The Hunt Begins

Everyone needs a good origin story. I remember sitting at lunch listening to a friend tell another friend about this cool game he was playing. She was interested, so they talked shop about the different roles and abilities available, and she expressed an interest in playing a warlock. I was curious too, but paying to play a game? I'll stick with the one time purchase cartridges.

Or so I thought. They continued to wear me down (mostly by talking about their fun adventures in Azeroth) and finally I agreed to download a trial the week after final exams. At this point I had the two original friends, a friend from Japanese class, and my roommate and his girlfriend all encouraging me to play. Peer pressure, y'all - it works.

I wanted to be a druid; when I heard about the tank-heals-dps options I originally wanted to level a tank (DPS are dime-a-dozen! I'm a special snowflake! etc) but was advised against it until I had learned the ropes a little. So, to take after my friend who was a resto druid in a progression raiding guild, I planned on a nelf.  No, he said. If you play a female night elf I won't play with you. Well, male nelves were way too creepy for my taste, so I switched to a human priest. I thought the name was so clever (being a witty pun on my name and a mix of the two languages I study) until someone pointed out that it was the name of a person on a reality TV show.

Well, leveling a priest is hard. Even now, knowing tons more about the game I still struggled through the first 20ish levels on my alt. So I struggled and my friends were never on when I was and finally my J class friend said, hey, make an alt on my server and I'll talk to you! Thus was born Akabeko the tauren druid. My friend sent me 50g (!!!!) and said that if I made it to level 30 I could get an invite to her raiding guild.

So, I killed quillboars (and was killed by quillboars) and begged my friend for help on group quests because I was too afraid to ask in general chat - although now I realize that there may not have been many alts in the zone, and even less willing to help. At her suggestion I leveled feral and got lots of advice on gear stats (like, even into Outlands I was asking about quest loot). I joined her guild and made some friends and got to 70 just a little while before WotLK was to be released, and I abandoned the miserable priest I had languishing on my first server.

There is, of course, much more to the story that I hope to talk about. For now I'll say that I hit max level, respecced to resto, and began healing dungeons and heroics (and was even carried through Kara <3 ) and Aka became my beloved main.