The day that Cataclysm launched I was set and ready with my paladin. I grabbed my best friend, took a couple of days off, and bought a whole bunch of junk food to be ready. It started at 3 AM and less then 48 hours later we were 85. We jumped straight into heroics by the third day, and had a full set of heroic level items by the end of the first week.
Then the idea was to raid. We had a little guild set for 10 man but people who we though were gonna play never logged on. We waited while other people hit 85 while trying to recruit. We tried guild alliances but the furthest we ever got was Algalon. Since we weren't really raiding and I had spare time on my hands I leveled my shaman. After she hit 85 I did the same thing. I was nervous about healing with her in heroics but I did surprisingly well.
The frustration was high with bladez. I joined a new guild hoping to raid but after logging in for a week straight and not really doing much of anything I was flying circles around Stormwind. I see a pug group looking for a ranged dps so I jump over to my shaman and ask them to join. I get picked up right away and I was amazed at my damage on Magmaw. We weren't able to get the boss down so they asked if I could switch to healing since they had an offspec healer. We proceeded to kill half the raid that night, and the next night we got most of Bastion of Twilight down. I asked if they were recruiting and was invited to join the guild.
In the weeks to follow I was on of their main healers and we ended up 10/12 of the current tier of content. I was happy to be raiding and I even got my best friend into the guild and we cleared a ton of content together. It was a lot of fun but the guild did have troubles. Even as a 10 man guild every night we had to pug 1 or 2 spots. We got lucky most of the time with good people joining up. Some nights only 5 guildies log on so we have to call the raid. We had the talent but we just didn't have the time to finish the content.
At the same time I was also getting married. Two weeks before the wedding I told the guild that I would probably be offline until after the honeymoon. At the same time the guild had decided to transfer off server. They just were having a hard time on Thunderhorn recruiting good players for raiding. I couldn't blame them but I didn't want to go with them. They had no garuntee that they would find what they were looking for over there and I didn't want to spend the money to move a character since I have 10 characters on the server.
Life goes on. I went and got married. During down time I will still play world of warcraft but I really don't have a guild anymore. I have developed some altitus and have been leveling some new characters. Since the Cataclysm changed the 1-60 game I had a lot of fun with a new worgen, goblin, and an undead hunter. Also when my friend and I get time together I play my neglected death knight.
The thing I wonder about is the future. I really did enjoy raiding but it is easy to get burned out on it. My first love is tanking and I even have 1 of every tanking class. The problem is that tanks/melee aren't as desired as ranged/healer. The reason my shaman has better gear is because the need for her is greater. I am sitting at full 359 gear and she is ready for firelands. Since I am married and my wife isn't into warcraft or gaming for that matter she wouldn't understand a schedule based video game. The idea that I have to be on a certain time of day 3 days a week every week would sound insane. Either way I don't have a raiding guild and I don't know which character to focus on so raiding for now is off the table.
