Memories of Vanilla #27 - How to Become a Guild Officer

Hey dudes, Silvite Soltis here. And welcome back to another episode of Memories of Vanilla - my reflective series of my early adventures in World of Warcraft.

The Deadmines

Last time, I told about my warrior's bo staff and how exciting it was to bonk enemies in the face with a wooden stick. Well today, we're going to continue that story a bit with another warrior story. One of daring and adventure in every Alliance player's favorite leveling dungeon, the Deadmines.

Before starting though, remember to follow my blog by adding yourself to my mailing list below, should you enjoy my content. There's a lot more coming between now and August 27th, and I'm sure you don't want to miss out on it! But with that out of the way, let's get right into the story:



Back in 2006, I was a guild officer in a small, casual leveling guild on Whisperwind called "The Guardians of Azeroth." I don't remember why or how I became an officer - likely just the fact that I was one of the few members that was online all the time - but I do remember that around this time, we were looking to expand and bolster our ranks.

So, in an effort to do this, the GM and I decided to hold a test for interested participants. As far as I recall, exactly one person expressed interest - a level 35 warrior named Liberate.

Twin Cruel Barbs

And so, we had our candidate. Now what we needed was a test to see if he was worthy of the title of "Officer." Well, at this time, my warrior was around level 17 and I was planning to stop leveling at 19 to do some BG twinking, so I thought it would be cool if I could snag twin Cruel Barbs from the Deadmines in order to wreck some face in Warsong Gulch. And since Liberate was level 35, I devised what I thought would be a unique test of his skill.

He would have to run my warrior, Aoyamamotoko, through the Deadmines.

So, with a plan in mind, the instructions were given and we headed over to the dungeon. Within minutes of arriving outside, we stood at the instance portal, ready to face the challenge ahead.

Liberate moved in carefully, pulling packs of mobs back into the entryway and taking them down one by one. To be honest, though, I busied myself with looting everything rather than actually paying much attention to how he was doing. Moving through the caverns, we defeated each boss in time, though much like my initial run of the dungeon on Silvite, I accidentally pulled the patrols that spawned behind us after one of the bosses' demise. Oops.

Edwin VanCleef

Eventually, after wiping about 3 times from the high damage that elite mobs can inflict even on a level 35 warrior, we made it to the ship at the end of the dungeon. This was the final test. I stood pretty far back as Liberate ran forward and cleared the pirates and their parrots, only following when he beckoned me over. At last, we stood in front of him - Edwin VanCleef. It was the final test.

Liberate charged in and quickly dispatched the two bodyguards before focusing on VC himself. Throughout the fight, he got pretty low due to the damage of the additional bodyguards that spawned, but with some Sweeping Strikes and Retaliation, he was able to finish them all off. The boss fell, a new officer rose, and a nooby warrior got a shiny new sword.





I hope you enjoyed this story of my first guild's somewhat ridiculous officer-promotion protocol. It's one of those experiences from back in the day that I'll never forget. Liberate stayed with our guild all the way through vanilla, though we did part ways sometime around the beginning of TBC when our guild basically fell apart. I did meet him again later on during the daily grind on the Isle of Quel'Danas towards the end of that expansion, though, and we have been friends in the game ever since. Hell, he might even be reading this right now.

But anyway, that's all for today. If you enjoyed this story and would like to see more in the future, follow my blog by adding yourself to my email list below. Also, consider supporting me over on Patreon so that I can continue creating content like this and my videos in the future. Follow me on Facebook and Twitter for updates when more content is posted, but until next time...

Take it easy!