How all my WoW dreams came true.

(As a quick prefix to this post, I'd like to note that I am aware that a new patch came out yesterday, and I'd love to comment on it, but every single change for warlocks that I am in a position to comment intelligently on...didn't work. My pet still has the same amount of HP, I can't seem to summon anyone, etc. So, I'll save that post for (hopefully) a few days from now when they fix these issues.)

I am a dark person. I'm not a sad person, or a depressed person, nor am I a fan of bad poetry, and hackneyed vampire books; but I am dark. I love old gothic churches, I love dark rooms, I love the color black, and if you play D&D with me you'll note that I almost never run a campaign without undead of some kind in it. For awhile I kinda wondered if I would grow out of it, but honestly I don't want to. Gothic aesthetics appeal to me on a very fundamental level, and I embrace that.

So, as you can imagine, my first instinct when I started playing WoW was to roll an undead. However, the server I was rolling on was my friend's alliance server, so after a bit of deliberation I settled on human. I like dwarfs a bit better, but I was really in the mood for trying out this 'warlock' thing, so human it was.

At some point while I was leveling away on my warlock, some 40+ hordie rode past me, on the most glorious mount I had ever seen. The horns seemed a bit much, but the skeletal frame, the wicked grin, the tasteful cloak draped over the bones--I had to have it. I resolved that no matter what, this mount would be mine when I was high enough level to attain a steed of my own. You can imagine that I was crushed when I learned that this glorious mode of transportation was available only to the horde.

Sometime after that, I had become content with the fact that I was in possession of the second coolest mount in the game. I mean, come on, my horse is on fire. Beat that, non-warlocks! (Warlock mount > Deathknight mount by the way.)

Then I got a little higher in level, and I--predictably--became absolutely engrossed both in the Plaguelands, and in the three instances that inhabited them. Each of the three was magical to me. Scholomance is still, in my opinion, the single greatest five man instance in the game. Naxx was this grand unattainable, something I always hoped I'd be able to venture into, and something I always regretted never being able to conquer in its level 60 fourty-man incarnation. And stratholme...

...Stratholme renewed my hopes that I would someday get my hands on the reigns of that most glorious of mounts.

That was nearly two years ago now. For almost that long I've farmed, and I've farmed. First in five man groups, then later, in groups of two. I was one of the few clothies I knew who could easily solo the place at 70--more due to memorization of the rout than any skill. And by level 80 I had my runs down to roughly 16 minutes.

And then, just the other day...



...all my dreams came true.


Oh...uh, hey Mor'zul. Sooo...I've got a better mount now. But man, thanks for all that help back in the day, that was really cool of you!

...awkwaaaard... >.>

I won't deny that every time I see another person with it, I cringe a little, thinking of how hard I worked for it, and how easy the recent patch made it. But honestly, I'm just happy to finally have an undead steed to call my own.

I think I'll name him 'Checkers.'