Prelude, Purpose and Posterity

Allow me to begin simply. My name is Ack and Im an addict. In my life I have been addicted to many things - cigarettes, women (individually and as a group), television, alcohol and video games. Currently, I only have two of these addictions - smoking and video games. Specifically World of Warcraft (WOW from here on out). If you arent familiar with WOW, perhaps this isnt the piece of the internet for you.

A bit about me - I am in my mid 30s, gainfully employed, happily married for 6 years, a home owner and a respected member of my community. I have friends, do things socially outside of the game, watch television.. all the things that a normal person does. But when I am home, I am online. And when I am online, more than 90% of the time Im playing in Azeroth. The remaining 10% is spent visiting forums (various guild and alliance forums mostly), looking for new add-ons to try and various other WOW related activities. Its a sickness.

So now that you know a bit about me and my habit I will get to the meat of this - why Im writing this and what you can expect to find here. Honestly, probably alot about WOW and day to day life in it. There will be some real life observations, discussions of new / upcoming MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online games) and other such frivolities - but mostly it will be WOW. Add-ons, life at 60, links to various resources, culled information and leaks about the expansion, etc. Oh - and probably more often than not a comment or 4 about living with this game as an addiction and how it affects me and those around me.

Todays post will be my pedigree for MMOs and where Ive been and what Im working on currently. Having beta'd or played in massively online games since.. well, along time Ive seen alot and experienced the ups and downs of various games. Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Final Fantasy 11, Asheron's Call 2, City of Heroes, Planetside, EQ2, SillyMuds (Silicon Realms and Phoenix), a Tolkien inspired DikuMud, Matrix Online - these are the majority of them, Im sure someone will eventually remind me of others that I have done. As for WoW, well - its the greatest one yet. I was in Beta and played several toons up to 20 to decide what I wanted to play at release.
Upon release I was on Hellscream where I levelled my Troll hunter to 60 before switching over to a PVP server (Burning Hand? Argent Dawn? will confirm later) and levelling an Orc Shaman up to 42 before I burned out the first time. This period was amongst the worst I had ever experienced with an addiction. I was skipping work, scheduling needless meetings so I could "work" from home and continue playing. The world was new and fresh and exciting and dynamic. As a matter of survival (job and marriage), I cancelled and uninstalled and backed off for a while. I managed to stay clean for approximately 7 months.
A few months back a friend of mine was starting up again with some co-workers and convinced many of us to play again. We would all be playing together and it would be awesome! So I reactivated, patched and started playing - but this time I was playing the "easy" side, Alliance. The game was stabilized - some of the class revamps had occurred, most of the end game instances were opened (only Naxx wasnt in yet) and I was playing with friends ("internet" friends tho - spread from Boston to Florida to Seattle and beyond). I hadn't done much alliance stuff and alot of the content was new to me. It was a newish server (Thorium Brotherhood) and several of us were levelling machines. We ripped to 60 in about 5-6 weeks (11 days played) and I had a fresh and new game to play with my Dwarf Hunter (yes, I did Hunter again).
~~wavy lines, time passes - more on this period in another post ~~
now Im playing alts - I am actively levelling a 23 human rogue and a 43 nelf druid. I want the druid to 60 before US Thanksgiving (unlikely with my convention schedule) and I believe it is possible to get my rogue at or close to 60 before BC comes out as well. Why have 3 60s? Because I find my hunter to be a pariah in 5 man groups - but he shines in 20+ man runs. I help lead a Molten Core (MC) raiding alliance with him, but getting a group for LBRS or BRD is killing me. So I wanted something more group viable - and I chose a Kitty Druid (Full Feral spec for now). One day there was too much guild drama and I needed some quiet - so I rolled a baby rogue and DAMN thats alot of fun. But again with the not horribly group friendly (more so than the hunter, but still not many calls for DPS go out over the LFG channel).

More on all of these topics later. Lets see what direction this site takes me in and go from there.

Oh - and since yall are probably wondering why Im blogging about WOW instead of playing... I have to do something at work, dont I??