My first MMO character #4: Lincoln Carpenter
My first MMO character was...
Maldirr, Orc Warrior
Born: ~2005
Game: World of Warcraft
Technically, my very first MMO characters were in a RuneScape account (that was later hacked during years of inactivity) and a Trandoshan force-sensitive in Star Wars Galaxies, that I only played long enough to realize the New Game Enhancements were bad.
After enough hours of watching cinematic raid clear videos on WarcraftMovies.com and daydreaming about the legendary weapon names I saw after Googling my way to Thottbot, I convinced my parents to foot the bill for a WoW subscription. My intention was to make an Orc hunter.
I misclicked. I only realized I was playing a warrior after noticing my new character didn't have a bow.
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But I rolled with it, and Maldirr remained my WoW main for years, Mortal Striking his way through casual Arms DPS rotations across somewhere in the neighborhood of four expansions. Eventually, however, the thrill of big Execute numbers gave way to other curiosities, and I started putting more time into my Worgen rogue. Then my undead mage. Then my dwarf shaman, who gets the most attention during the couple times a year I pay for a month of subscription time.
When I get those resurgent bouts of the WoW bug, I still try to put a few levels into Maldirr for old times' sake. At some point, I changed his hair color from brown to gray—but he's still wearing the same old Stone Guard tabard I'd earned from too many hours in Alterac Valley, when there was nowhere I'd rather be spending my time.
Lincoln has been writing about games for 12 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.
- Harvey Randall Staff Writer
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