1st Giveaway Winner and World PvP

And now for the post you all (well okay, some) have been waiting for...


Finding out who the winner of my 1st Blog Giveaway - a $25 Amazon.com Giftcard, in celebration that it's been 5 years this month since I first started playing World of Warcraft!

I got called into work today and like I mentioned on Twitter, I was planning on doing this when I got back, but since no one's at the office and it won't even take me an hour (probably not even 30 minutes) to do what I need to do there, I figured I might as post this now, since I have another idea for a post in my head that I plan on making tonight.

Anyways, here's how I picked the winner:
What I did was I created a spreadsheet, listing the info of each person that entered as they entered, and for each way they entered I put their information in again, in order of how it was submitted (for example, if you made 4 entries, then went back later and made the 5th after others had entered, the 5th entry was split up from the others). Then I went on Random.org, entered in the max number of entries (20), and hit the button to generate the winning entry number!

And the winner of my first ever blog giveaway, celebrating 5 years this month from when I first started playing World of Warcraft is....

Kara from Crayons and Cylons! 

Congrats and enjoy your gift card! I'll plan on sending it later tonight (when I get back from work and running errands) to the email that's listed on your blog, unless you tell me otherwise, okay?

Sorry to rest of you, but thanks for entering! I got plans for another giveaway coming up soon - a summer giveaway for the ladies - as I reach my 200th published post (we're currently in the 180s!).

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Now, onto to today's Warcraft Wednesday post:

A lot has changed in the 5 years since I started playing World of Warcraft - one of the most notable changes being the inclusion of Battlegrounds (aka BGs).

WoW without Battlegournds? No way!

Yes way!

And it was AWESOME.

If you play on a PvP server, you are always "flagged," meaning that at anytime a player of the opposing faction can sneak up and kill you while you're doing anything. On RP and PvE servers though you have to manually "flag up" via typing /pvp to attack an opponent outside a Battleground or Arena setting (Wintergrasp being the current exception). If you enter a city or village of the opposing faction though, you will get automatically flagged and the NPC (Non-Player Controlled) mobs will start attacking you.

Back in the day, before Battlegrounds, we had some pretty awesome, memorable matches on my server.

Regularly, if you visited the Hillsbrad Foothills, near the tower in the center of the map you could find a battle going on - this was known as the ongoing battle for Tauren Mill and Southshore.

This was my first experience with PvP, as a huge group from my first guild was going to join in the epic battle one afternoon. I was only in my low 20s, but it sounded fun, I heard of it before from my boyfriend at the time who was a higher level than me and had experienced the fight before and I wanted to see for myself. I got directions - get to Wetlands (I had been there before), go north through the pass into Arathi Highlands and then west into Hillsbrad - stay on the path as much as possible.

I wasn't very effective, as most of the horde players were higher level than me, but there were a few other lower levels than me there, so we banded together.

It was a lot of fun.

Another old school World-PvP event was the time a large group of the Horde decided to try and take over the Dwarven Loch Modan, which is a zone surrounding a large lake.

They had been going through the smaller Alliance towns for a while this evening and while traveling, I saw the notification that Horde were in the area and attacking our Alliance members. I informed my guild members in guild chat, a few spread the word in some of the major cities, and within 10 or 15 minutes, there was a giant group of us Alliance countering the Horde's efforts to take over the Loch. We ended up fighting most of the battle in the middle of the Loch, on one of the smaller islands, with crocolisks and kleboids attacking both of us every so often.

Eventually we overthrew the Horde, sending them home and the battle was won. It was a fun time and lasted for a good half hour to an hour once everyone got into it!

And another memory, the time the Horde decided to take over the Alliance tram system.

In order to even reach the tram, you have to run in one end, cutting through either Stormwind or Ironforge (2 of the main Alliance cities) to get there. Once inside though, so long as you and many in your group didn't die, the Horde could freely take on the Alliance without NPCs interfering. Dying sucked though, as it was a long trek back - especially if you died on the Ironforge end but you were sent to the Stormwind graveyard! While many gave up and decided to just let the Horde run amok in the tram passageway, several of us, myself included, continued to chase them down the path. It eventually ended in a mutual way, both sides calling it quits, but it was a fun evening and the Horde posed for some fun pictures in front of the passageway that's under some body of water (the Loch Ness monster lives there too!).

Once Battlegrounds came out though, World PvP became less and less, only really happening when someone wanted to attack the major capitol cities, as everyone was spending hours in queue to join BGs such as Alterac Valley (AV) and then spending an entire weekend just to play one server wide match (which was always epic - oh how I miss the days of an AV that lasted at least 48hrs!). People would get in Friday night, and play on til Sunday! It was insane!