasn't until later in Burning Crusade and when I started raiding that it really started showing its age.
January 1, 2007 - A few minutes after midnight. After watching the ball drop in New York with my family, I returned to my computer and logged in to see the festivities. There were fireworks and booze in Stormwind. And dancing druid-bears. Even though they never really change I try to see the fireworks in WoW every year. I took this on my priest, who was about level 20 at the time. Lenaya was named for a character on Stargate SG-1, Linea, the Destroyer of Worlds. Sounded cool for a Shadow Priest.
January 4, 2007 - Questing in Duskwood with Baraccus and Kaidn. Besides being surprised by the sudden rain, at first I though Kaidn's mage shield was repelling it.
January 4, 2007 - In the Wetlands. When the moon hits your eye.... Even the sky in WoW looks great.
January 5, 2007 - Clothie buddies!! With me being a tailor and both of us using cloth gear, Baraccus and I had matching gear for a while.
January 7, 2007 - Here I'm being shown a "trick" for getting to the end of Blackrock Depths. I think we needed to get someone the Molten Core attunement quest or the Black Forge. After Lord Incendius, we jumped down on to a ledge by the lava, ran a little ways and got to this part. At level 60 the lava actually hurt. So Balford, the priest shielded us, we ran out into the lava towards that island. Half-way across he refreshed our shields. Once we got to the island there were a few fire elementals to fight and then we swam through a tiny bit more lava to emerge on a ledge on the opposite side of the cavern. Tricksy, tricksy.
January 9, 2007 - Patch 2.0.3 - "The Burning Crusade" was released. The expansion itself would be released in one more week.
January 11, 2007 - The original end of the Missing Diplomat questline. Remember when King Wrynn was missing? Here's Lady Jaina Proudmore and her entourage - Pained and Archmage Tervosh.
January 12, 2007 - Raid Quest! There used to be a few quests in the world that actually required a raid to complete. This semi-random group is in the Eastern Plaguelands to slay Nathanos Blightcaller. It wasn't until I rolled a Horde character that I learned how funny this guy is.
January 13, 2007 - The Dark Portal is open! Burning Crusade launch is mere days away, but already tons of demons and pouring through the Dark Portal. The Argent Dawn had a camp established there and upon completing a quest to kill a mere 6 Felguards, I was awarded with one of, if not the rarest tabards in the game. Tabard of the Protector.
January 13, 2007 - Whoops. Oh well, quest done. While this was going on, Highlord Kruul was running around Azeroth surprising people with a quick death. As you can see in this YouTube video, he was quite thorough.
January 17, 2007 - A day after the release of The Burning Crusade. My first steps through the Dark Portal. And the sense of awe and wonder that followed. To this day, I still enjoy taking a new toon through the Dark Portal that first time. That feeling of arriving on a different work is pretty awesome.
January 17, 2007 - The dreaded Fel Reaver. Loud, tall and will stomp you into tho dirt if you're not looking. I saw more than a few people die to this horrible monstrosity.
January 18, 2007 - At some point Baraccus had jokingly told me he couldn't wait to kill a Blood Elf Paladin. I assumed it'd be days before we saw any in the open world. Instead it was just one day. This person must've been up all night.
January 19, 2007 - Using the /who command, a lot of people were watching to see who the first level 70 on the server would be. Keep in mind there were no achievements back then. It was Drec, a Night Elf Hunter, barely two days in. He was also the first level 80 on Destromath in Wrath of the Lich King.
January 20, 2007 - After most of my friends left Order of Odin to form Paragon, I found myself questing more and more with different people, namely Helwyr and Tatiana. Helwyr had a "Read = Dead" philosophy. So I knew when questing with him if we saw any Horde, we'd be tearing them up and getting some good honor.
January 20, 2007 - The servers weren't perfectly stable after Burning Crusade came out. Destromath went down for a few hours, so a few of us from Paragon created new Blood Elves on the Maelstrom server. I think we got as far as level 12 before the server came back up. I thought about making this my "Horde" server. Back then you couldn't have Horde and Alliance characters on the same PvP server. Since Maelstrom was a RP-PVP server, I decided to start my real Horde characters on Exodar instead.
January 24, 2007 - Infernals! Run!!!
January 25, 2007 - Seems I ran into Forged Alliance people quite often before actually joining the guild.
February 20, 2007 - One month in to Burning Crusade and I'm only level 65? Man, I sure took it easy back then. I was taking my time and also playing alts a lot. In this shot I'm doing a quest - grouped with Forged Alliance again - in Terokkar Forest.
February 20, 2007 - Aannnd the quest broke. Here we are re-starting it. Second try was the charm I think. Sometimes it broke so bad you'd need either a GM to fix it or a server restart.
February 26, 2007 - Master Sergeant Thandrenn, Killer of Stuff sporting the wonderfully matching Fel Iron Plate set. Carefully crafted by Carlean, a fellow warrior in Order of Odin.
