My “Goofing-off” toon in World of Warcraft is a Dwarven Hunter named Mossler. (WoW Armory seems broken right now.) How that happened is a bit convoluted.
After having played various Horde player characters, aka “toons”, during the original Open Beta of WoW (November 8th 2004), I opted to avoid playing the game on release, because workload and personal worry about addiction factor. I was right on both counts, but almost *all* my colleagues had transitioned from Final Fantasy XI Online to WoW and so I was surrounded by discussions all day. The topic was simply unavoidable.
Of course that made me want to play, to be involved, but the game was sold out. Ratchet up 2+ months and I finally managed to snag access. By this time, my entourage had already maxed their toons to 60 and were actively raiding Molten Core. So I asked what I should play to have a productive future in the guild, and was told “we *need* Warriors!”
I began to level a Tauren Warrior, Mulberry, and realized how hard it was to be playing pretty much solo on a PvP server when everyone else was doing something together. And being “ganked” repeatedly left me feeling like crap, loosing time and patience. Just about then, the pace at work picked up and I ended up taking a break.
Upon my return, quite a few weeks later, I discovered that my guild had gone and cleaned out the non-active players, like me. I could not blame them, but it left me in a lurch. So I tried the one class I hadn’t even played in Beta: the Warlock.
My Forsaken Warlock changed my view about the game. Maybe it was the slightly sinister and tragic point-of-view of the Forsaken, maybe the vengeful nature of the Warlock, or the silly and yet satisfying pets. I excelled at the game suddenly (cries of “Nerf ‘Locks!” heard to be sure) and my playing style in Pickup Groups (PUGs) got me into a nice homey guild. I started to really enjoy playing with total strangers, questing in groups, helping each other, running “security” on much lower level players, etc…
And then my out-of-town buddy Mike came for a visit. His brief contact with the game can be summed up as: “It was glorious!” I laughed, since all Mike saw was a brief snapshot of the recurring raid Alliance players submit onto The Crossroads. Funny thing is, I had made him an Orc Shaman to try … foreshadowing the future.
Then I hatched an evil plan: place a seed of corruption into Mike and have it infect my other friends. (Game related puns are unavoidable)
That said, convincing friends who have never payed a monthly recurring cost for a game to bite is hard. So I did what all good evildoer does: I made the first hit free. My judicious promise to give anyone who tried the game a free Game Card worked. Indeed, I spread many such cards along.
The actual details of what faction and what server type to play on came to me easily: it would be Alliance, since I knew none of their quests and so it would be fresh even for me, and Roleplaying server to satisfy the less “stress inducing” introduction to all my friends. My cup overuneth from being ganked. The server choice came easily too, a new RP server came online: Kirin Tor.
Although I planned to shepherd some choices among my friends about what to play, I finally only indicated that it would be cool to play Dwarves. That kernel of idea netted a female Dwarven Paladin (unheard of! shocking!), a male Dwarven Paladin, a male Dwarven Warrior, a female Dwarven Rogue, a male Gnome Mage and somehow a female Human Paladin from far-off Stormwind. I had many ideas of what to play, but I made the conscious choice of adding some long range firepower to the existing mix, so I picked my 2nd favorite hunter race: Dwarf.
Oh, those heady days. Right away, folks wanted to form a guild, and so I asked and received help from my workside colleagues who made temporary toons on Kirin Tor for the needed signatures. I already knew a little about the in-game Dwarven history and locales in proposing to name the guild: Brewnall Curling Club.
