5 of my top gaming memories

1) By fire be purged!

Back in vanilla WOW my guild was progressing through Molten Core, we had a semi stable guild with a good core of players. Our main tank at the time had some pretty bad connection issues and it wasn't uncommon for him to disconnect for 5-10 minutes at a time. 

One night we were progressing hard on Raggy and he disconnected, we gave him the usual 10 minutes and there were no signs of him coming back. At the time we didn't have the best of gear and all our other warriors were arms/fury spec. This one guy steps up to the plate and equips his tank gear, his health pool goes down. It wasn't looking like the most promising of situations! One particular item of his I remember was his shield, it was a wooden plank from ZG with a snake in the middle of it, the caster version. 

The count down starts, we all brace ourselves for the fight a head, the Warrior draws his sword and board bravely in preparation to attack. Raggy activates! "The power of Ragnaros, Now you shall see it first hand!" He strikes once and our warrior dies... Never had I laughed so hard in my life, all the build up and wipes lead to this final attempt, for it to be concluded in one hit. The whole guild were in hysterics, and we continued to laugh as we all died one by one ending the raid there.

2) Hammerdin time

I was jumping around servers in Diablo 2 and I saw this Paladin, he had this huge shield and a mace which had looks which could kill, a true warrior of light. 

He was running through our Baal runs with several spinning hammers above his head smashing every mob in his path. I was in such awe after seeing this guy I decided I had make a character similar to his. After some investigating, hard work and some tricky trades I gathered all the materials required to make my perfect paladin. Shako, HOTO and Spirit all made by my own hands. I was so proud of my Paladin at the time and enjoyed nothing more then repeatedly running the Cow level with my Hammerdin.  

3) Straight to the heart, Take your mark! 

Burning Crusade, WOW. Probably one of the best expansions I've played, with great end game PVE and competitive PVP it had everything I needed from a game, including my next memory. As every guild will know unexpected drama can happen at any time and will generally have a negative effect on a guild, In this memory we turned a negative situation into a positive. 

My guild was wiping in SSC and our main tank / guild master was taking all the flack for it. As an officer I did every thing I could to defuse the tension and calm the situation down but some nasty things were said and our guild master along with some others quit the guild and logged off. This left us in a pretty sticky situation and one no guild wants to be in. Sitting on the verge of a guild disbanding and knocking on Lady Vashj's doorstep with no leader, no main tank and low moral. The officers of the guild jumped down a channel in Vent and discussed our options. 

We all agreed we had worked too hard as a guild for it to end there, I was passed guild master and I gave everyone one a 30 minute break to compose themselves while giving myself enough time to complete the raid roster. After the break we pulled the boss and executed an almost flawless kill, all the emotions of the night came out in one huge cheer as we all screamed and shouted on vent while the events prior became a distant thought.

On the high we were on we ventured to the Eye with only Kil'Jaeden left to down. Carrying forward the momentum from killing Lady Vashj we took down Kil'Jaeden swiftly achieving 2 guild firsts in one night. A night which could have turned into a horror show, turned out to be the most efficient raiding night of my WOW career.

4) "If this is all a dream, don't wake me up" Cloud

This next memory could have easily been all 5! It includes in my opinion one of the best series of games ever, Final Fantasy. Completing Final Fantasy 7,8.9, X and X-2 have been wonderful experiences and I highly recommend anyone who hasn't played them to pick a copy up and play through them all starting with 7.

I could go into why I love each one in so much more detail but I wouldn't want to spoil anything for anyone and take away the excitement the game brings. I can however say expect highs, lows, tears and laughter as you battle your way through a truly intense story line becoming immersed in several plot developments at once. With a great base of characters, wide range of items, spells, and mini games, there is something for everyone.

5) Who need sleep when you have Guild wars 2

August 28th 2012, 3am. GW2 launch day. 

A group of friends and I had been stupidly excited for the launch of Guild Wars 2. We had spent days playing in the beta and planning our leveling patterns. I had tested the class I wanted to play and made the looks I wanted for release, I was prepared! 

Jade was away for the night and I was home along, perfect! I set my alarm for 3am and I don't think I've ever woken up with such ease. I grabbed myself a coffee, couple of bottles of water and some cereal bars as I didn't plan on leaving my PC for some time. I  logged into Teamspeak to be met by about 15-20 zombies on and ready to go. We all tried to communicate to each other that morning but all I can remember is hearing "Uuuuuuung GW2" "Uuurrgghh can't log in yet". 

Spamming the game executable I would attempt to log in several times a minute until I saw it, the character screen. I was so excited and pumped, I was ready! After gloating to everyone for a couple of minutes while I was creating my character, my client crashed, oh how I facepalmed! I tried again and again to get back into the game,  hearing rumors from people on TS that they were in and playing, 

My time came and I was in! My level 1 Warrior Ratha was ready to take on the huge dynamic world of Tyria! 

The reason for this one being a memory is because I've not hit a game on release as hard as I hit Guild Wars 2, achieving cap on day 2 I had never been so focused on achieving something nor had so much fun leveling with my friends.

In 4 days I had played 75 hours, I can't lie. I enjoyed every second of it!