A Blog Is Born... Shadow Trance!

Welcome to Shadow Trance, and welcome to its first post.... please excuse the dust as I remodel the place.... I'm pleased to be starting this blog, but first, I want to give you a history of myself and my gaming experience so you will hopefully have a better understanding of my experiences and my take on the game.

My first MMORPG was Ultima Online when I was in college.  I had always been a fan of the Ultima Series, my first was Ultima IV on my Apple IIc. Thankfully I didn't great involved with UO until late 1998, after the bulk of my college career was finished.  I had several characters, and that game had several FOTM type builds.  I pretty much had 7x GM in everything at some point.  UO is what really started the birth of the MMORPG market, ALL HAIL LORD BRITISH!  After the disaster that was UO2, I finally canceled my accounts in 2002-ish  and gave up citing that I had beaten the game, and PKed more than my fair share.

Then came Star Wars: Galaxies in 2002. Of course, I have always been a big fan of Sci-Fi and naturally the Star Wars films.  I was accepted in the public beta of SWG.  My main character was a rifleman, and I was okay... I joined a guild called Peace Keepers <PK> on the Bloodfin server.  Eventually I took over the guild when the GM eventually stopped being active.  Bloodfin was a very PVP-orientated server, and that's a good amount of what I did.  I even had a second computer setup that I would log-in my Doctor and give free medical buffs 24x7 inside the Cantina; that was great!  Through our PVP efforts, I made friends with a guild called <AXIS>, lead by Heat aka Assassin.  When the holocron system was introduced and everyone, including myself, stopped playing and focused solely on grinding your Jedi professions, I knew the game was in trouble.  I did get my Jedi and leveled him to uberness, but the game was irreversibly damaged.  The only thing that would save the game, was a complete re-write.  And that's what they did in 2005 with the release of the NGE.  SWG had always been bug-ridden, and most of the <AXIS> people had decided to move to WOW.  I followed them to WOW shortly after.

I started playing World of Warcraft sometime in 2005.  I started as an Orc Warlock and leveled him to 50-something and then realized I made a huge mistake... Undead Warlocks were a better option than Orc Warlocks, DOH!  So I deleted him and made an Undead Warlock and got some help (read: chinaman) leveling it to 60.  I joined up with the people I knew in SWG and we started raiding Molten Core.  I was still learning, but I did fairly well.  We usually had 5 warlocks in our 40-man raiding team.  We eventually cleared MC and BWL, and I eventually became the warlock class leader.  Guild drama seemed to always follow our GM, Heat, and eventually the guild split up.  A warrior in our guild, named Cremator, started his own guild after that, and I followed him because he had earned my respect as a main tank and as a raid leader.  Our new guild eventually cleared BWL and AQ20.  Our guild had almost cleared AQ40 and half of Naxxaramius when the Burning Crusade expansion hit.

Our guild eventually decided to transfer servers to Bonechewer, where there was larger population to recruit from.  We formed a guild called Infamy and started recruiting.  We were pretty successful with our core group of raiders.  I'd say 10-12 of us were probably the very best players in our respective class.  Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the bulk of our guild.  Eventually, our GM stopped being as active, and the the tag-along he had as a "co" GM was a douche.  I eventually parted ways from them and started looking into the the more senior guilds on the server.  By this time, I had warlock-ing down a science.  I felt I knew every aspect of the class and was likely in the top 1% of all warlocks in terms of skill.  Now I just wish I had the gear to match.

I applied to Civilian; after a long application process :) , I was accepted.  And so now I've been here ever since.  The guild is solid and has stable leadership.  It was awkward at first coming into a new guild where I knew only 1 person, but I have since found my footing.

Without blowing my horn too much... I am a very knowledgeable warlock.  I hope to share some of my tips, tricks, and maybe a few secrets with those of you who choose to read this.