Dredging the Past

I recently decided to fix my WoW Insider account and in doing so found my entire post history. I decided to post a selection of them that I thought were prescient or just plain wrong.

June 29, 2009 - "[1.Local]: Dumber than a box of nails"

"[W]ho cares if Reynolds thinks gaming is a waste of time? I think watching reality shows is a waste of time, and I make fun of those who do. He just has a different viewpoint on things.
And he's f*cking Scarlett Johansson, so I really don't imagine he gives a damn what anyone else thinks about him."

And then she dumped him. Poor bastard.
July 1, 2009 - "Breakfast Topic: Would you change your faction?"

"I can almost guarantee if you show up as a Gnome in Orgrimmar you'll probably never get a group for anything."

July 8, 2009 - "Changes in Patch 3.2 PTR build 10072"

"There's no way in hell that "60 seconds" isn't a placeholder for Earth, Wind, & Fire. You would either need three tanks (one for Ema's adds, one to tank Ema and Arch, and one to tank Ema and Arch during Arch's tank grab) or two incredibly geared tanks (to tank Arch+Ema adds normally, and tank everything during a tank grab). You'd have to split Ema and Arch to prevent your Arch+adds tank from dying during a nova, but then you have the possibility of a grab and a nova overlapping which would be nearly impossible to heal through, even considering cooldowns. And then with an overcharge right after... 

And that's not even including Koralon. Yeah, I'm calling placeholder."

Not a placeholder at all, apparently, and not as impossible as I'd thought.

October 3, 2009 - "Breakfast topic: Who inspired you to play what?"

"Durto, gnome warrior of The Awakening on Hellscream Alliance inspired me to roll a warrior.
I met him and his girlfriend (a priest) at level 42 in Zul'Farrak a few days after transferring my druid to Hellscream. They were leveling new characters, both having 60s already, and I was on my way to my first 60. 

Durto was the one who pushed me to tank as a bear all the way back in vanilla - something that most people would have just abandoned. But he thought I had what it took and I will never forget the first time he put on DPS gear and coached me through tanking Stratholme. That was the pivotal moment in my WoW career. 

Now my raiding main is a tauren warrior. He and I have gone our separate WoW ways (for now) but I'll never forget the impact he had on me."

Still true to this day.

October 21, 2009 - "Shifting Perspectives: The disappearance of the bear, part 3"

"I played a feral tank during vanilla. Yes, vanilla. The first time I tanked Stratholme was a revelation to me and I have been playing a tank for most of my WoW career since.

When Wrath launched, however, I rerolled a DK, fully intending to go all out on him being my new main. I wasn't a casual DK reroller - I was seventh on my server to hit 80, I had farmed nearly all the stuff for leveling quickly, and I had mapped my route nearly quest for quest. I hit 80, he was my main for months. I leveled my druid on the side, hit 80, and did very little with him - gearing was too daunting for bear in the face of rogue gear and plate tank ring/neck/trinket gear being everything I needed. Strangely, I never built a tank set for my DK.

I rerolled a warrior of the opposite faction in January this year to play on a friend's server. He became my new main, mainly as arms but doing a lot of tanking as well. I found the tanking style familiar but refreshing. But then the urge to druid returned in force.

My druid is now my best-geared character, despite having only really played him at 80 for the last 2 months or so. Much of that is due to badge gear.

The strangest thing, though, is how many healers I have had tell me they were bored when I druid tank. I have tanked entire heroics with a ret pally healing mostly with Art of War procs. I tell healers not to worry about healing me during particularly healing intensive fights such as third phase Black Knight. I have tanked every single whelp in Ony25 solo and led DPS for the entire fight while doing it. To be honest, those complaining about bear AOE threat have clearly never played with a bear who knows where his swipe button is.

Bear tanking is in a better place than it has EVER been - including the period during BC where bears were ridiculously OP. I love bear and I honestly think it will be quite some time before I stop doing it on a regular basis. I've stared at the rear of a bear for probably around 100 days of my life now, and I'm still not sick of it."

My, how things changed. I did get sick of it late in Wrath, and now I've gone from  bear to cat to moonkin to resto since then.

November 5, 2009 - "Patch 3.3 PTR - Sound files may reveal fate of the Lich King"

"From a writing perspective, putting either a) someone intimately familiar with undeath already or b) someone with the holy power to withstand the corruption of undeath makes for a much more interesting story than a shamanistic orc taking over the helm of the Lich King. My votes go out, in order of likelihood, to 1- Tirion Fordring, 2- Darion Mograine, 3- Sylvanas. Sylvanas seems least likely because of her prominence as a leader in the Horde, but at the same time Blizzard has pretty well shown that they aren't averse to changing things up, so who knows."

I was on the right track, but I didn't guess Bolvar. Not exactly holy power, just sheer badassery.

April 15, 2010 - "Celestial Steed mount and Lil' XT pet to be sold on the Blizzard store"

"I'm really not sure how comfortable I am with Blizz moving to put something useful ingame for real money. I know people whined about moving to micro-transactions when the pets came out, but this seems like a much larger step to me, potentially saving a player the cost of an epic mount.

Not that it's much, but it's something.

That said, if I have the cash I'll probably buy the damn thing because I'm a mount whore."

I have since changed my mind about mounts for cash, but I was sure as hell right about my buying store mounts!

July 31, 2010 - "The Maelstrom is probably epic enough for you now"

"I've been to Un'goro Crater in the proper level range during vanilla, those devilsaurs ARE ninjas."

That was in response to someone saying that all that was missing from the Maelstrom were ninjas after they made the metal-forsaken-riding-dinosaur-riding-laser-shark.

Well, that's about all I've got. It's just always interesting to look back on your history, especially in the internet age where things you say are sometimes very random.

-Rush