Farewell Old Friend

In a trend all too familiar these days, Euripides, of OutDPS and the Hunting Party Podcast is retiring from World of Warcraft.

Wow!

In my nine years playing World of Warcraft, I have met many players, but made few friends. Euripides was my best. Euripides and I began our blogging careers almost a month apart. His first post was published on February 24, 2009.

I discovered his blog shortly after I created mine. I did a Google search on how to kite Zombie Chow, and this post was at the top of the list. I read the post and everything else he had written. I never thought much about it until now, but Euripides saved my blog.

Shortly after I started my blog, I had second thoughts about continuing it. At that time the first generation of Hunter bloggers were going strong (BRK, Pike, Birgwyn, etc.) I wasn’t feeling that confident, but I went and visited OutDPS and saw that he had added me to his blogroll. I have no idea how he found me. I did not know Euri, and hand’t left any comments on his blog. I assume he was checking stats and saw me as a visitor and traced back to my blog. However it happened, it was seeing my site on his blogroll that encouraged to keep on going.

It was by mere coincidence that Euri and I happened to play on Drenden. It was also the home of BRK. I honestly don’t remember how our friendship evolved. I do remember that on the day that patch 3.1 dropped, Euri invited me to join his raid group to run Ulduar. We only did Flame Leviathan, but it was my first taste of being in a strong raid group.

In July that year, Euri made this post announcing that he wanted to start a Hunter related podcast, and he was looking for help. I answered the call and a few short weeks later, the Hunting Party Podcast began.

A year later he got me an invitation to his guild, Aetherial Circle (AC). AC was also the former guild of BRK, before he quit. A couple of months into it, AC folded, and Euri and I formed our own guild called Bucket List. It’s gone through some ups and downs, but remains strong today, albeit under new management now.

In addition to making a name for himself as a Hunter, Euri became better know as an AH guru. His articles and podcasts helped fellow WoW players make millions in gold.

Whether as a Hunter or a banker Euripides is worthy a of a spot in the WoW players hall of fame, and I sincerely hope that Blizzard finds a way to recognize him as they have so many others. Perhaps and item that makes you randomly disengage to your death in the first 30 seconds of a boss fight.

Happy Hunting, old friend, I miss you already!