Left behind

I feel bad about my rogue, Deadbare. He was my first character, my first main, first to 60 (which was the level cap at the time), and pretty much is the reason I've stuck with this game so long.

Once Deadbare got to level 55 or so I was starting to feel the pull of the alt. I had made it so far, but the grind to get to 60 was starting to wear me out, and I felt I needed a change. So I made Blackbare, my druid, and had a great time leveling him, since I convinced my friend to also create an alt and level alongside me.

As I went, I switched off playing the two, and Deadbare ended up making it to level 60. At that point the game really opened up for me. I was able to go to all those level 60 instances I had heard so much about. I could get some awesome gear, and eventually join in raiding with my guild.

Well, it didn't go quite as planned. Rogues and hunters were a dime a dozen, so getting into a PUG was nearly impossible. It was made even harder by the fact that priests were considered the only viable healing class and warriors the only viable tank class. Sure we had paladins and druids that could heal or tank, but they didn't have all the tools they do now.

So after a bunch of runs to Strat and Scholo, and a few LBRS and UBRS runs with no upgrades dropping I was starting to get very frustrated. I was making some money, and eventually bought a few of the gear upgrades that were BoE, but even those weren't a big help because my guild was fairly strict on gear requirements to get into the raids.

I was playing my druid more and more because I just couldn't justify spending time in the game if all I was going to do was sit around Ironforge for hours trying to get groups together that were just going to fall apart before the end of the instance half the time.

I started thinking about how to fix this. I thought maybe if I were to create a new character of a class that is in demand I can actually accomplish something. So I made a priest, Vonari, and while I was planning on healing in the end, I leveled her as shadow to go faster. I never got her to 60 before BC came out and bumped up the level cap.

So after trying out a few other alts, making some horde characters to see what it was like, the expansion came out and introduced a lot of new stuff to the game.

I had always wanted to try a shaman, and now I could make one on the Alliance side. That was fun for a while, then I left the brand new starting areas and was back in the old world again, with all the same quests to do. I wanted to see Outland.

At that point my druid was also close to being able to go to Outland, but not quite. Deadbare could though, and I sent him out to see what it was like.

After a few of the quests I had replaced most of my gear, including the stuff I had spent all that money on so I could get close to being able to raid. It was sort of disheartening to know how much work I had put in and was now having everything replaced with quest greens. I decided to get my druid to Outland instead and would come back to Deadbare later.

Well that never happened. Deadbare still sits at level 60, hanging out in Ironforge as a bank mule. It's a little sad, but I guess the bad end game experience I had with him sort of makes it hard to pick him back up, and now that I have so many other characters to level he's getting left behind.

Will I come back to him eventually? I'm not sure yet. The rogue talent trees have changed so much in the past couple years, and it would be fun to see what he's capable of now. I also have so much to do on my other characters that I don't know if I'll get around to playing him again. He's going to be hard to fit into my other plans.

Funny how attached we can become to our characters and actually start thinking of them as real people with feelings.