so long, asx

So a little more than two and a half years ago, I picked up World of Warcraft to see what all the fuss amongst friends was about. I solo’d my holy pally Asx (with a little help from Axe and Tierney) for the first couple months, and avoided joining a guild, mostly because of experiences with a lot of idiocy within clans as a server admin for Q2. I eventually hooked up with the great group of people who make up The Ancient Sun and continued leveling, participating in 5-mans with the deadsquid crew and guildies, and occasionally raiding 25-man content with the rest of the guild.

I was an ok healing pally, and enjoyed the social aspect of the game (a lot more than the game itself), playing with a bunch of friends I didn’t really see that much in person for a bunch of reasons. TAS had a great core, and we even managed to have a couple meet and greets in Vancouver and here in Ottawa. I stopped playing for a while, left the guild, and eventually came back to play BC, level my toon, and re-join TAS.

Unfortunately, it was never really the same. I had lost my regular spot in our weekly 5-mans, everyone had progressed pretty far ahead of me gear-wise (which is a killer in higher level dungeons), and there had been enough turnover in the guild that I didn’t know nearly as many folks any more, and some of the folks I played a lot with were either gone or on very different scheds than I.

Progressing was more of a chore, and it was really hard to get into any of the guild runs with a prot pally (we had great tanks and off-tanks already, and if you’ve ever played a prot pally, you know it hits like pasta from a food court, which limited my usefulness to a raid group that was tanked up). PUGs were ok, but they really weren’t the same as playing with people I knew. I hung on for a little while longer, and stopped playing again at the end of October. Since then, I’ve had no desire to play, and realized recently I was really done with the game.

So, yesterday I gave Asx away to someone with family ties to the guild, and I hope he gets put to good use. To Axe and everyone in the Deadsquid crüe, a huge thanks for the weekly runs, group questing, ad-hoc dungeon runs, and general silliness; it was an awful lot of fun. To the summer of ’06 crüe, thanks for convincing me on a regular basis that statying up ’til 4am running dungeons on a school night was a good idea, you bastards. To the officer cadre of TAS – in particular Axeom, Ahms, TheMagicOne, Raxin, and Dagle – thanks for your patience, willingness to let everyone learn, and management of the guild and guild events; I know it ain’t easy. Finally, thanks to Anat for always giving the Horde the benefit of the doubt, and all the entertainment for the rest of us that brought through your repeated deaths. 🙂

So, so long Asx and World of Warcraft. It was fun, but it’s over 🙂