New Blog!

Hey all (or, more likely at this point, 'hey none'), welcome to Tank Harder, the not-so serious blog for tanking in World of Warcraft. I've seen way too many blogs out there about this exact subject, and of course when I see other people do it, my immediate response is to decide to do it myself. Why? It's obviously not because I can do it better, or because I'm an amazing writer. It just gives me something to do while I sit in the break room at my overnight job as an on-call insurance adjuster. Really, there's nothing better to be doing, as I'm the only one around.
So... who am I?

Well, in the World of Real Life (the only one that truly matters, as I hope we'd all agree) I'm a 23 year old Insurance adjuster living in Oklahoma. (what could be more boring?) I've got an amazing girlfriend who I've known since I was 14, and will be asking to marry me shortly (before she even gets a chance to read this blog). Oh, and my college career was spent earning a music degree, even though I work in insurance now. Sad huh?

It should come as no surprise that my number 1 hobby is playing MMORPGs. I started out in 2004 with Star Wars Galaxies, and have tried every major MMORPG at least to some extent. I've been playing WoW since Spring 2005. My first character (still my main) was a little Dwarf Paladin named Monteverdi. I picked a Paladin because I wanted a self-sufficient class, and I figured with heavy armor and the ability to heal myself, I picked pretty well. I had no idea what I was getting into. I leveled from 1 to 70 prot. specced.

I didn't raid pre-BC, but as BC hit I got into the raiding scene. My guild was never too hardcore, but we were one of the better guilds on my server. I was forced into a healing role from Karazahn all the way through Tempest Keep, but the day we took Kael'thas down (pre-patch, woot) and stepped into Hyjal, my persistence in championing the cause of the Tankadin paid off, and I was asked to respec tank. I tanked through Hyjal, BT, and the first part of Sunwell before WotLK hit.

During WotLK, I stepped down from my raid spot (at this point I was also an officer) due to my job. I moved to working an overnight shift that did not allow me to raid. As of this writing, I've not been able to move to days, and thus have spent all of WotLK in PUGs and off-night runs though. However, it's not been all bad... I've seen all but Algalon, and downed all but Yogg. I've never really done the hardmodes, but look forward to some day.

One side effect of my overnight shift is an abudance of time on my nights off. I've been able to level 4 tanks to 80... Monte (again, my main), Mahler (blood DK), Faure (Resto Druid), and Bruckner (Prot Warrior). (Side note: props to whoever guesses where my names come from). I'm an avid reader of all things tanking, and look forward to talking a lot less about myself and a lot more about tanking in future posts... Hopefully I'll even convince a few of you crazy folks to read up.

Until next time, clear skies to you all.

And, as always, screw Kungen. Monte tanks all.