thedawnwindjournal-blog

[thedawnwindjournal-blog]

Moon Guard: Nostalgia or fogged memory?

What defines home? Is it the warm glow of a fire lit neatly in a fireplace that brings all who grace it’s presence a warm feeling on the inside? Or a place to escape to with familiar faces that you can always rely on? Does that make Moon Guard a home? Quite possibly. And for the five years that I had been away, I had yearned for that home day in and out. Not like an addiction but a place to reside where no one had to know about my home life struggles or that Navakis Dawnwind the Paladin was different than Frost, your average human.

Moon Guard was an enigma to me when I first stumbled upon it. I originally came from the PvE server Draenor where two real life friends and I resided. I leveled all the way to 70 by myself. No dungeons. No LFG. Pure level grind and questing. Maybe the heroic dungeon here and there but nothing fancy. It was late into Burning Crusade’s lifecycle that I found myself in thick crowds on the Isle Of Quel’Danas and scrambling in real life through messages from my two friends sent me messages. They had bought gold and that Blizzard had found out. Their accounts were banned and in the midst of people getting their dailies done or showing off their White Hawkstrider, I felt sad and alone. I had leveled so far to do raids and dungeons with them that I had nothing now that they could no longer log in.

I had mucked about on Draenor for a while. A character maxed out with no sign of Wrath of the Lich King in site, during the recession and with not much to do but play games. There was nothing to do. I joined a guild called the Purple Lotus. Now that I think about it, that would have been a cool name for a Pandaren only guild. But this guild was mainly as bad as Trade chat mixed with vanilla Barrens chat. That’s when I had enough and sought out a new server.

Enter Moon Guard. A server with a weird (RP) icon where the (PVP/PVE) icon resided. This piqued my interest and I started my first character. Navakis. I struck gold with this as it really fell in line with Blood Elf naming methods. Ding! Level 10 and it was off to Silvermoon with me. I had really loved the Blood Elves and that their Paladins were more like thieves of the light than those bestowed upon the Paladins in the alliance. (Little did I know that it actually was bestowed upon them because of the events in the Sunwell Raid happening at the time)

I, or rather Navakis, at the time had found himself at the Inn to the left of the entrance in Silvermoon. Purple, red, gold, and everything glowed. I had thought “Wow, this was like Second Life but everyone is a fantasy character!” I sat at the bar and watched people walk up as they ordered fake drink after fake drink for their characters with minor quips in between about how their character had fought someone else. Or how their Mage had a long night ahead of them studying their tomes. I was hooked. And that’s when I learned of the Blood Knights. Blood Elf Paladins that siphoned their power from M’uru. A Naaru that resides within Silvermoon thanks to the conquests of the Blood Elves prior to their assimilation into the horde.

It was a blast. Every twist and turn of every story. You turn the corner of one street to find yourself in Murder Row where a thief chases down another. Or the Bazaar where you’d find deals or romance. It was great. And my character was surrounded by it. Then slowly, my RPs stretched out into Eversong. Then to Ghostlands to hunt with the Sunguard. Then further on into Stratholme to fight the purge seeping down the Dead Scar with a small detachment of Domion soldiers. This was fun. This was what weekends were for. And at some point, my laptop just couldn’t handle WoW anymore and all those stories disappeared.

5 years later and here I am. Pandaria is discovered. Garrosh and Gul’dan drag the game through a trilogy of horrors leading up to Sargeras’ legion invasions. Something I had secretly hoped for since seeing Kil’Jaeden drown in the depths of the Sunwell. But as I walked through Silvermoon, the only thing I could notice were the crickets making noise and that I was just a relic of the old past. The guilds I had belonged in still resided and were going strong but there were only new names as far as the eye could see.

I was aghast. The halls of Silvermoon were quiet while the game had been seeing its best days since Wrath. What had happened? Stories rarely unfold. And that’s what this blog is here to document. My trip to see what will happen when I take to the streets with my new Characters, Faronae and Calinys.

[thedawnwindjournal-blog]

Prologue: Dawnwinds, Silverfires and Long Ago

Hello. I’m Frostfire. Or you can call me Frost. That’s a nickname that I gave myself long ago when a friend introduced me to World of Warcraft. Or rather the English translation of what my friend named my first character: Yukiha. Later that character would go on to get a name change: “Arathias”. As far as what my friend said it stood for, it meant snow “yuki” and “ha” meaning is. I put fire in later as Frostfire Bolt was one of my favorite spells.

Anywho, this blog is going to be a session by session blog about my thoughts on RP and my reintroduction to World of Warcraft, RP and Moon Guard as a whole. I thought that this might be a fun little experiment that would either be my thoughts or random ranting and ravings. So here’s a run down of a few of my characters in Moon Guard.

Navakis Dawnwind: A former Bloodknight of the Seventh Regiment Of Silvermoon. Former thief turned Paladin.

Caelonis Dawnwind: Son Of Navakis Dawnwind. Also a blood Knight. More naive to the world than his father.

Atelos Silverfire: A pirate and naval captain. Formerly residing in Lordaeron and being long since removed before it turned into the Undercity.

Faronae Silverfire: Daughter Of Atelos Silverfire. Orphaned when Atelos joined the Domion of the Sun at the age of 13. Now 19, She is rebellious and seeks to break Silvermoon from the hold of militarization.

Calinys: No last name but sister to Navakis Dawnwind abandoned 11 years prior to current in-game time due to her becoming a Illidari Demon Hunter. Estranged to the Dawnwind family.

Now, with the last two on the list, they are my two most recent characters and you might notice a similarity in the fact that while related to my first three characters, they are both detached as well due to events in the past. This isn’t a coincidence but a fact that I wanted to start anew with my RPs. This is more of a choice for the fact that I don’t have to unload a ton of plot onto everyone I meet as it might be a lot to devour at one time. This keeps it simple.

My main focus of this blog is to get back into the swing of RP in general while also trying to recount what happened over the past 5 years and to see if Moon Guard is the same lovely place I left or if it is just a shell of its former self. Enjoy your stay