Jedem: Through the years

The very nice and friendly Vidyala over at Manalicious wrote about a cool meme that involved posting a screenshot of your main from many levels ago along with a screenshot of it now to show how far you've come along. I meant to do this post the other day when Vid actually posted about it but of course doing things when they are relevant just isn't my style. So I dug through seven years worth of screenshots and eventually I found screenshots that made me both laugh and cry. Seven years of visual reminders of things that you've gone through tend to do that.

Anyway on with the show! I decided that I would tweak the premise of the meme and instead of posting a comparison of a character then and now, I am posting a visual timeline for my mage. Step back into the way back machine with me as we travel back to the year 2005. It was a good year: Facebook was still only for the cool kids in college, the White Sox won the World Series, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith was released, and a young man who would go on to be known world wide as Jed, began to play the World of Warcraft.



When I began playing WoW I decided to play a warrior first because I thought it would be the closest equivalent class to the Dark Knight I had played in Final Fantasy 11. Eventually events occurred that caused me to switch to a new server that had just opened up named Ursin. I figured that I would try a mage this time and so Jedem was born. Sadly I couldn't find any screenshots of Jedem pre-20s, probably because I didnt take any until around 26. So here is Jedem at level 26:

Ah the good old days of using CTMod and not having enough spells for all the extra action bars it gave you. You can also see Titan Panel and MonkeyQuest in that shot. I still use both addons today.

Here is an action shot:

 Apparently I picked up a sweet looking hat not long after this screenshot because here is Jedem at 32 in old Menethil Harbor:

 Oh yeah, I'm so awesome that my hands glow from said awesomeness. Be jealous. Fast forward a few levels and I've apparently visited SM Cathedral as I am wearing Whitemanes Chapeau in Uldaman.

The horrors of having to run Uldaman every time you needed to visit the enchanting trainer. Damn kids nowadays don't understand how easy they have it. Anyway, I am probably not far into my early 40s in that last screenshot because early 40s was the level range for Uldaman. I of course didn't get a mount at 40 when I could because it was expensive as hell back then. It cost 100g to learn the riding skill and buy the mount. Now in today's game economy, 100g can be earned in an hours worth of dailies but in those olden days 100g was an insanely high amount. I don't know anyone who played in vanilla and bought their mount at 40 on their first character.

Now once I did get my mount, I explored all the things! I ran around every not for achievements or xp but for the sheer pleasure of seeing the world. One of the zones that I ran through was Un'Goro where I ran across the king ninja dinosaur:

Of course I made a snarky nerd remark as soon as I saw him:

Eventually I managed to claw my way to level 60 and I was still pugging my way through life. Heres the mage in DM:

That's right, even back then I was topping the DPS charts. /Flex I also started using a sweet UI addon called Discord, which was great and gave me more info then the default UI. Yays for only part of the UI being default! Also I giggled at how little information the character info screen actually gave us back then. I can't tell you how much spell power I had but I get the feeling it was less then 200.

This is me on my very first Molten Core run in front of Lucifron. I am wearing some very sexy dungeon set pieces, at least the Magisters robe and possibly gloves. I'm also sporting my very first epic, the Glowing Brightwood Staff which was enchanted with Fiery Weapon. That's right fear my fiery weapon glow!! (It was free from a guildee and I didnt have anything better at the time so don't judge.)

Eventually I downed rag and picked up my sexy tier two helm along with a cool weapon which you can see in this image. I actually got the killing blow on the first rag kill we had and it was great bragging rights. =D

Eventually my mage made his way into BWL a few times. Here is the Razorgore fight, I honestly can't remember if this was a wipe or if we downed the boss. By this point I had managed to pick up some tier gear including my shoulders which you can see in the screenshot.

Uhmmm...I'm not sure how to explain this. In fact we should probably not talk about this and pretend that this never happened. 

Well Burning Crusade hit and I was all about the leveling. Here I am in the Slave Pens and you can see that my UI hasn't changed much since the last time we saw it. Very blah, I know but it worked just fine for me and that was all that mattered.

Here I am at 64 probably running from Mana Tombs to go quest in Terrokar. It appears that I had no luck getting rid of my tier shoulders or helm. : /

Here I am at the Ring of Blood in Nagrand doing the group quests. I still hadn't managed to get rid of my tier shoulders or tier two helm. Pay no attention to the DPS meter as it is clearly not accurate since I am only second on it.

Hey look at that I'm 70 now and I am no longer sporting my tier helm...but I still have my tier one shoulders. Stupid loot luck ftl =(. I don't remember where I got that cool looking staff but whenever I do, I might have to get another one for mogging purposes because it does look sweet.

Now I tried really hard but I couldn't find a single screenshot of my mage in the 70-85 level range. I guess I just didn't screenshot along the way or perhaps goblins ate my screenshots. The only one I was able to find was this one At least we aren't forced to look at a mage in a northrend viking clown suit or cataclysm greenage.

Here is my mage at the end of a heroic Throne of Tides. I FINALLY moved away from the default ui.(truthfully I probably did that during BC but since I don't have screenshot proof of it, we'll just pretend that's what happened.) In my opinion level 85 cloth gear was much nicer looking than level 80 gear.

Here's a better shot of my mage's gear. This was after an Outland Gnomish Death Race which is why I'm hanging out in Honor Hold with a bunch of gnomes. /shifty eyes Yeah that's the story I'm going with.

Because my raid main is my tankadin, my mage doesn't many raids but every now and then I manage to get someone else to tank and I bring my mage along for raiding fun. Here is my mage hanging out with a dead Nefarion in BWD.

My mage sadly never killed the Lich King in Wrath so I got a group together to kill him in Cata. It wasn't the same but hey I'll take what I can get.

Here is my mage in Dalaran minutes after getting the 100 mount achievement which rewards a sweet Blue Dragonhawk flying mount! This would be around patch 4.2 as I am still sporting Zul'roic shoulders.

And so we come to the end of our timeline. This is my mage in Stormwind sporting some very sexy transmogged gear. I'm wearing 7/8 Arcanist, 1/8 Netherwind, and my Glowing Brightwood Staff and this time its enchanted with Power Torrent. It has been a long journey to get here, seven years in fact, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. I've met amazing people, I've met horrible people, and many people in between. I've downed bosses and I've wiped to bosses, I've run content when it was new and considered progression and I've run the same content now when it's considered old and boring.

Here is to Pandas and everything they bring. Good or bad, I know I'll have a good time as long as I'm on my mage.