Done Holding Myself Back

Last night I went to the Trial of Champions (regular) with some guild mates. It was my first time there, and I had fun; though I’ll need some more practice with the jousting. I came away with my first two epic pieces of equipment: [Breastplate of the Imperial Joust] and [Legguards of Abandoned Fealty]

Since getting into the higher levels, I’ve been doing more instances and even got into the Alterac Valley battleground a few times. I’m starting to do dailies. I’m thinking about what gear I want to get down the line, instead of whatever happens along.

I’m starting to think differently about how I play the game. Up until I made this Death Knight, I was content with the day-in, day-out process of leveling my characters. I was an altoholic, jumping from one character to another after a week or two.

I don’t want to wander blindly through the game anymore, though. I want to have a main character and some alts, instead of a bunch of semi-main characters. I want to be able to do Heroic dungeons with my friends and guild mates. I want to run people through instances, instead of being run all the time. I want to see the Old World dungeons before the Cataclysm. I want to be able to participate in the holiday events like Brewfest, Winter Veil, etc., and not feel guilty about it because I should be leveling. I want to be able to go on those holiday raids and actually be able to use the loot I get. I want to know what people are talking about when they discuss boss encounters and raid strategies and dps/tank/whatever builds…

My time in WoW is limited, and I want to make as much of it as I can. I’m tired of spinning my wheels – which I’ve basically been doing for 4.5 years – while people that have only been playing for a couple months already have a character at the level cap.

In order to achieve this, I joined a casually serious raiding guild. What I mean by casually serious is that there are over 90 characters in the guild, many of which are level 80. There’s no set raiding schedule, but you can almost always find a group to run an instance or daily with you.

This is the first “raiding” guild I’ve belonged to. I’ve always just had small guilds that would serve more as a chat room than anything else. We can still goof around in the new guild (which is a huge plus) but we also have the resources to get our members epic gear and what-not.

Does this mean I’m moving from “casual” game play to being a raider? No. I’m still a casual player simply because of my schedule. I have a fairly rigid window of play time, and sometimes I have to miss events because of it. And to be honest, I don’t want to have anything more than a casual relationship with my World of Warcraft. I like being the one in control of deciding what to do on any given night. But it’s also nice to have the option to run a few instances if I feel adventurous. If a guild mate says “Anyone want to run a Heroic?” I’ll be able to say “Sure, I’ll come.”