Humble Beginnings

     After many years of leveling, PvPing, and raiding in Azeroth, World of Warcraft began to feel a bit stale.  Our once strong hard core guild had been gradually disintegrating.  In the final days, we were a maybe once a week casual raid guild.  Mostly people just got older and their schedules got more complicated.  We had some good times and the core group had been playing together for almost four years.  When Art of Vengeance (our last 10 man incarnation) fell apart, my heart wasn't in WoW anymore.  I began as a DPS, had a stint as tank and had settled into healing for most of my raiding/pvp activities.  Ironically, despite all the silly panda stuff, I felt the game was at it's best when MoP came out.  The new zones had an amazing aesthetic that for me, really supported the mystic and ancient setting.   The game-play itself was certainly better than it had ever been.  Rotations and talents were interesting and combat was extremely fun.  The MoP raids, I thought were some of the best in the game (but nothing beats Ulduar IMHO).

     For a while, I had also dabbled in SWToR.  Mostly because like every kid born in the 70's, I love Star Wars.  I played a couple of classes and I got Sith Sorcerer, Bounty Hunter Powertech, and Jedi Shadow to 50.  My wife is an avid MMO player as well and her first toon was an Imperial Agent.  That story line really kept my interest.  It seemed less juvenile than anything my characters had going on.  Lots of intruique, double agent stuff, conspiracy and a kick ass ending. Some of the other story lines were cool (some were just awful), loved the space missions even though they could feel repetitive.  In the end, just wasn't as much fun as WoW.

     We tried Secret World for about a week.  Felt like a waste of time.  I always wondered if we gave it more of a chance, maybe we would have found some things to enjoy in the game.

     And now... Wildstar.  I haven't felt this excited about a video game in a long time.  My wife and I got into the winter beta in early January and it's been quite a fun ride.  The first thing you become aware of when you log into Wildstar, is that the game has a huge personality, for lack of a better word.  This didn't surprise me.  All the videos on the game website were hilarious.  At it's core, there is a serious story line guiding your adventures on the planet Nexus but you're going to have plenty of laughs along the way.  One of my favorite parts was the narrator who berates you with snarky comments when you die, pumps you up and congratulates you when you level up, and gives you some exciting background when you get to a new area.  The game play is very active.  The player has to hop around and do quite a bit of aiming.  The instances are fun and definitely challenging. The boss mechanics kept me on my toes and kicked my ass until I got the hang of them. The players we met were all very helpful and that just added to games positive atmosphere.  I decided to try my hand at blogging as we begin our adventure in Wildstar when it releases on June 3.  If you didn't already know, pre-order you get in three days early.   I plan on putting together some detailed posts about various aspects of the game my wife and I experienced in beta and keep it going once the game goes live.

 For now, here are some pics form the various characters we've started:

My Esper looks like a badass shredding on her hoverboard.

Thanks for reading. 

-Gubjub