My warcraft story

 Note - This is an abandoned script and done in notepad with no spell check. And I'm real bad at spelling.

My warcraft story

-wow was an escape, but not for the usual reasons
-played other mmos first, talk about those
-little brother asked me to install it
-guy from work recommended it
-mulgore was first zone

In order to tell the story on how I got into world of Warcraft, and then started making a living making videos on the game, I have to first talk about pokemon.

When I was in 4th grade, a friend of mine name Jose got Pokemon blue and let me borrow it. I had a gameboy color and only 1 game on it, so I was super excited to try out something new. So I go onto pokemon blue and just start exploring the world. I think my friend had already chosen a starter and only got to the first town, so it was pretty close to the start of the game. So I took my bulbasaur and pidgeys and started just grinding levels. It was my first time ever playing an rpg and I loved going up in levels and getting new abilities, plus the eveolutions were pretty sick too. I gave the game back to my friend a few times and he was happy that I had gotten so many levels for his pokemon, that he just kept letting me borrow it until I beat the game for him basically. When I finally got around to the eleite four, my venasaur was at like level 80 something and I swept through them all pretty easily on my first try. Because I had just out-leveled them all.

Then I just gave the game back to my friend and bought yellow version some years later and beat that as well. Then I bought all the new versions that came out and had a blast with gold and silver version. In those games, you got to get 16 badges and fight pokemon trainer Red at the end, whos pokemon were all around level 80 or something, which really rewarded my constant grinding. After I had beaten gold and silver, and collected all the pokemon I could, I reset the game and just played through them again and again. And then when crystal version came out, oh boy. I never touched gold or silver ever again and played the game probably more than I've played anything else.

All that to say, I fucking loved leveling. And just playing video games in general.

Fast forward to my highschool years. My mom was given a computer through like some charity or something so I had internet for the first time. I should probably also mention I was poor as fuck. I'm pretty sure the only reason I had a gameboy color when I was little was because my mom took it from the lost in found when she was working as a hotel maid or something. And the only way I was able to buy games was through a combination of saving birthday money and returning old games for store credit.

anyways, with internet for the first time, I thought I'd try out some browser based rgps. The first one I tried was maple story, and I actually have another video on this channel about why I stopped playing that. To summerize it though, Maple story was were I learned what cybering was and I thought it was really weird so I just logged out and never went back. Then I tried out Runescape, because everyone talked about how good it was since you could explore the world n shit. It was fun enough, but I got stuck in some building that required me to have a paid subscription in order to get past, so I just stopped playing since I didnt like the concept of having to pay for content in game when it boasted to be a free to play game. Plus I didnt have money to pay for it anyway. So I went to other browser based mmo's, and tried out a few and fell in love with one called Fallensword.

Fallensword, for a browser based rpg, had a ton of depth that I never saw in pokemon games. The game had no level cap, and was totally pay to win looking back on it. But I had no idea what that meant. All I know is I played the hell out of that game. You couldnt spend all day leveling mind you, you had to spend stamina to move, and stamina to fight. And fights were autodecided based on your stats, gear, and talent points. And you could have it set to auto-complte the fights so fights would last like a second. The strategy in that game was to just put all points into attack stats to finish the fight in 1 round, because every attack spent your stamina. And there were not a lot of quests in the game, I can only remember ever doing like 5 quests total I think, so all your leveling was done by grinding monsters. But monsters gave a lot of experience points so it wasnt really that bad, afterall the game was designed around that. But after like, half an hour of playing you'd usually run out of stamina for the day and that was it. You could check the auction house and work on your gear, and that was about it. But I would play that game all day every day. I dont even know how thinking back on it. They did update the game with stuff every now and again to add stuff to the game to do outside of leveling.

I also tried starting my own guild in the game, but that did not turn out well. Guilds had some really nice advantages in that game. For one, you got a guild bank which was great because backpack space was very limited. You could also have guild battle to control towers throughout the game to get exclusive guild wide buffs. And these buffs were good too, so top guilds were always fighting for them. I eventually just abandoned the guild I made and applied to join a top one that I fit the requirements of. And holy crap was it great being in a big guild like that. They had rules on the forum about how you had to log in and play everyday and use your stamina. And if you were going to not be able to log in for some time, you had to make a post on the guild forum stating how long you'll be gone and why. Guild space was limited, and the guild level was based on xp it got from guild memebers when they leveled up, and the guild had its own talents point which were super good to have. Plus the guild had all these rare weapons and items in the guild bank that were free for anyone to use. So I could just constantly borrow the best gear for my level and level up that much quicker with all these guild buffs as well as help out in guild battles. Plus the guild forums were pretty active, so I took part in discussions pretty regularly there, and thats were I learned about wow. The guild leader use to play wow and would talk about it occasionally. Well bash the game really, they would all just bad talk the game and talk about why they quit. So I did not have a good opinion of the game and had no inclination to ever play it.

