Aspect of the Wild: Lynxr

Lynxr was my first WoW character.

Several of my good friends play WoW. Zeiseit used to pester me to join WoW so I could play with them, but I've never been interested in video games. I do, however, like animals quite a lot. I told Z that I had zero interest in running around as a troll or an elf or an orc... but gosh, if they ever made it possible for me to play the game as a cat, maybe I'd give it a try.

The funny part is that he forgot to mention Druids. Druids can, more or less, run around in cat form all the time... exactly what I was looking for! Eventually, I overheard my friends talking about "cat form," and sure enough, I agreed to give it a try.

Why must Tauren cats be so ugly? QQ. If I could have played Alliance from the beginning, you bet that I would have. I thought all the Horde races were ugly (except for Blood Elves, they're all right), and the Tauren Cat is especially bad... I'm a mangy male lion with my jaw constantly hanging open in a stupid grin, and nasty back hair running all the way down my spine. The ears are the worst part of all, disgusting little pink flaps of skin that wiggle back and forth, entirely out of place on a feline. Eww. Night Elf Cats are gorgeous! But alas, all of my friends play Horde, and so I gritted my teeth and resigned myself to a lifetime of ugliness. But hey, I had four paws and a tail, and I could bite and claw stuff to death, and that was pretty sweet.

And so, Lynxr was born. Her name was a typo, btw. I was trying to see if "Lynx" was available, and accidentally stuck an R on the end, so I went with it. Learning to play WoW was hard, since I've never played video games on the computer (or anywhere else, really) before. How do I run forward, backward, turn around, or jump? What do all these buttons do? How will I ever remember which keyboard keys correspond to which actions? I picked it up pretty quickly, though, and within a few days I had powered through the first ten levels and gotten Bear form. Then I sped up to 20 as quick as I could, eager to be a kitty. WoW was fun! Taurens may be ugly, but Mulgore was pretty, and filled with pretty animals.

My friends and I formed a core group of characters to level together. We created our own guild, called WoW Cave, after the room in our house were several of us play WoW all together. We stayed within about 3 levels of each other at all times, and we did every instance on the way to 70. Early on, Zeiseit the Paladin tanked. Thulgasta the Shaman both DPSed and healed (as Enhancement). Livormortis the Warlock, Raiynaha the Rogue, and me the kitty DPSed. Eventually, as we entered Outland, it became apparent that we needed a dedicated healer, so Z respecced to Holy and Shylar the Paladin (Raiynaha's main) took over tanking. We had many grand adventures on our way to 70. At 70, we had finally caught up to Baro the Priest, our friend who has been playing WoW since the beginning and who was level 70 long before the rest of us were level 1. For me, the best part of WoW (aside from the kitties ;) is playing with friends.

Since reaching 70, WoW Cave has grown to include several more friends and friends-of-friends. We do Karazhan and Heroics regularly, and have also gone to the occasional 25-man. We're super excited about all the 10-man content that we'll be able to run together in WotLK.

Lynxr has been fully "epic," wearing 100% purples for Cat gear, for some time now. She's sporting a mixture of Kara, T4, and Badge gear. She has always been a Cat first and foremost, though she's been doing a lot of tanking over the past few months. Lynxr's main goal in life is to collect as many vanity pets (minipets, companions) as possible. She currently has 55 vanity pets. I keep track of my vanity pet collection at warcraftpets.com.

Lynxr's Titles: Bloodsail Admiral, Jenkins

Noteworthy Achievements: Avast, Ye Admiral!; Tabard of the Argent Dawn; Shop Smart, Shop Pet... Smart; 1,000 Quests Completed; 1,000 Honorable Kills -- she should also have Classic Dungeonmaster and Outland Dungeonmaster because she's cleared everything on those lists, but since they were not all retroactive, I'm still working on re-doing some of them.

Screenshots:

Lynxr's first Christmas. My boyfriend (Thulgasta) got her a Firefly and a Crimson Whelpling, my first rare vanity pets! For a low level character, these were amazing gifts... he even farmed the Whelpling for me himself, which took many, many hours (both of these are 1-in-1,000 drop rates and sell for upwards of 1k gold on the AH). <3>

Lynxr in Booty Bay, dancing with Cornish Rex. With help from my friends, I purchased all the Alliance-side vendor pets and transfered them to Lynxr through the neutral AH. Of course, this was before she turned to a life of piracy and became the enemy of Goblins everywhere...

Lynxr and her friends have been on many adventures to scary dungeons. We have defeated a lot of really bad dudes and dudettes.

Lynxr's first trip to the Dark Portal. Outland awaits... and I hear there are vanity pets there...

Arr! Avast, mateys! Lynxr became a Bloodsail Admiral in order to obtain a very rare vanity pet, the Blood Parrot. To this day, she is Hated by all of the Goblin factions... with good reason, since she slaughtered legions of their kin to win the favor of the pirates.