Once The Burning Crusade hit the shelves, I quickly leveled to 70 and started on the dungeon gearing process. A week before we were meant to go into Karazhan for the first time, groups were posted on the guild forums and I noticed that I wasn't in any. I posted on the pertinent thread that my name was omitted from the list, but before Zav (or Thep) had a chance to fix it, a couple of the guild assholes (namely Windir and Svif) jumped on my case that I'm a whiny bitch. Since I don't take shit from lowlifes, I told them to fuck right off. The issue escalated within hours and ultimately resulted with my telling Itzlegend that I'm done with Conquest and him telling me that it's probably better that I leave. By the time I got home from work, I was already de-guilded. In retrospect, this turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me.
Literally the same day, I joined a guild called Abandon led by some of the ex-Vengeance fellows Chalae and Coeus. It's worth noting that at the time I was still playing Itada, but this time no longer as a healer but as shadow DPS. Likely due to my status as ex-Conquest, I got a spot in their first ever Gruul's Lair spot. Right off the bat, Rizzen proceeded to talk shit to me, because I was just a recruit and they had sat some of their raider-status players in favor of me. Rizzen gave me a huge amount of attitude whilst I was in Abandon for no apparent reason other than just to be an asshole. Admittedly, he might've had a reason to be angry since I absolutely obliterated him (and the rest of the raid) in DPS on Maulgar and eventually also Gruul. Not to diminish my skillz, but I should also mention that shadow priests were extremely strong early on in TBC, because the base values of their spells were higher than the rest of the classes. This did not translate well into late TBC due to lack of scaling, but that's a different matter. Tack on the fact I already had experience in both of the fights from beta and it's no wonder that I did so well and Rizzen didn't like it!
Unfortunately, Abandon did not last beyond the first two months of its existence. Like many other guilds to this day, Abandon simply suffered from "friends" and thus the overall skill level was lower than required to conquer raid encounters in early TBC. When Chalae officially declared Abandon abandoned, I had once again set out on a journey to find a new home. This time, however, my new home would become one which to this day I champion in every MMO I play.
End, Part 4
