This week’s topic over at Blog Azeroth is near and dear to my heart. Mostly because I’m a total packrat, and I love these kinds of things, but what Feral Tree wants to know is what items or mementos have you kept (in your toon’s pack or bank) and why? Whether it be keepsakes, quest rewards, special items, random drops, whatever! – why did you decide to hang on to it? What’s its significance to you?

Now, I already did a post about what kind of junk I tote around with me in my bags, so this time I’m going to focus solely on some of the mementos that I hold near and dear in my bank. Every time I lament my lack of bank space and Brade tries to convince me to destroy things, there are certain things that I just cannot let go – no matter how full my bags may be.

Before we get started, and so that you fully understand the level of packrat-ness that I exude, perhaps I should give you a glimpse into Beru’s bank? Yes?

As I was looking through the treasure hold that is my bank last night in preparation for this post, I found it extremely hard to pick just a handful of my preciouses for this post. However, I have somehow managed to narrow it down to ten. It was a challenge let me tell you! But here are ten of my fondest memories that seem to survive every expansion and every bank purging.

As Cataclysm grows closer I find myself, and several of my guildmates, doing a lot of reminiscing about “the good old days”. There are a lot of things that I remember when I start to think back over my almost 6 year affair with WoW, and there are some things that I think I will never forget when all is said and done and I think about the time I spent in the game.

During this period of reflection I started thinking about some of the most memorable boss kills that I have experienced in WoW. Now, I have killed a lot of bosses in this game, but there are certainly some that will always stand out more than others. I suspect that while there will be some bosses that grace a lot of lists, no two lists will be identical. Everyone will have different emotions and feelings that color their memories.

So, while I am being all nostalgic, I thought that I’d share what boss kills I think I will always remember.

So, recently Tam decided that his holiday gift giving should start a little early this year.  What did he give everyone?  Why, a question to which he would like the answer.  What did Tam want to know about me?  He was curious to know about the most difficult decision I’ve had to make in WoW and how I felt about it in retrospect.

At first I looked at the question and went “man, I think I would have preferred the murloc one!”, but to be perfectly honest, the answer came to me very, very quickly.

Unless you’ve  been living under a rock, you are probably aware that WoW is celebrating its 5 year anniversary.  What you probably don’t know, however, is that Monolith (WoW edition) is also celebrating its 5 year anniversary!  This is something that I’m extremely proud of, and also a bit awed by.  There aren’t that many guilds out there that can say they have been here since Day One!  Sure, we’ve had our ups and downs, but we’ve persevered.  This is something that I think is worth a bit of celebration.

I have spent a good bit of time over the past few months preparing an anniversary celebration for us.  We’ve opened it up to anyone and everyone that is in our guild to participate, regardless of guild rank.  We decided on five events that we are going to host over the course of the evening during our regularly scheduled raid time(this Sunday!), and have been slowly “leaking” the events to the guild via our website for the past couple of weeks.  Because I’m so excited, I thought I’d share our plans with all of you!  Including the elusive fifth event that we haven’t announced to the guild just yet 🙂

I’ve been working on a series of posts, that have grown hugely lengthy, trekking down memory lane, as we approach the 5 year anniversary of WoW.  I realize as I go through them that they are probably only interesting to me, but I am enjoying drafting them, and I will post them in all of the wordy glory nonetheless.

But as I go through them, I realized that they chronicle the decisions that I made and why, but some of my fondest memories don’t seem to have a place there.  I could go back and re-write them, but instead I’ve decided I’d just make a separate post for them!  Here are some of my fondest memories in WoW:

• Getting my hunter’s epic bow.  I was one of the first on the server, I was so proud of myself for having completed it.
• Finishing the Benediction quest on my priest.  The story line for that quest was absolutely amazing, and it’s a shame that very few people actually got to be immersed in that lore.
• Getting Beru’s AQ40 staff.  I still have it in my bank!
• Killing Nefarian.  What a rush, they just don’t make fights that epic anymore in my opinion.
• Killing C’Thun.  This is actually one of my proudest moments in WoW.  There were not many guilds at all that accomplished this task and we were the only horde guild to get the job done.
• Getting griefed…and then griefing in kind on the outdoor dragons 🙂  A lil’ world PvP never killed nobody!
• Graveyard zerging Auzuregos, you know you did it at least once too!
• PvPing with Krush, Lal and Cootie.  I miss Cootie, he was a breath of fresh air every day.
• Killing Illidan.  After our guild split nobody expected us to survive, more or less actually be successful.  This kill was a big fuck you to everyone that wanted us to fail, and validated every last ounce of hard work I had put into helping us rebuild.  Not only that, we had gotten a glaive on our first kill…what were the odds?  We had also killed Vashj and Kel’Thas and Archimonde all pre-sunwell, but it was this first Illidan kill that really felt like we had hammered in that final nail and it felt good.  We were back and here to stay.
• Crafting Val’anyr.  I wasn’t sure we would get it done, little did I know we wouldn’t only get mine done but Bill’s as well!

I’m sure I could come up with 100 more!  I’ve been playing this game for 5 years, after all 🙂  How about all of you?  What are some of your fondest memories?