What am I

I'm one of those who have reached the venerable age when you only grow sideways. I am also a gamer.

I think it started 1980 or so. With an RPG, which I believe people not vested in antiquity would call a 'table top' these days. I'm rather certain it was D&D, but what version it was I fail to remember -- it's that venerable age of mine playing tricks with me I guess.

I know for a certain that I spent close to ten years playing the ICE flagship, Rolemaster, in a way that has to be called hard core. During that time I encountered a dozen other RPGs and an innumerable amount of board games.

Then came MUD. That would be an early precursor to the WoW you're familiar with. The flavour I played for half a year and developed for another four is labelled LP-MUD. The specific one I started up with a friend, Kingdoms, came on-line 1991, and as far as I know it's still running. 20 years. That's a pretty good score for any computer game in my book.

After that I spent less time gaming and hence a lot less time making adjustments to games. One would say that I had grown up I guess, but, as every true gamer knows, that was not to last.

My fiance introduced me to a dead game. I had seen it in shops five years earlier, but after realising how awfully bugged and broken Magic: The Gathering was, I chose not to spend my cash on yet another Garfield TGC.

Now, however, it was 1999, and my fiance was dead set on me trying V:TES, and I did, and I was hooked. Eight glorious years down the drain. When I didn't work, get kids, raise kids or travel, I played V:TES.

I wrote articles, I followed and joined rules-forums. I found out what rules to legally exploit in order to force a change of the rules. I travelled around Europe to take part in championships, I eventually helped run one; and I learned the 2500 different cards by heart, how they interact with each other, what type of player prefers what type of decks.

Eventually I tired, and I ran into WoW.

Now, I know all about being hard core, and my experience from the MUD had me a bit wary. For three of those four and a half years I spent an average of sixteen hours a day, seven days a week redefining, developing, testing and changing that game.

So I am a pugadin. I'm a casual, who spends a lot of time with WoW, but I am never scheduled ahead of time, and I'll take a month or two away from the game whenever I'm bored.

Oh, and I tank. From playing fighters and paladins with sword and board, rolling dice on a table, to defining a tanking profession (that would be class for you) in the MUD, I preferred the holy warrior. During my years with V:TES i always preferred playing a defensive, blocking style of decks able to take a brutal beating.

My first character in WoW was a protection warrior, my second, after I learned about coherent talent trees, the existence of an Auction House and the possibility to trade with other characters, was a paladin. Sword and board.

That's 30 years of gaming and a total lack of evolution for you. But then I always say that tanking is a specific kind of mental deficiency. At least it's consistent.

And I guess I'm a lot of other things as well, but none that are directly related to this blog.

The Pugadin blog

This is not for you, dear hard core raider, and not for those of you who defy the shortcomings of the paladin class and prove the rest of us wrong in mortal combat with other players.

It is not even for those of you who are my brethren but chose to heal or inflict damage.

This blog is for the casual tank who thinks like a tank despite being casual.

This blog, most of all, is my creation, and hence thoroughly subjective. My opinions and my point of view will seep through every line of text here, and thus you should never take what I write as any kind of universal truth.

If you chose to do so anyway, well then I have this prime offer concerning some real estate on the Moon that I think you will find interesting.