Then about a year later I got my own job. There was a guy at work who played wow and when we worked together, he would tell me all about how great it was. But I was conflicted, I'd heard nothing but bad things about the game from my guild, but the things he was saying about the game had me just so interested. Apparently you could level up for as long as you wanted in the game! Imagine that. No wait, that cant be true., If you could level non stop then why would you ever stop playing the game? I thought. So I didn't really believe him.

Then one day, we got a free trial CD in the mail, and my little brother brought it to me and asked if I could install it on the PC so he could try it. And I was all like, "ok I guess" and begrudgingly installed wow.
After it was done installing, I tried it out to see what it was like, and made a tauren Hunter named Hirumared. Quick story about the name, I always named my characters in video games "Red" since I was a big fan of pokemon trainer Red in the gold and silver games, but Red was never an available name online, so I would just put the name of an anime character in front.

ok, so my first time in mulgore as a hunter was, pretty neat I guess. I had no idea what I was doing. I was a hunter, yet I had to attack things with my melee weapon, since I could only get in 1 shot before they got into my melee range. So I ran around the starter zone, wacking stuff with my weapon, trying to use the clunky ass ability called raptor strike, and it was pretty fun leveling up. It wasnt until I left the starting village and headed to Bloodhoof village that I fell in love with the game. You see, I was not use to doing quests, and tried leveling up by killing monsters, so it took me a long time to get out of the super beginning level 1-5 zone. And the run towards Bloodhoof village was just breathtaking. I have always been a big fan of open plains landscape, and thats all Mulgore was, just a giant ass open grassy plains. I explored literally everything in that zone, and holy crap my first time getting to thunder bluff was overwhelming. It was so big, and you needed to use an elevator to get to it. And holy crap at level 10 I got to tame a pet? And holy crap, you really can level forever, theres nothing stopping me from not playing. I dont think I would have kept playing if I had started in a different starting zone. Luckily I choose tauren.

I was so hooked, I dont think I've ever been as hooked on something as I was when I first started playing wow. I wasnt too into at first, but thats because I went in with a negative mind set. Once I left the cramped starting area and went out to explore the rest of the zone, that was it for me. I got to do my 2 favorite things, grind endlessly, and explore a gigantic open world of my favorite landscape.

My little brother didnt get to try the game for the first time until a few days later, because I just could not stop playing.

But I didnt really have to much time to play. At this point in my life, I was in highschool, played sports, and had a part time job. The job was cool because it allowed me to easily pay the subscription fee, but that took up half of my weekends, since I'd always work Saturday and Sunday. At school, we had morning practice for football at 6am. And the rule for morning practice were to be in the weight room lifting by 6am, or else you had to run after practice. So I had to wake up at 5 every morning for that stupid shit. Then practice after school lasted until 7 o-clock normally, so by time I got home, showered, and ate dinner, it would be around 8 or 9 o-clock. Luckily I was a smart kid so I never had homework, so for those 2 hours before I had to go to bed to wake up at 5 am the next day, I got to play wow. And those were the best 2 hours of the day.

Wow was my escape, but not for the normal reason people use video games as an escape. I was just so damn busy all the time, that it was nice to escape into a fantasy world for a few hours a day to relax. I also didnt talk to anyone while playing wow, I tried my best to be as anti-social as I could in the game to the point were I didnt even join a guild until I had been playing for like 6 months. I had to talk to people all day at school, at practice, and at work, And wow was my alone time. A place where I could finally take a break from people. And my goodness was it great.

If friends invited me to go out, I'd tell them, "no, I'm gonna play wow tonight" And eventually they'd stop asking. Is what I'd like to say but I'm pretty sure they thought I was joking and kept asking me all the time anyway until highschool ended. Looking back on it, they were pretty great friends. But at the time, I just thought it was mildly annoying since I gave them the same answer every time.

So I was a busy bee, enjoying wow for about 2 hours a day, and a little more on weekends when I got home from work, until my senior year of highschool. Thankfully, luckily, during practice one day, while we were doing hitting drills, I injured my shoulder. It wasnt to bad, I had hurt it a few months earlier, with what I thought might be nerve damage, but I could just grit through the pain. But this time around, the pain didnt go away after practice. So I went to the personal trainers before practice the next day and had them take a look at it, and they said I sprained my rotator joint or something, so I got to just ice it up and not practice.

And boy, I was the happiest kid in town. I left practice early that day and just went home and played wow. The next day I just left early as well, and it was the best. I have never been so happy in my life to be injured, bucause it meant i could go home during pracitce to play more wow. And sometimes I'd even just not show up to pracitce at all and just leave right after shool. It was literally the best. I couldnt do that everyday though, because the coach started to notice, and I had to keep coming to keep up appearances. So I would just talk to the other injured players about wow, No one else on the team played wow, but that didnt stop me from talking about it anyway. I have never been shy about my hobbies, and no one ever gave me any kind of shit about it. I also learned that people are not interested when you talk on and on about a hobby they have no interest in. So eventually I just talked about wow to them all the time to annoy them because I thought it was funny for some reason.

