Sometimes ye just need tae git’ yer hied doon and get oot o’ town. Other times ye might just fancy a change o’ scenery – whatever it is make sure yer no just hidin’ fae a problem as that only makes it worse.

Quite a few days back I stared a small post and, as usual, it slowly accreted into a much larger post. It seems I wanted to share a lot about the experience of starting over in WoW – something which has, in a way, defined my WoW time – and perhaps ease others in the process by writing down my thoughts about the issue and adding a sprinkle of advice. I’ll go over what Starting Over really means, the reasons, the implications and the actualities. I hope it’ll help someone who’s thinking of starting over or who has done so and is not sure where to go next. If not I’ll at least have gotten the urge for essay-writing out of my system. So, say hello to /hug’s first multi-part post/guide thing.

1. What is Starting Over?
2. Reasons and Implications
3. Practicalities
4. What now?

1. What is Starting Over?

Starting over. It happens for a lot of reasons – maybe you wanted a change, maybe you left the game for a bit and came back, maybe you have a bad rep on your old server (deservedly or not), maybe some arsehole decided it would be funny to constantly corpse-camp you and you had enough of it. It can be a breath of fresh air, a daunting task, or both at the same time.

I’ve done it twice, now, sort of and both times it has been quite an upheaval for me. A quick rundown on how things happened for me, first, because I love having an excuse to tell you all stories. You can skip this if you want.

/cue flashback

I started, as a little Roguelet, on Eonar one summer. Uni started back, though, when I hit level 58 and I decided that, for my studies, would be best if I stopped playing WoW. TBC came out and I wasn’t going to play but a friend sold me a spare copy cheap (she had ordered two in case one didn’t come in time…) and a few more friends mentioned they were going to all reroll characters on a new server – Sporeggar. I started a druid, found I liked the class, and rocketed to 70. Most of them were slow levellers, though, and drifted away to their old characters and so I found myself playing solo for the most part – though I made a few good friends and my other half was still playing. We had great fun but, eventually, real life interceded and I had to take a month or two break from WoW once again.

When I returned everything had changed and I decided I wanted to play with at least someone I actually knew in real life. My best friend had an alliance character on Bloodhoof so I decided – Hey, I could transfer my rogue, level him and play with a friend again. Brilliant! So I did. Once again I was on a new server where I knew nobody – I was accepted into my friend’s guild and made welcome by the awesome bunch of people therein. It’s my home now, I’m kinda settled there and know more people than I think I did on either of my old servers. I miss a few people and I miss playing on an rp(pvp) server, I don’t miss Eonar that much, sadly, as I barely knew anyone there.

/end flashback

So, I’ve had a couple of ’start overs’ – Both rolling a new character on a new server and transferring an old one – sometimes with breaks in between and sometimes not. Starting over often includes leaving close friends and basically pulling yourself out of your comfort zone, it’s taking yourself out of a familiar situation in a way more complete than rolling an alt. It is a break which is akin, perhaps, to moving to a new town or out of home to go to Uni/College and something which can definitely effect how you experience the game.

What this isn’t going to go into is moving guilds (as a topic in itself) – it is similar in some ways – moving out of your comfort zone etc. but others have done far better are more informative posts than I could hope to. If you’re interested in them you might want to look at Matticus’ post here for a start on that topic.

A quick intro and not much meat, yet, but keep an eye for the next post which should be coming shortly.