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!

The Start of Something Perfect

"Joe we are going to play Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn!!"

This was a sentence my best friend told me 18 months ago. A lot has changed since then I've had a beautiful baby boy, gotten engaged to my lovely girlfriend, moved house and brought a brand new car.

Time to game? I don't think so!

Any one reading this who is an avid gamer will know the passion never goes, no matter how hard your try to subdue it.

Once I realized playing a game was a lot easier than running round a football pitch for 90 minutes I made the transition from promising young footballer into a tiny pro gamer and have been playing PlayStation, Xbox and PC games since I can remember. 

The first game I remember playing competitively was Diablo 2, I would stay up late and wake up early to get in an extra Meph or Baal run. I have a vivid memory where I really wanted to have an item called HOTO (Heart of the Oak), In order to do that you need to have 4 runes which were random drops through out the game. I wanted it so bad I got my parents to buy me the final Vex rune I needed to complete it and was so proud of my weapon. In 2001 I brought the Lord of Destruction expansion and along with that came my new love the Trap Assassin.

In 2004 I was hearing rumours of a game called WOW (World of Warcraft), being another Blizzard game I singed up for Beta and only now almost 9 years later I have finally stopped my subscription fully. I started the game playing a Mage called Joeyman, an ugly Troll with possibly the worst face, hair and tusk combo. After a month of being asked "SWE?" I gave in and created an Orc hunter with equally awful looks called Ghosthunter. Many weeks past as I leveled Ghosthunter to 60, pvping in the newly added BG WSG (Warsong Gulch) and grinding mobs as I had no clue on what I meant to be doing. Once I dinged level 60 I was lucky enough to join an MC farming guild called Spherical. Doing MC with 40 people was one of the funniest times of my WOW career, wiping endlessly on Raggy, waiting weeks to get my Hunter bow quest and eventually getting full Giantstalker set. 

There was a Nightelf warrior on my server, Rank 14, he had long purple hair and a stare that could silence any crowd. He would sit in battle grounds and gank in Tyr's hand constantly charging his way through anyone and everything. After running back to my corpse more times than I could count and waiting minutes to spawn every time, I left my hunter and my old server Bladefist and started a fresh on Frostwhisper with a level 1 Nightelf Warrior (I didn't copy honest!). The life of Ghostman began. I leveled Ghost up a lot more successfully than my hunter, achieving cap in a couple of weeks. I PVP'd the whole way through my leveling and achieved rank 8 before I dinged 60. Catching the attention of some hardcore PVPers I found myself in a WSG premade playing 8-10 hours a day grinding my way up to rank 13.

After I achieved the rank I wanted to in PVP I had to give PVE ago again, I joined a guild called Infinity with a friend of mines help and was fortunate enough to get a space in their raiding 40. I was apart of the first Nef kill in BWL and multiple others in AQ40. This character was to become my main for the best part of 4 years.

Being curious and jealous of some of my PVP friends characters, I rolled a Mage (again) as an alt and decided to dedicate him to PVP, achieving the same rank as my Warrior and farming end game content I thought I was done with the game. This was until The Burning Crusade was announced...

Rushing to level 70 and farming PVP gear in preparation for the first arena season, I obtained Gladiator rank  in 5v5 on my warrior and made a name for myself along some of the top PVPers on the server dueling outside Org taking on any challenge. Along with PVP I dabbled in PVE and found myself guild master along with some friends in a guild called Wasted. Now if I had to pick a bunch of people to play with, these would be them. I had so much fun during this part of my career. I  made some friends for life in that guild and all during leading them into Black Temple.

I could talk forever about WOTLK, CATA and MOP but I shall stop here, unless anyone wants me to carry on the story. Below are only screen shots and I have of my chars after swapping PC several times.

              

Originally NE Ghostman                  My second Warrior                      My Mage Ratha

During the past 10 years or so, I've tried a few other MMORPGs. Aion, Age of Conan, Rift and Guild Wars 2. I have always had a competitive streak and strive to achieve the highest PVP ranks I could in all of the above.

In rift i was rank 6 and then 8 when the new patch came out, in Aion I got Commander rank (ended up buying a whole new PC due to lag, damn that game!!), in AOC I think I just died a lot while trying to storm a castle myself  on my rhino mount and unfortunately GWs's PVP didn't hold me so I gave up on that, although the WvWvW was very fun.

Again due to me swapping PCs I don't have many screenshots of my game play, I have a few below of my time in GW2 though. I hit the release so hard with a couple of friends and the backing of my guild TDA (The Dark Alliance) I got max level in 2 days and was amongst the first to level 80.

     

            My first completed dungeon                                    My leveling partners, Knutti and Fiets

                     My Warrior                                                       The first huge Dragon I found

Anyway enough about games for a while and a little about me.

I'm a 24 year old IT Analyst working for a national law firm, I have been working there for 4 years now and I'm a making nice progress in my working career. I've always had a positive head on my shoulders when it comes to work and always try to go above and beyond when tasked with any challenge.

In my personal life I have a loving family which are 100 miles away, my girlfriends family and a good bunch of friends for support.

Here is a picture of myself and my Fiancée :) In case you were wondering I'm on the right :)

My baby boy and I, he is learning well.

Hopefully you've enjoyed a little insight into me, my gaming past and my personality. The following posts will be very orientated around Final Fantasy XIV and my journey with my Monk to be, Ratha Xiv. 

Below is a picture I took during the last Phase 3 beta. This is with Lily Mae (http://vanishedsun.wordpress.com/)