I made my first world of Warcraft toon back in 2005, which was a Tauren Druid named Deusaxe and I could not have picked a better Hero to explore Azeroth with. Back then I used to play on a PVE server called Greymane. It was a crazy time to be a Druid, as anyone who rolled one around patch 1.6 would know, BUT Deus would tank, dps and run the flag in Warsong like a Boss. In fact, I managed to get him to Rank 10 champion, which I remember being very time consuming at the time.

When Burning Crusade came out though, my friends and I re-rolled on Thaurissan, a PVP server. Sadly, this meant that Deus got shelved. When Cataclysm came out, I used a free character transfer and boost to get Deus over to Thaurissan, but didn’t get much play out of him.

Since then I’ve mained a Warlock, a Hunter and a Warrior; pretty much switching it up for every expansion. These past few weeks though I wanted to try my hand at support. After going over a few guides and videos I decided that the best support class for me would be a Resto Druid; so out came Deusaxe.

Things have changed a lot since my Druid’s last prowl. Between the modifications to Feral, Guardian and the tweaks to Boomkin, the Druid is no longer the underdog it used to be back in Vanilla.

EDIT: There is a pretty fun song this dude named Taly made ages ago which sums up the Vanilla druid experience quiet well. Do check it out – Purple Monster

I tried all the specs for the fun of it, but found that the most familiar to me was Resto, even though I had never played as Resto before. This was because if you choose Restoration and go with Guardian Affinity as your third tier talent; I feel the Druid plays a lot like it used to back in Vanilla.

I love that.

Plus, I kind of like to RP a little bit when I play WoW and though I don’t go overboard with it, what this means it that U have a particular mindset for my characters. My Lock was all about death and destruction, the warrior was “in your face” and the Hunter was more of an explorer and collector. Deusaxe to me now is the Veteran; the old dude who looks out for you.

This works out great as Resto. You run around healing all your friends and Allies but if things get bad you “Bear Down” and take the agro.

So I started to play Deusaxe again and leveled him through a few dungeons, but mostly through PVP. The current Legion invasions worked out great as well because each one netted me a whole level and then some.

Last night Deus dinged level 100 and for a mix of reasons it was incredibly moving for me. He has also clocked 89 days of play-time, which is about 2136 hours

World of Warcraft is one of those games that reminds me of why I like being a gamer. It’s a great experience in itself, while having so many nods not just to other games, but entire other mediums and it serves as a culmination of everything I love.

Then there’s making real life friends online; people I would email and chat with outside of wow. The hours of exploring and being in awe of everything. Running Dire Maul for the Unyielding Maul before grinding enough AV rep to get the Unstoppable Force. Dinging level 60 in a Yeti Cave somewhere in Winterspring.

Running through Stormwind to get to the Stockades. Trying to tank ZG and MC. Heck, trying to get 39 other players who had enough confidence in me to let me tank ZG and MC.

Or just chilling along the shoreline in Feralas because it was my favourite place in game.

Nothing beats the first time you go through Azeroth; Deusaxe was my first step into all of that and it’s just a great feeling to be taking on the next expansion with him. Bring on the Legion… Deusaxe is prepared.