We did it!

After 86 wipes on Sylvanas and after nearly 2 months we finally finished Sanctum of Domination, Shadowlands’ second raid tier.

Today we had 17 people and not the usual 13-15 – maybe that made the difference, or the practice of the last two weeks, or everyone actually giving their best. It might have been slow but I am so glad that we did it. More relieved than happy, actually.

This is also my first AOTC (Ahead of the Curve) achievement for killing a Heroic end boss before the next tier arrives, something that eluded me in Castle Nathria, the first raid tier of this expansion, and that didn’t even exist when I last raided in MoP.++

So this was one day after our raid week #21 concluded. We’ll see if we can redo the kill on Sunday, or a bit later.

But… my sub is running out in 8-9 days, so I maybe have 2 raids left. I had acquired a WoW token as a backup plan if it would run out before we’d killed here, but now I’m looking forward to a little WoW vacation. I think I’ve been subbed since early BfA, that’s quite a while, one month more and it had been 3 years. I don’t know when 9.2 will hit, but I plan to come back and raid again with my current guild that I joined in early July, 5 months ago. But of course we’ll see how I’m feeling about WoW and ActiBlizz then, if we will have managed to raid in FFXIV and everything.

++ footnote: Because I don’t like writing wrong things I looked this up. This page on Wowpedia says there were some AOTC achievements in MoP (for Normal), but I have 4 out of 6, jus this one is weird: Sha of Fear before patch 5.2.0 – that patch came on March 5, 2013 – my “Defeat the bosses in Terrace of Endless Spring.” achievement says 2012-11-25, clearly before 5.2.0 but I don’t have it.

When changing WoW servers recently (actually I dug out this draft and July 3rd id not so recently) and reserving my old names, creating bank characters and so on, I ran into the 50 character limit per WoW account. I think that’s happened for the first time, ever. 50 sounds a lot, but I’ve started playing this game in 2005, that’s 16 years. So only 3 new characters per year, right?
But how did we end up here?

Well, there’s the server where I started playing in 2005, which also was my main server until 2014, when I stopped playing for a few years. Mostly Horde, and that one Alliance Rogue I brought into the guild I’d been raiding Castle Nathria with recently, back in 2009. When I came back for Legion I started more Alliance characters on the server connected to this one – so basically one realm, but 2 connected realms. 19 on the original one, (now) 12 on the other one.

Then there’s the server I transferred to, 7 characters. And the Horde one where I went to visit those friends, but playing Horde, that’s another 5 characters. So we’re at 43 already.

But now to the outliers. There’s this one Level 11 (ex 24?) Warrior on a German PvP server, where I started to play with some people from another MMO, probably 12 years ago. I guess I can delete that one. Then I have a 30 Hunter (used to be 61 or so?) on Argent Dawn, where some bloggers started the guild named “Single Abstract Noun” – I would’ve saved that one via transfer if leveling was still a thing, but Level 30 can be done in like 5h, so hard pass on 17-25 EUR for a transfer 🙁

And then there’s the server where I had transferred my main over to raid, just before I stopped playing. I had started a DK and a Priest while playing there. The DK reached max level, the Priest only 5x (now 28). I think I transferred my main back for a normal price and the DK when the transfer was marked down, years later. Again, Level 30ish is easy to reach, so I guess the priest will be deleted at some point.

But… if I remember correctly, we had free transfers to that realm, so I brought my Level 19 Twink Hunter. The only Battlegrounds Twink I ever made. Now she’s Level 9 and I surely didn’t play her since 2014 or earlier, and I don’t know if twinking like this still works.

I didn’t go over the top with all the expensive BoEs, but she still had some nice gear.

So how did this post start out as an idea about twinks in WoW and ended up talking more about the 50 character limit? I don’t know.

One noteworthy thing is that before the level squish I didn’t want to delete old characters on random servers because of the time invested. Now it’s so quick that if I don’t have a nostalgic connection… that 10 year old toon can absolutely be deleted without a second thought, but there are just so many exceptions. Maybe the best way is to do it like people who clean up their apartments do it. Take a screenshot, write a few paragraphs in the blog about the story, delete, and go on with your life.

I just logged in and in a spam of login and addon messages I didn’t see why a guildie jokingly? congratulated me. After scrolling up I saw the […] has earned the achievement [WoW’s 17th Anniversary!] and of course I had to dig into the achievements pane now.

17 15 12 10 9 16 14 8 7 6 5 4

Wait, why aren’t they sorted?

17, 16, 15, 14, _, 12, _, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, _, _, _

So the first missing one is the 13th, that would be 2017. The second one is the 11th, that would be 2015 and then 2007, 2006, and finally 2005.

This surprises me a little because I’ve taken a lot of WoW breaks over the years and mostly hadn’t payed a sub uselessly, but on the other hand I’ve been playing for a long time, so especially the first 3 missing made me curious.

So let’s look at post history in the WoW category first:

In September 2018 I wrote “So either I’ll buy BfA and play WoW in early October,…” but I only came back in January of 2019 and I think I’ve been subscribed since then. But I had completely forgotten about the “free up to Level 20” thing, so that probably explains why I have the 14th anniversary.

Next up (in reverse chronological order) I wrote a post titled WoW Legion: 10 weeks in in November 2016 where the 12th anniversary would have to have happened.

Intermission: The WoW token went live in April 2015.

Now it gets a little mysterious. I subscribed in December 2014 for WoD and did not continue after a month. Either I still got the 10th anniversary achievement (unlikely) or the “log in sub 20” thing went live before November 2014.

And then I seem to have mixed up dates, I stopped raiding during SoO, that was in spring 2014 (not 2013) and then I had a half-year break until WoD.

Good old warcraftrealms.com shows me as Level 25 in October 2005 and Level 40 in December, so I was most certainly subscribed and actively leveling, but no clue why I didn’t get that one. But searching on wowhead seems to point to the 4th anniversary being the first one with an achievement.

The Burning Crusade launched on Devember 5th, 2006 and I was subscribed for that, but I don’t know for sure if I was on a break the month before. Unlikely though, with the hype for the first expansion.
Again, warcraftrealms has me guildless in October 2007 and guilded in November, as I remember that time (my original guild had imploded in the summer) it’s also unlikely.

So, what did we learn except that I played too much WoW in my life? Keep a blog and a few links to a few fansites it’s not problem to trace back your steps for the last 16 years.