February 28, 2007 - Though not officially a member of Paragon, I still ran with them often. Including this guild group we formed to attack the Horde town Crossroads in the Barrens.
February 28, 2007 - We rode in like the heroes of old, ready to slay all those who would stand against the mighty warriors of Paragon.
February 28, 2007 - And ended up looking like King Arthur and his knights in Monty Python. Good times were had though!
March 1, 2007 - The Lunar Festival in The Park in Stormwind. Remember The Park? Oh hey, I'm still not 70!?
March 13, 2007 - Level 70 finally. Almost 2 months after Burning Crusade came out. As with when I hit level 60, I tried to find a decent enough looking place for a good screenshot. I was not counting on this dead mob's corpse to photobomb me though.
April 1, 2007 - I love awesome guild names. Also he's a level 1 gnome, naked, in a level 60 zone. Surprised every mob in the zone wasn't converging on him.
April 3, 2007 - There used to be a cave in Southern Winterspring in Darkwhisper Gorge with a portal beyond a locked gate. I assume this portal had something to do with Mount Hyjal or the Emerald Dream or something. So far as I know it was never opened and was removed when Cataclysm was developed.
April 5, 2007 - Karazhan, being the first raid in BC, was a pretty happening place. And on a PvP server, there was often big fights between Horde and Alliance there. Back then there was no mass summons. Warlocks didn't have a summoning stone and could not summon inside an instance. Groups had to meet up at the stone or ride there by ground mount from Darkshire or Stonard. So many skeletons.
April 7, 2007 - At some point Baraccus and I created Alliance alts on the Kirin Tor server to get away from the drama happening in Order of Odin. Upon completing the major quest lines in Bloodmyst Isle, Draenei are rewarded with all the quest NPCs they helped showing up and congratulating them. Pretty epic.
April 16, 2007 - Call the gryphons! Early on there weren't many choices for mounts. And since at the time all mounts and non-combat pets were items that took up bag space, most people only grabbed one. Apparently the Snowy Gryphon was popular. It was what I went with too!
April 18, 2007 - In the Ruins of Mathystra in Darkshore, there used to be a translucent Ghost Saber that would only spawn after you looted a random number of Cat Figurines scattered around the ruins. A few minutes after it spawned it would die. It took a while for me to get it to spawn.
April 21, 2007 - The famous Reginald Windsor questline. An epic series of quests that uncovered a major secret in Stormwind City. I'm sad that quests like that don't exist anymore. Here I'm on the final stage.
April 21, 2007 - Aannnddd it turns out she's a dragon.
April 21, 2007 - Rest in Peace Reginald Windsor. We'll remember him well. He was avenged by the mighty Bolvar Fordragon.
April 21, 2007 - One of the last stages in the questline to complete the key for Upper Blackrock Spire. Remember when you needed a key for that?
April 22, 2007 - There was a gnome in that big demon dog thing!?
April 28, 2007 - Ysondre, one of the Dragons of Nightmare that used to spawn at the portals in Duskwood, Hinterlands, Feralas and Ashenvale.
May 19, 2007 - Thandrenn and Baraccus questing together again at level 70. With dead blood elves at our feet. A week or two prior to this I finally left Order of Odin and re-joined the rest of my friends in Paragon. I wanted to raid and run dungeons with my friends more. Most of the people I played with in Order of Odin - Scrog, Helwyr, Tatiana, Robear, etc. - weren't playing much anymore. There was a select group of guildies that were pushing to try to get into raiding, but I was not part of that. So with a "So long and thanks for the fish", I left Order of Odin and became a member of Paragon.
May 22, 2007 - Patch 2.1 - "The Black Temple" was released. Best trailer ever.
June 7, 2007 - It was around this time that I decided to make a serious effort to try the Horde side out. In the months prior I had created a few new Alliance alts on the Exodar server. I deleted them all - along with a few other really low (like below level 5) toons I wasn't going to ever play on other servers. I didn't do any research, but I liked the name of the server, so Exodar became my first Horde server. Here's Rebecka and her faithful dragonhawk, Rollhacks. This was the first time I used the name Rollhacks for my Hunter's pet.
June 13, 2007 - Lady Sylvanas Windrunner. Our Dark Lady. The Banshee Queen. She was much less intimidating before they gave her a custom model in the Lich King expansion.
June 19, 2007 - Reindeer Parade in Stormwind in June? Well, why not?
June 25, 2007 - All hail Thandrenn, the new King of the Ogres!!!
July 13, 2007 - I don't recall if this place had a name. It was basically the same model as the temple of the moon in Darnassus, but it was all broken down and overrun and in Azshara. It was removed when they re-did Azshara in the Cataclysm expansion.
July 14, 2007 - Not enough questlines involving this NPC.
July 14, 2007 - Seriously.
July 14, 2007 - Run for the hills! Wait! We're already in the hills!
