I’ll never forget the first time I laid eyes on the Champion of the Alliance. It was early 2007 my small group of friends and I had recently hit level 70 and decided to celebrate with some wpvp in hellfire peninsula. We were fresh broke 70s so we grabbed the fp to honor hold and made our way to hfp. Upon arrival we found 2 of the 3 towers under the horde’s control, heck yeah time to get dirty, our first target would be broken hill so we mounted up on our ground mounts and headed north.
We encounter no resistance at broken hill, ez cap and slap, stadium was still under the alliance’s control, maybe the horde aren’t actually here what a bummer onto the overlook. Overlook was just as barren as broken hill, our dreams of wpvp domination were starting to slip away. Two ticks into our overlook cap the moment we’ve all been waiting for yellow alert text appeared in our chat and the stadium turned red, looks like meat’s back on the menu boys. We finished capping overlook and hastily made our way to the stadium. To our dismay the horde didn’t want to pick a fight just yet it was a ghost town, we decide to stay and full cap the stadium and cut them off at the overlook, we were 17 year old tactical geniuses.
The stadium cap was taking forever, we could smell the blood in the water and couldn’t wait to outmaneuver our adversaries. The cap was three fourths of the way there, just another minute or two and we’re in business. The overlook has been captured by the horde ¿lulwut? we were just there my dudes is this bad? Fear and confusion gripped us we were obviously outnumbered they capped that to fast, maybe we’ll go all in on broken hill and retreat to honor hold if stuff gets hairy? There was no time to deliberate, high in the sky northeast of us five objects came into view red names mounted on wyverns headed directly for us. Defeat is all but assured these fat cats have flying we can’t outrun them we are probably embarrassingly under geared compared to them, our only option is to fight.
They swoop down low in a terribly synchronized formation and disappear from our sight we decide to hold fast on our high ground atop the walls of the stadium and wait. Broken hill has been captured by the horde, we were so naive, all that’s left for us now is to take as many of them with us as we can and spirit rez to safety. Corruptions start to appear on my allies debuff bars as the horde begin to flood in beneath us, I active sprint and beeline towards our enemies trying to get a sap off on an out of combat target to help even the odds, turns out I was actually going to eat a frost nova, nice try nerd, escape artist, I’m all over you.
The ensuing battle felt like it took an eternity but was probably only a minute, apparently our foes comp consisted of three male bloodelf holy paladins probably because they are super pretty. It’s not easy to kill a target with three pocket healers but thankfully hpally’s aren’t known for their top tier dps and we’ve got a resto druid turns out lifebloom was kinda good. We’re losing this war of attrition however, I’m out of cooldowns the druid is going oom and our lock buddy could have probably live forever realistically affliction was op but it’s time to retreat. We jump off the northern side of the stadium walls, it’s a stretch but we can make it back to honor hold, more importantly why do I have two racks of lock dots on me now and what’s this ravager doing here. Broken hill finally decided to show up to the party and we jumped right into their waiting arms. We’re surrounded, low health and the good for nothing druid is 100 yards away in travel form praying to go ooc and stealth, for all intensive purposes we dead.
Have you ever been hit by 10 holy shocks at once? I have and it felt great, unbeknownst to me my savior had already arrived. Like a swarm of divine locus I watched as a tempest of plate, diplomacy and stormherald’s devoured the horde in front of me within the blink of an eye, at the head of that glorious force Horrigan. Five seconds ago my aggressors were all too assured of their victory, now motionless on the ground the only thing left of them were the honor tokens in my bags. Without a word he and his outfit mounted their gryphons and were gone before I could even say thank you. That life changing encounter left me with two things an indescribable desire to join the ranks of The Enclave and what I’m assuming was a troll blessing of wisdom. A few days later I finally worked up the courage to request admission to what was now my life’s only purpose and who better to ask then the conqueror himself.
The story of the first time I ever spoke to Horrigan is much shorter. He told me I was not fit to join The Enclave because I was a filthy subhuman and undeserving to wear their banner, so instead my friends and I lived out our tbc days under the guild tag of Horrigans Gnome Posse and unquestionably carried out his will until they opened up to all races in wrath. Fortunately for you guys there is no class restriction this time around come play.
-Dust