I originally created this blog because I liked World of Warcraft a lot, and I seem to have a hard time not talking about the things I like. At the same time I've always hated to bore people with stories that don't interest them, which is why the WoW-related posts on my personal blog quickly started to feel out of place. The obvious solution: a new blog, dedicated to WoW only. The name was chosen due to me maining a priest at the time (first shadow, then holy).
I started playing in late Vanilla, with my first character hitting level sixty a few weeks before the release of the Burning Crusade. I switched from Alliance to Horde pretty early on, though I still played characters on both sides of the fence throughout the next two expansions. (The blog was started during Wrath of the Lich King, so you can go quite far back in the archives if you fancy reading about things like what I thought of that expansion at the time.) I raided on what I'd consider a medium progression level for a few years but gave up on it about halfway through Cataclysm due to dissatisfaction with the raiding game. I wrote a series summing up my raiding history back in 2020:
- My Raiding History, Part 1: Vanilla
- My Raiding History, Part 2: The Burning Crusade
- My Raiding History, Part 3: Wrath of the Lich King
- My Raiding History, Part 4: Cataclysm & SWTOR
I eventually quit WoW in early 2012, until early information about the Warlords of Draenor expansion piqued my interest again and I returned for a brief stint in Mists of Pandaria. This interest did not last however, as I realised that I just felt no connection to the live game anymore and only pined for the way it used to be in the old days.
In 2015 I discovered the world of Vanilla private servers and wrote about my adventures on those for a while. When Classic was announced, I was happy to finally have a reason to come back to the real thing. I also started to dabble in retail on the side again, since it came "free" with my Classic subscription anyway and I found it much more palatable as a side dish than as the main course. I played Classic until about halfway through Burning Crusade, when my beloved guild fell apart.
Disillusioned with the way the Classic community was evolving, I returned to the Vanilla Classic era servers, where I found the vibes much more agreeable and where I still play to this day. I also continue to enjoy playing retail casually on the side with my husband and some friends. However, I still spend time playing and writing about other MMORPGs as well, most notably Star Wars: The Old Republic (which I consider my online home these days).
In real life I'm a 41-year-old Austrian living in England, married to an Englishman I met while gaming on the internet.
I read all the comments people leave, but I'm not always very good at replying to them since I hate to artificially increase my comment count by saying things like "oh yes, I agree". Do know that if you do decide to leave a message, it does get read and appreciated. You can also email me at shintarcommando at gmail.com if you want to contact me, and I can be found on Bluesky as Shintar.
-Shintar
Shintar, do you need the underscore ("_") in your e-mail? Just curious.
ReplyDeleteYep, two underscores, one before and one after "Irish". It's a very old e-mail account, these days I'd have better sense than to create clunky addresses like that.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it is great to defeat spammers.
ReplyDeleteCheers. Thanks for your blog. Quality reading.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the "promotion" but just created this wow-polls site and thought it could be interesting for the wow-population. Hope you have a chance to take a look.
http://wowpolls.posterous.com/