In the Books...

First, let me take this opportunity to say Happy New Year to everyone. 2008 saw a tremendous amount of change and turmoil for me, both personally and professionally, and I am not sad to wave bye-bye to it as it recedes in my rear-view like a bad, newsworthy highway accident. Y'know the kind I'm talking about; "Vanload of Nuns Crashes Into Amtrak Train Carrying Dahli Lama in Parking Lot of Renaissance Festival. Film at 11." However, a lot of good things did happen to me this year, and I wanted to share a few of them that are related to the main subject of this blog. So here are my top 5 most memorable moments of WoW in 2008. Feel free to blog yours, as well, or respond here:

5) 1st Shadowfang Keep. This was my first real instance, and the first time I was introduced to the idea of Tsuri as a dedicated tank. I hooked up with a few other people I'd been running around with (who are now my guildmates) and they invited me along. The old GM looked me over and said, "great. You tank." Having never done it before, I was just hoping I didn't make us wipe. In retrospect, I needn't have worried, as our priest kept up the heals, our 2 DPSers were awesome, and I was holding agro on everything I pulled. Halfway through, one of the party remarked, "Wow. This is a lot easier than it was yesterday. Wonder why?" The response was: /points at me. "Because we have agro-boy along." /embarrassed blushing with pride commences

4) 1st Flag Cap in WSG. So at 39, I stopped leveling for a bit to PvP for the Rune of Duty trinket and the Scout tabard, and found myself in WSG as the last run of the night. Now, I'm generally not very good at PvP, and seeing the group we had, my heart sank: Me, one lock, another warrior, one hunter, one shaman, and the rest Priests. No rogue, no druid. Ugh. The gates open and I immediately sprint for the flag while praying the group can hold everyone else at midfield. After looking over, I realized we had a chance as we outnumber the Alliance folks and they were sans rogue, also. I manage to get to the Silverwing flag room, grab the flag, and proceed to crawl back to base with the hunter running cover. Remarkably, our boys had pinned the alliance down and stalemated them midfield, so I was able to scoot past taking no damage and cap the flag. Me. A Tank. 'Dat's right!

3) Irresistible Force vs. Immovable Object. That same PvP night, I must have faced off against basically the same group of alliance guys 10 times. One of them, in particular. He must have been a fury-specced warrior, and I believe he was twinked a bit. In 2 hours, I faced him personally about 15 times on 6 different battlefields, and killed him dead a good 9-10 of them. He'd charge in and hit me once, and then could never get a decent chain off on me after that because my armor, block, and dodge ratings were ridiculously high (for 39), and I just stayed in tank mode the whole time spamming revenge/HS (hooray for glyphs). The last time we faced each other was in AB. He saw me coming down the road toward the blacksmith and, his frustration at this n00b whom could take far more damage than his pay grade would indicate coming out, screamed something incoherent in caps at me, to which I responded with a /roar at him. We both switched to arms, charged, and then proceeded to beat on one another without mercy, the ret/hamstring/HS/cleaves flying fast and furious. I managed to come out on top of that one with about 5% health. After we'd won, one of the other guys told me that he'd been in most of the battles that night and he and his buddy had intentionally stopped what they were doing to watch the last epic skirmish between the two of us. Too cool.

2) Hiding from zombies. So when the zombie plague event hit, I was in KC, MO for a card tournament and decided to log on after the fact to play, not knowing what was going down. One of my rl friends was also on, so we decided to go a-questing. We both stepped into Orgrimmar and right into a John Carpenter flick. There were zombies everywhere, eating everyone, and infecting the rest. I made the mistake of bending down to kill an infected roach, and suddenly had an urge for brains. The two of us ended up doing what all good heroes in zombie flicks do: We loaded up on weapons and ran for the Stonetalon mountains, where we stayed until Halloween. Definitely added a cool element of survival horror to the game, though.

1) Promotion to 2nd GM of Demonic Bane. This came at me out of the blue the other day. I logged in and Bob said "hey...check your status." Figuring I'd been busted back down to officer from general, I looked...and nearly choked on my blueberry white tea when I saw I'd been promoted to co-2nd. I asked Bob why he'd pick me, the newb, for the job. Honestly, I didn't get it. Still don't. He assured me it was because I'm active, trustworthy, and good at my role (that last bit I appreciate the sentiment, but doubt the veracity). I felt completely humbled, but very proud that of the 30+ people he could have chosen, I got the nod. That was easily the best WoW moment for me of 2008. Now...to figure out what a 2nd GM does....

So this has been a very good year all-in-all, and I can't wait to see what 2009 brings both in my regular life and WoW existence. I certainly hope everyone has a safe and pleasant New Year's. Drink some brews, watch Penn State annihilate USC, and don't get the cops called on you.