Featured Guildie Astraness

Meet Featured Guildie Astraness

1. Please take a screenshot of your character in your favourite transmog and send it along with this message. 

2. What is your main chars name/class/favourite spec?

Astraness, Balance Druid. 

Previously I mained a Hunter from the pre-patch for Warlords of Draenor, and all the way through Legion until Mythic Progress on Battle for Dazar Alor was just getting underway.

3. When did you first start playing WoW?

It was around November (ish) 2011, Firelands was out, and I vaguely remember the hype around Dragon Soul releasing, even though I was completely new to MMOs, and had no clue what this ‘raiding’ malarky was about. 

4. What was the first character you ever created?

The first character I ever created was a female Night Elf Discipline Priest, Macnessa. I still have her with me on my current server, although she’s shadow now and human and prefers to spend her days crafting gems.

5. What is your favourite zone in the game?

Aesthetically, I absolutely loved the Vale of Eternal Blossoms (before Garrosh ruined it in Patch 5.4) – it was breathtakingly beautiful, and I have to say that the Valley of the Four Winds was the first time in playing that I felt thoroughly bonded to a zone, I had 8 max level alts with max level farms all doing their daily planting and harvesting and I made a nice amount of gold for the first time since starting to play.

I also love Uldum, going there always feels like I’m taking some kind of sunny vacation, it’s so wide, and open, with those amazing huge landmarks. Great stuff.

Uldum

6. If your current favourite class didn’t exist, what would your main be?

That’s a really tough question. I’m still trying to find a ‘main-alt’ to focus on.

It would probably be back to my hunter, even though they’re kind of middle-of-the-range right now, I guess I’d be keen to try something I’ve never raided on before.

Probably Mage. Possibly Warlock. 

To be honest, I’d be happy to main whatever my raid team needed.

I mean, if you’d told me five years ago, I’d be doing Mythic Zul progression on a rogue, I would have laughed at you for being certifiably insane, but there you go.

7. Name a player that you admire, and why (you don’t have to know them personally)

I’d have to say Sco from Method. One of the most genuine, down to earth, level-headed players out there. Dedicated to the max, weathered the Method/Serenity split like a complete gentleman (even though he personally took a lot of abuse from certain members of the community involved), he kept his head up didn’t resort to petty mudslinging and built his vision for the Method team into a solid business, growing ESports brand and effectively forging a completely new “playing field”.

Closer to home – any player that takes the time to stop and help out a random new person, or even a veteran, anyone who passes on info to help someone improve on their personal gameplay – not everyone is a theory crafter (myself included) and to all those people who have ever pointed me in the direction of the latest info to improve my personal gameplay – I know you who are, you know who you are and you have my thanks.

8. Tell us about an amazing experience you had in game.

One of my earliest “mind-blown” moments came when I started playing WoW – and having come from an RTS background where the map always had an end or an edge to realising that WoW was an entire world, with continents and seas – and realising how HUGE the world felt. Realistically there are edges to it – by way of ships and portals etc – but that feeling of freedom, of flying for the first time? It was indescribable!

Another great moment was still very early in my WoW journey – I was on a small server with a fairly tight-knit population – and I was randomly sitting outside the AH in the Trade District of Stormwind when I was invited to a group who were going to go for the Achievement “For the Alliance”. They were messaging people on and offline – and the skies filled up with dragons as players either flew in – or logged in to join and I’d never seen anything like it.

So on our little server that was so quiet and where hardly ever anything happened – it turned out that some hordies had flown into Stormwind Keep and were attacking King Varian Wrynn – and in retaliation, the Alliance side of the server had decided to first defend and then take out all four horde leaders for the achievement. That was my first taste of group content resembling a raid and I was thoroughly hooked.

9. Any favourite movies or music you want to share?

Anything that resembles an epic musical score from a movie. Hans Zimmer, Nick Glennie-Smith, the Gregson-Williams brothers, James Horner, Ennio Morricone, John Williams, Trevor Rabin, anything by Tomas Bergersen.

Love classical music.

Love 80s pop.

Love Trance/Electronic Dance.

Love (some) Metal.

10. After WoW, which other game, have you invested a significant amount of time in?

Overwatch. Civilization (from III upwards to VI, including A.E.), all the old Sierra Empire Building Games (Caesar III, Pharaoh/Cleopatra, Zeus/Poseidon, Emperor). Age of Empires, Warcraft II Tides of Darkness, Warcraft III, Starcraft Brood Wars. Banished. Planetbase. Surviving Mars. Offworld Trading Company. Pretty much any space related empire/colony management sim. Two Point Hospital. The Sims (from the original all the way to IV).

Warcraft III

Civilization VI

Empire Earth

Age of Empires III

11.  A Photo of my set up

Ok, this was my set up until 2 weeks ago, since I just moved house.

I’ll update with my new setup soon, although tbh, not much has changed except I have a bit more space, my secondary monitor is now on my right and I have a new keyboard.

11.  A Photo of my set up – updated!

Here’s my updated setup as promised.

These featured guildie posts will form part of a community page that I’ll be building once I’ve posted more responses to the questionnaire that is on our Discord (Pinned in the website-updates channel). So if you haven’t yet filled it in, please do so, and PM me your answers on Discord. Alternatively, you can copy pasta the questions from here.