The End of the World (of Warcraft), Part One
I've been playing World of Warcraft more or less consistently for the last fourteen years. That's an uncomfortably long time to dedicate to anything so ephemeral, but as I come to realize that my time with the game is finally, finally, at a legitimate end, I've spent the last few nights thinking about just how I got here.
Consider this the first part of a three-post memoir about my time in the World of Warcraft: from Pancakes to betrayals, heartbreak, and some level of personal growth.
Everything Before Pancakes
It's December 25th, 2004, and I'm twelve years old.
I'd been playing EverQuest on my dad's account for probably a year, maybe more, rolling through the Swamp of No Hope with my Iksar Monk and having a blast. Despite a litany of issues brought on by young age and the limitations of an early MMO interface, there was something entrancing about the idea of this tremendous world, full of places I couldn't go because they were just too high-leveled, brimming with people yelling about Fippy Darkpaw and Kurn's Tower. My parents were in a guild of their own, raiding the realms of gods and demons, and having that connected experience was just fascinating. It seemed like an entirely unique experience, coming from someone whose closest experience was Phantasy Star Online.
I received a copy of World of Warcraft for Christmas, and after reading exhaustive preview coverage and spending some time in the original beta, I dove in deep, hungry for that communal experience of my own. Stealing a name from a GUComics ogre and deciding I liked the big cow man, Toast Witjam sprang into existence, and I was smitten.
To be frank, at the time I didn't expect to have relationships built within the framework of that game, to know and grow up alongside people across the country. If you'd told a twelve-year-old Dylan that he'd meet people at that age who he'd still keep in touch with and speak with daily, fourteen(!) years later, I don't think he would've believed you.
It's August 20th, 2005, and I'm thirteen years old.
I got my taste for raiding with Visions of Anarchy, a guild I'd applied to a few months before. My first proper guild, Somnio Abomino, had just been gutted by a handful of people leaving it in desire of raids of their own. I went from nobody to officer in the span of a day, watching a handful of SA's most critical members leaving the guild in the middle of a Scholomance run. The guild leader, Thunderhoof, a name I legitimately should not remember thirteen years later, promoted me to Officer status and asked me if I wanted to help rebuild the guild. I don't remember how I responded, but I had already made plans to move up in the world.
I'd joined a few dungeons with VoA members, and may have raided with them once or twice before properly applying: I remember making explicit mention of my age (VoA was a "mature" guild, and looked for players of like mind), but promising I was "mature for my age." This was, like most things a twelve year old would say, categorically horseshit. I decided I wanted to tank, because it seemed like a good way to prove myself and be valued, and proceeded to endure the grueling gauntlet of being one of five or six tanks all working under the tutelage of Margrimm, an orc warrior that knew what he was talking about and was happy to help his squad get up to his level through tanking workshops held in the depths of Scholomance. "You're gonna fight me for aggro, and you win by keeping it."
I dedicated myself to that raiding crew in ways only a child with an unbelievable amount of free time could. My parents let me raid in VoA consistently - a decision they have admitted regret for, many years later - and I accrued accolade and admonishment alike from my team members. I remember bidding on the Leggings of Might after telling Natheend I wouldn't, and giving a sheepish apology as he cursed me out in private tells. There was a night where I unintentionally left my mic hot in our Ventrilo server and belted a good fifteen seconds of whatever song I'd been listening to at the time, wondering why the entire raid was typing my name out. I banked DKP for months, hoping to see the fabled Bindings of the Windseeker drop in one of our raids. When they finally did, there were exactly two bids: Pelicangchi with 5 points (our minimum), and me, with 500. I'd go on to hold the third Thunderfury on our server, working alongside Boundbyglory, the tank who'd originally left Somnio Abomino to help form Unified and the tank who held the second, just a few days before me.
None of these moments are as important as the founding of the Powers of Dragonblight.
It's...probably some time in October, 2005.
Cariono, Askamba, Galewalker and myself comprised the initial Powers of Dragonblight, which started as nothing more than a dumb private chat channel we made up to predict what loot was going to drop on a given night, because we'd gotten lucky a few times with our guesses. That was the whole impetus, but as time went on, and we added more members to our elite, secret roster...let's take a quick side-bar and see if I can remember all of them.
