Six years ago I swore that I never thought I'd be back to Online gaming after quiting that time top MMO Ultima Online. I especially didn't think I would be playing a game that invited to so much carebaring as WoW does.

Boy was I wrong. I knew Blizzard from Diablo and Warcraft (although I never played Frozen Throne nor completed WCIII) and as such I was quite sure they would make a quality game. Anyway, I still dismissed WoW as an EQ clone. However, my brother and my neighbour would continue to show me stuff from the closed US beta and EU beta later on. I told myself, I can register for the open Beta (Christmas 2004) just to try it out for a month and see if it was anything worthwhile...


And here I am. New administrator of Realm History ready to serve and participate in the thrilling and exciting friendly server competition in both disciplines of PvE and PvP achievements. It's been a long and audacious journey - having to balance exams, dodge (some) social commitments and the endless time investments required to play with the top guilds on various servers. But it's been fun.

And I hope it's just as fun for you, which brings me back to my original question and my take on it: "What defines greatness?"

Let me start with some background information. I am not a huge fan of Vanilla WoW (pre-TBC). The encounters then was a huge zerg-fest and any raids would have their bad apples and e-tards that would fall asleep during the raid and do something that messed up your raid. Designers consequently had to take that into consideration when designing encounters - as such most encounters simply became a tank-spank zerg which allowed room for many mistakes or relied on some crazy raid compositions (4H anyone?). I therefore chose to break away from WoW and I had already written WoW off as a dead game that merely didn't know it yet.

When I first heard of The Burning Crusade I instantly knew Blizzard was on to something. Reducing the raid size allows for much more complex and interesting encounters that allows for creative thinking and use of classes (mage/warlock tanks, druid/paladin MTs, etc). I simply love the way Blizzard put a new spin on something as familiar and simple as WoW. The raiding environment is turned upside down and is much harder than it ever was in vanilla WoW. So what does indeed define greatness now?

Certainly it isn't (just) your 2v2 (5v5) arena rating or your gear. Rather it is the style with which you play, behave and act in WoW. It is the grace with which you defeat encounters and the fun you have in competing with other players. And that is coincidentally why this site is so great. In here you'll find an easily manageable crafters list and a likewise easy PvE progression update feature (and if I have my way soon an Arena team section). As such I and Realm History invites you to the grand competition of PvE and PvP. The PvE progression list you according to the date where you kill a boss and then rates you on the basis of this.

Good luck to you all.

Tanja


Guide to Updating PvE kills:

At the top of this page you'll find a link: PvE Progression. Click on it.

Next you'll see a list of instances. Click on the instance name for which you wish to update a kill (see my example with SSC).

Then Choose Submit Your Guild Progression.

If your guild isn't listed yet choose Add New Guild/raid group. If it's listed choose: Boss Kill to Existing Guild.

Then fill in the information in the Boss Kill window (you can add more than one instance from this window).

Submit your information when you filled in all information and your kills will be listed.

Good luck in getting many PvE kills!

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