Starting Anew vs. Starting Over

As referenced in my last entry, It has been quite some time since I walked this path.  There was a time when I posted fairly regularly, and at least checked and replied to comments when that’s all I had the time to do.  After writing again yesterday, it became apparent to me that I missed having an outlet to write, I’m very, very rusty at it and there’s quite a lot to do around here before I can really get to it.  I’m working on that last point at the moment, but it seems at a snail’s pace.  At least I’m not starting from scratch; I can start fresh from where I left off, more or less.

In many ways, that’s exactly what it was like a few months ago when I started playing again.  It wasn’t hard to pick WoW back up, but there was some housekeeping and catching up that needed to be done.  If you’re interested in that small journey, read on…

My first order of business was simple:  create a new character on Lightbringer to join my friends.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to play past the scope of a single month time card, so paying to transfer a character first was out of the question.  In this process, Samtime, the Pandaren Monk, was created.

I really enjoyed the look and feel of the Pandaren starting zone and spent a few days of leveling before hitting level 30 and setting up dual spec as a DPS / Tank.  I really enjoyed tanking on the Monk, and at that point I knew that I would be playing longer than a month.  I began to work out how to make Lightbringer a permanent home for a few of my other toons.

I had five 85s on two different servers with the server transfer my guild did in Cataclysm, and I wasn’t going to pay to transfer all of them, so I had to take the time to go through the banks and bags of each character and load up the toon I was going to transfer with all I could.  I transferred my Paladin first, as she was the only 85 on one of the servers, and began to level through the Mists content.

I almost managed to get her to 90 before the pre-patch hit, stopping a quarter level short the night before the patch.  I began the Timeless Isle grind and continued to level my Monk.  Around this time, Blizzard had a deal on server transfers.  I talked to the Mrs. and had her decide which two of her characters she would like to transfer, even though I knew it would probably be a while before she actually had some time to play (which really hasn’t happened yet).  Going through the banks of all of our alts and our personal guild bank, we loaded her two toons and my Rogue up and sent them to Lightbringer.

It look me all of a weekend to level Sam once he was on the new server.  I ground out professions and Timeless Isle and did what I could to get him ready to go once WoD hit.  I ran all of Ogrimmar LFR a few times, and even took a guild up on an offer to carry me through Mythic Garrosh for the BoA Dagger.  I did more of the same on Samtime, who I also managed to level to 90 before WoD.

Once the expansion hit I was on fairly equal footing with everyone else I was playing with and that brings me to where I am today.  I’ve leveled the three previously mentioned characters to 100, delved fairly deep into pet battles, and am halfway through progression raiding in Blackrock with my friends.  I’ve got a freshly leveled 85 Warlock waiting on the Mrs. to have enough time to play, and the future looks pretty bright.  I can’t wait to experience it and write about it.  Hopefully I’ll cross paths with a few of you along the way.

– Sam