Jotaro, 4c, Nih/Daggoth, Jolah, Hetril, Gethcarn, Gusty, Nightingale, Gonzoie, Sorhyn, Kazgrax, Juggas. I'm pretty sure that's all of them.
Anyway: as time went on, and we added more members over the years, that channel became more important than the guilds themselves. It was a safe haven to snark on poor performers, commit to awful, ridiculous bits, and engage in some of the funniest banter a person only finds with the family they choose. As bold and open as we were with our predictions and the literal labeling of our group as "the Powers," only one person ever actually figured out our channel name and tried to infiltrate it apart from our proper induction ceremonies: a series of hypothetical scenario questions, culminating in a needlessly obscure lore-based question. It was dumb fun, but we were a family (or, arguably, an extremely snooty clique) within whatever guild we went to.
It's July 13th, 2007. I'm fifteen and frustrated.
Visions of Anarchy was not in a good place. The Burning Crusade was wreaking havoc on our raiding roster, and people were - understandably - starting to get frustrated. Jolah had already jumped ship to the server's leading Horde guild, The OCK, and had been poking at some of us to take the plunge as well. It was a tense time in VoA, and I think there were lots of people who knew where things were going. I was more than a little distraught: VoA had been my home for two years, and the idea of leaving a ton of people I knew and cared about for the chance at raiding bigger and better content was...a lot to take in. In the end, we took the plunge. Hetril left the guild, and I chased after him in the context of a text goof. I remember Margrimm's message, asking if we were serious about the decision, and my saddened affirmative reply. I'd left the nest that I'd worked so long to be a crucial part of.
In hindsight, leaving Visions of Anarchy was the most important decision I could've made in my Warcraft career. Without it, there would've been no stint in The OCK. Without a stint in the OCK, largely sitting outside the raids because I was an undergeared scrub they didn't want to bring to Kael'thas, I wouldn't have taken a three month break and returned to the game guildless.
Without that break, there probably never would've been Pancakes.
It's March 23rd, 2008. I've made a decision.
The details are a little fuzzy these days, but I want to say it played out like this.
I'd been back in the game for a while now, joining a guild with 4c/Forcystus run by - if memory serves? - her sort-of-boyfriend at the time. Envision was pretty casual, working with other guilds as part of the Horde Small Guild Alliance. Rather than uniting together under one needlessly large banner, the HSGA was a coalition of probably five or six different groups of folks who couldn't field 25-man raids of their own. It worked, for the most part? At least, it did until several of those groups blew up for one reason or another.
One of those groups was Dead Man's Party, run by a weird, bearded man named Jotaro. He'd probably tell the story with more accuracy and detail, but his guild was stabbed in the back by a nightmare of a man and several members of what was left behind were now out of a way to raid. I think Envision also managed to blow up around that same time, the guild leader at the time deciding he didn't want to lead a guild and just disbanding it.
So, as any reasonable pair of individuals would do, Jotaro and I said, "what if we just made our own guild?" I'd played with Jot's group before, and he was familiar with some of the people I'd be bringing to the table. We all sort of knew each other through the server's unofficial forums, Dramablight hosting an astonishing amount of content that would never have flown on the official Warcraft site.
<Hookers with Pancakes> formed on March 18th, 2008. We lasted...about four days before we had to rename ourselves. It was never a name I expected to keep for very long, but we settled on <with Pancakes> after the report came in, if for no other reason than it synergized well with my name. "Toast <with Pancakes>;" it works, right? March 23rd became our new birthday, and Dragonblight had a new gaggle of idiots to deal with. We had our first kill on April 8th, bolstered by members from another guild, the echoes of the Horde Small Guild Alliance still ringing in the halls of Gruul's Lair. Posting with pride on our website, I proudly proclaimed that we were on a path to success. There was a lot of strife left to sort out, but we hadn't realized that yet.
Jotaro and I went back and forth posting updates from our raids, and it was always a rush of adrenaline to be able to say, "hey, we get to post a new thing! We killed a new boss!" It felt good to have a roster that we'd built together, all working towards a common goal for once. I always ended those posts with an implication that we'd have more to talk about before too long, and that's where I'll leave it tonight.
