After a 3ish year break and brainwashing myself into thinking WoW was a better game I finally came back to my senses. I was leading my guild in WoW along with a few of my officers from back in EQ and people kept talking how great the raids were getting in WoW. I kept repeatedly saying "You think 10 and 32 ICC is great... you will never know how great it really is to raid until you take 72 people into PoTime B for the first time or when you have to encourage your guild to get drunk together as often as possible so they don't get sodomized by the twins due to not having high enough alc tolerance!" Most of us would laugh about it and go on and keep playing a mediocre easymode game for the masses. Then real life happened and I had to stop playing for a few months during football season because I have two boys playing little league and a daughter cheering both for football and competitively and well, they are so much more important.
To be fair to my WoW guild (Azeroth Secret Society or A.S.S. for short) I passed leadership on to my second in command and told them to replace me (main tank) and my wife (best dps) while we were gone. Within a few weeks after we left 3 or 4 other members left and were replaced with new people. When their football season ended I realized that I could go back to WoW and play with a guild that was half friends and half strangers at this point, or I could fire up EQ and dink around a month or two just to see how much things had changed. EQ won!
I got back in the game and was going through the bank bags of all my old alts and the guild bank (because my guild had actually survived and I was still one of the 3 leaders) and kept having all these memories flood my head of the good times we had in EQ. About 2 days later I went ahead and bought HoT. I was gonna spring for the collectors but my wife slapped my hand and made me settle for regular. *grumble grumble* The best part of my come back story... when my former EQ officers who were also WoW officers found out I came back so did they. So we have 4 of my original 7 officers back together playing once more and so far we are having a blast!
We heard rumors of a time locked progression server opening after the first of the year sometime, then actually confirmed it by dev posts on live the last few days and we were thrilled. In our time off we missed a lot of content, and never finished some we were working on before we left. Now we can start from scratch and re-live all of it and hopefully make new friends along the way. They were all discussing what races and classes they would be rolling up on day 1... it got to my turn and I didn't have to think twice. Barbarian Shaman. Like there would be another choice? (Even though before I quit I had temporarily shelved my shaman to play my warrior due to a lack of tanks in the guild)
Now the sad part to my tale. What has happened to all the communities?!?! Spirit Realm was the very first forum I looked back up upon my return. I have been coming here daily (well 3 or 4 times a day) for the past week or so. I have also been visiting Alla's, Steel Warrior, and SoE live. I was very happy to see some of the familiar cornerstones of the shaman community still holding this place up. WoW never had the quality of "veterans" like EQ has. People like Brog, Tordail, and the one and only ShammyKnight still being here validates my decision to return, but it is almost like being in a graveyard looking at the living legends and wondering what killed off the rest of the masses. I have actually been running into people regularly in the game and actually went to a mid level zone last knight where we had to check 3 different camps before we found one open, so I know there are people still out there. Sure, the population isn't what it once was but all the great forum communities are more barren than the game! This is truly sad for me.
At any rate, I am back and glad to see some familiar faces and looking forward to meeting some new ones. This has always been the best community out there. I am determined to start a personal crusade in the game and start directing every shaman, pally, or generally good person I meet to the forums once again. I will also be posting more frequently again myself begging advice soon. I had been playing a lowbie to knock the rust off but fired up the shaman again for the first time last night. Some of it came back swiftly to me, and root rotting was still second nature soloing... but there is a lot of stuff I am missing now or that has changed since I left. I have been reading posts as I can, but it seems a lot os outdated other than just gear and spell lists. Hopefully I won't pester you all too much.
![Wink ;-)](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)