WoW Classic Countdown

Death Knights. I kinda miss you.

For the past few weeks, I've had a bit of nostalgia.  That itch in the back of your head.  The urge to go replay some long forgotten content of an old title.  And that title is World of Warcraft.

But not today's WoW.  I'm truly looking forward to WoW Classic.  There are parts of the game that I really want to replay that haven't been available since Cata hit, and I want the ability to start fresh on a new server without the modern trappings and niceties attached to my account.  I really want to just kind of wipe the workbench clean and start fresh.

It struck me that so much time has passed that WoW launched in a very different era.  So let's start by telling a few of the good ol' days stories.




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Part I - Here's how we got started.

I can't talk about WoW without also talking about EVE Online.  The two games were the biggest time wasters of my adult life, and as I got worn out on one title I'd alternate to the other.  So, it's no surprise that when WoW originally launched in 2004, I was up to my neck in EVE Online.

I was a fan of Blizzard in general, but had gravitated more to the Starcraft and Diablo franchises and hadn't been incredibly enamored with Warcraft III.  While WoW was under development, I vaguely knew about it, but I can't say I was heavily anticipating it.  The whole MMO scene was still new, new game titles were flying out all the time, and EVE had my full attention.

So I was totally prepared to dismiss WoW when it launched.  I remember EVE Corporation (Guild) members logging into EVE to hype WoW and try to convince us to come over, but most of us said 'meh' and got back to mining and building and doing spaceship things.

Months passed.  Around March of 2005, my EVE enthusiasm was on a downtick, and out of curiosity started looking at WoW.  On a whim, I bought an install box at Circuit City (in the era when you still bought software at a store and before Circuit City went bankrupt).

I can't say he was my first character (I might have had a priest first, maybe) but I rolled an Undead Warrior named Dodd and started killing my way through Tirisfal Glades.

Mrs. Zoxe was interested, and we setup an account for her on a 30 day buddy code that came in my box.  I know that we rolled a few characters to try a few different races and classes, and eventually she had a Gnome Rogue named Bo on a server and I rolled a Gnome Warlock named Iz and away went across the snowy dwarven starting area.

But alas, it was not meant to be.  See, WoW had a flaw at the time that allowed characters to be created even if the name was already in use.  A few days later, Mrs. Zoxe logged in to find that her beloved Bo had been deleted after the patch.  Mostly disgusted, she rolled a new character back on Horde, landed as a Tauren Warrior (which I'll call Oni), and started playing.

Not wanting to be left behind, I rolled an Orc warrior, and while naming him decided that I wanted a single syllable name with a Z or an X in it and in a fit of stupendous glory decided to use both letters.  Thus my current online persona - Zoxe - was born.

>> Milestone moment; this is what cemented us as a Horde household.

Zoxe became my main character, and would be my main through Classic, TBC, Wrath, and Cata.  Oh sure, I dabbled in all kinds of alts, but playing Zoxe was always like coming back home.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Zoxe and Oni started separately but quickly joined forces and (for the most part) leveled together.  We joined a guild named  <Infinite Darkness> that ironically had a more finite lifespan than the name suggested.   Members of that guild merged with <Go Horde or go Home> (the capitalization error always bothered me) and I eventually became an Officer for them.

Anyway, that's the story of how Zoxe was born.