Today is a special day for about nine million people.
January 16 marks the one-year anniversary of the release of “The Burning Crusade,” the long-awaited expansion to “The World of Warcraft.” I started playing “WoW” in January 2006 after witnessing my boyfriend sit at his laptop for hours and hours, and I’d make fun of him for it… Then one day I tried it, and I was hooked (it’s similar to Corpsegrinder’s story — only I’m not the singer of a death metal band).
So during the summer of 2006, I spent much of my time (much more than I’d like to admit), playing a Night Elf Druid. But after nine months of spending all of my free time playing my Druid and a slew of other characters, I decided to stop. Why? I chose life — “life” meaning other games that I was neglecting.
In 2007, they got me back. When “The Burning Crusade” came out on January 16 of last year, I couldn’t resist. A whole new continent? Flying mounts? New races? I had to experience all of this stuff firsthand. So what follows is my year in Outland, as seen through a few randomly taken screenshots I captured while playing throughout the year (I wasn’t planning on writing this feature back then).
JANUARY
I was at Level 55 when I took a hiatus from “WoW,” so I needed to make my way to Level 58 in order to enter Outland through the Dark Portal (seen above). That meant finally finishing old quests and killing everything in sight. I think this particular screen is of my character clapping for joy because my boyfriend’s character leveled to 58.
A lot of people see the beginning of a new year as a chance to start over, make themselves better, and resolve to do certain things throughout the new year. One might call these plans “resolutions” if people could actually stick to them.
I made some people angry this year. Let’s reflect on that.
UPDATE: For those interested in comparing scores, I’ve started a new group called on the Desktop Tower Defense” leaderboards called “GOTY” I’ll post any new scores there.