Then, as the end of the football season drew near, my shoulder was slowly getting better, but I milked the puppy for as long as possible. Our team usually lost in the first round of the playoffs, if I could just hold out until then I'd be fine I told myself. Well, to my dismay, that was the first time in 18 years that our team made it all the way to the finals. I was not able to fool the personal trainers that long, so I eventually had to go back to practice for the last week before the final game. I didnt play in the game, and practice was light so it wasnt that bad.

But after football was over I was finally free at last. I could play all the wow I wanted after school.
In the next semester, I had my schedule set so that I could go home during lunch, since I had the last 2 periods off. So I just drove home during lunch and skipped all the traffic and got to play so much wow it was ridiculous. Once I graduated highschool, I decided to take a year off before decided on weather or not I'd go to college, and I also cut all of my friends out of my life. I did not return their calls and just ignore them until they stopped talking to me so that I could just focus on playing wow 24/7. Well, at least until I had to go to work on the weekends anyway. I still had to pay for my subscription afterall.

So how did my year off from everything and only play wow for a year work out for me?

Well, that was THE best year of my life. It was better than I thought it could possibly be. I actually got to raid, since I could actually stick to a raid squedule since I wasnt crazy busy all the time anymore. I got to level up so many alts, I got to grind so many battlegrounds, I got super into the auction house and became super rich in game. Everything was just the best. You'd think I'd burn out on wow playing it that much BUT NOPE, that didnt happen until a few years later in mop. I was just crazy into the game. And then cataclysm came out around that time too so I had this giant new expansion to explore. I ended up raiding on 2 raid teams, one on my priest, and another on my hunter. when LFR came out, I had all 10 toons on my server at max level, with raid viable gear and specific professions to make the maximum amount of gold possible. You'd think if I would have burned out it would have been there, but not even close. I even organize my own rated battle ground teams as well as lead the raid group on my hunter. My guild was the biggest guild on the server, with the best pvpers, and the 2nd, and 3rd best raid teams. Of which, I healed on my priest in one, and Dps'ed on my hunter in the other. I also had friends in the guild who had the best raid team on the server and I would fill in for them sometimes on one of my many raid ready alts. My life was basically just playing wow.

Then later on, some stuff happened, I got kicked from my raid group on my hunter, yadidada, guild drama, a crazy psycho jealous boyfreind incident with an arena partner, and MOP comes around.

I wasnt really in the right state of mind to really go all out in Mop like I did in cataclysm, so I stopped leveling all my alts, only raided on 1 team, stopped palying the auction house, and only did the bare minimum amount of dailies to unlock patters and vendor items for raiding. It was in mists that I was basically only logging in to raid and for nothing else.

Then I got fired from my job, and something else personal happened, and I knew I was going to go to a negative place. In order to change my mindset and not allow myself to even have the chance to be depressed, I decided to try a couple of things that I've always wanted to do, but never got around to for one reason or another. One of the things was make youtube videos again. SO I made some fake guides for classes, modeled after pyrion Flaxes Dota2 fake guides, with the ms paint drawings and everything. But man are those videos so bad. But I also had a lot of fun making them, and they took so much time to make that it was keeping my mind occupied, so I just went on a video making binge, and started making my "history of X ability" series around this time, which actually got some decent views. I remember putting so much time and effort into researching and editing together the "history of paladin seals" video, and the posting it on reddit and then watching it hit the front page was such a good high. It was great to see something I put so much time and effort into getting some recognition. And I was finally turning my mind set around and getting to a better place. But then that night, Literally the day I uploaded the pally seal video, while I was on my run, I was attacked by 2 men with a gun. What a perfect event to round off a perfect year of just everything going wrong for me.

But rather than give up, I just went right back to making videos. And it wasnt even really a big deal. It should have been, that should have been the straw to break the camels back. How often do you have a whole bunch of shitty things happen to you one after the other, and then come back from staring death in the face? By just making more videos thats how! And deal with mild PTSD and flashbacks for a couple of months. But hey, its not like I needed to leave the house anyway, I didnt have a job anymore afterall.

So I just kept making videos, and about a year later I was finally making enough to live off of the income from my channel. I didnt think it would happen, it was totally a pipe dream I thought. I started too late afterall, it was already 2013, and there were so many bigger channels on youtube that there was no way I would get noticed. Well it turns out that wasnt true, and I did get noticed.

As for now, well I'm too busy making videos all the time to play the game as much as I use too. I still play a lot more than just logging in to raid, but no where near the levels of when I use to no-life the game.

Do I regret cutting all my friends out of my life to play wow after highschool? Yah a little bit. I do and I dont. For one, that was the best year of my life and I cant help but look back on that time with fondness.And I could have never had that year unlessI did what I did. And two, I could always just re-connect with them later on in life if I want, which I did do with a couple. But I also made so many new friends through wow and youtube that Its not really a big concern of mine. Plus highschool was like 6 or 7 years ago now(9 years now), so all of them are adults with jobs and kids and responsibilities. God I feel old.