Tank like a girl

Yesterday, it happened, and there was this loud sigh in WoW blogs around the world: we have a release date. And now that we have a release date, it’s time to get everything lined up, for a smooth transition to the patch that will change the way we currently play WoW.

I am trying to think back, to how it was when vanilla WoW hit the end of its lifecycle and we were getting ready for TBC. They changed the honor system not too long before that, and suddenly everyone did PvP. If you think back, there were few things you could do at 60, if you were not a raider. Sure, you were able to run the 60 instances over and over again. Let me tell you, I hate LBRS, with the burning hatred of the fire of a thousand suns. Incidentally, this is where Kadomi actually hit 60, back as a fury warrior. I actually had 7/8 pieces of Dreadmist on my warlock, which was like the most ginormous accomplishment ever, I thought. I had the hat! It actually still sits in her bank, together with the blue PvP warlock hat, which I also fiercely loved. But yeah, that’s what you did back then, you either ran Scholo-Strat-LBRS-Dire Maul, and it took hours to complete them, and if you wiped, the whole instance had respawned. Or you did PvP because suddenly, you were able to obtain phat purple lewtz without raiding. Or you did some light raiding, I set foot into Zul’Gurub and AQ20 a couple of times, but for a casual guild like mine, this was really beyond the realms of what we could do realistically.

This is rambling, please bear with me. There’s a reason one of my categories is called ‘rambling’. I do it a lot. The gist of it is: when TBC hit, I had no goals. There were no things that you could attain before you were ready to move on. When people cry about the lack of content these days, it was far worse back then. For me, there were absolutely no goals. The biggest goal was to replace two pieces of Dreadmist with the 0.5 pieces, woohoo. I did some light rep grinding, I wanted to be Exalted with Argent Dawn, and only made it to 7k through Honored. I tried rep grinding with Cenarion Circle, and that was mindblowingly worse. Does anyone remember how disgustingly awful it was to grind rep with CC if you weren’t running AQ regularly?

So here I am, 1.5 years later as Blizzard barely keeps its promise of an expansion every year. Barely. I have changed mains, I utterly fell in love with tanking, the warlock only logs in to make pots for the tank, and you know what, I am still busy. I have goals. Sure, they aren’t huge goals, but they are things I would like to accomplish in game first.

• finish leveling my shaman to 70. Garande is my current pet project, my future resto shaman, and she’s a blast to play. I intend her to be part of the three characters I shall level to 80 first: tank, rogue, healer. That’s my order.
• power-level alchemy on my shaman as my warlock won’t be leveled for a while
• grind out the last 17 points of engineering on my rogue, because engineering looks like craploads of fun in WotLK
• build the roflcopter, because I wantssss it
• grab my bestest girls and tank H OHB and H M-T to complete my heroic experience. Yes, I am skipping Auchenai Crypts, and that’s a-ok with me!
• lead another Gruul/Mags raid and this time won’t pass the T4 shoulder token to another warrior. Why there were never any shoulders to buy for badges, I wish I knew.

But last yet not least, my biggest hope, dream, aspiration, goal is to actually meet those two charming young men in their foresty home:

Hex-Lord Malacrass and Zul'jin

Now, that last goal is most important to me. I want to be able to push our limits and clear that second of 10-mans in TBC. I think we can do it if we manage past Dragonhawk. At least I hope we can. I’d so get my kicks out of that. But given our light raid schedule, time is ticking. I am prepared to push Karazhan off our official raid schedule and invest the rest of our raiding time into ZA. I would totally dig that. I like challenges.

Ah, I forgot another goal. To finish my Karazhan guides and the multitanking guide I have been working on. Sure, it’s going to be different or obsolete soon, but in the meantime, if only one tank can learn something from it, it’s worth blogging about.

Now that I have rambled about my goals, what are yours, and how did you feel back then, in the days of yore, when TBC was impending? I am curious.