About
Runyarusco (roon-yah-roo-skoh)
With a free 14-day trial in hand and the assurance that I’d be able to play with one of my best friends, I created Runyarusco on Garona during the summer of 2006, just after finishing college. I had absolutely zero prior experience with any sort of MMORPG but hit 60 mid August; soon after, I joined my friend Oreblade’s progression guild, <Awen>.
Even in the days of vanilla WoW, Runyarusco was always a Feral Druid—with a pretty nice set of healing gear. Although I detested the greener side of Druiding, it was relatively simple to keep up and/or exceed the rest of the healing core simply by having a massive mana pool (thanks Heart of the Wild!) and down-ranking Healing Touch—that’s how I earned my raid spot. Whenever we needed an offtank on the fly or a little more DPS, I shifted into the appropriate gear and lent an eager paw.
Just before Burning Crusade released, our guild master boldly decided to take advantage of the free transfers off of the heavily-populated Garona to Baelgun. Fueled by the prospect of zero queue times, easier farming, and less competition for quest mobs, nearly the entire guild transferred. Formerly third on Garona, we were forced to start from scratch and draw recruits from an increasingly small player pool and simultaneously compete with other like-minded progression guilds. A myriad array of real life issues and sudden disappearances made a serious dent in our group of core raiders, and following the initial nerf to Feral Druids back in February of 2007, our guild leader requested that I level my Warrior, Rueful, to be a new full-time tank. In the process, I met the best Warrior I’ve ever played with—and two years later, we’re getting married.
<Awen>, however, wasn’t destined to last. Although <Awen> with all its long history dissolved a few months into Burning Crusade, it remains the single greatest raiding experience I’ve had to date—even though I wasn’t tanking on a regular basis. Forty-man raiding, before the advent of easy server transfers, was a tight-knit and highly regimented activity where I met folks I’m still friends with today (and sorely miss). Since then, I had a brief stay on Scarlet Crusade (RP), home to Phaelia of Resto4Life fame, and raided as a Restoration Druid to play catch-up—that’s what the guild I played for needed.
As a Restoration Druid, I conquered tier 5 and 6 content, even after I transferred off of Scarlet Crusade and joined <Singularity> on Doomhammer to raid with my now-fiancé. I met some more fantastic people in <Singularity> and finally had the chance to switch back to being a full-time Feral—which was what I really wanted anyway. When I finally left the guild due to officer corp. rearrangement, scheduling and the prospect of wedding planning, we were most of the way through Sunwell (pre-nerf).
With a small group of friends (<Dread Lobster>), we tackled much of the ridiculously easy content that Wrath of the Lich King has to offer. Wrath splintered guilds even more than Burning Crusade. As a million tiny guilds with mostly-great players sprang up, it became increasingly difficult to recruit anyone. Now, excited by the prospect of raiding in an entirely different atmosphere, I divide my time between Doomhammer (US-PVE) and Mal’ganis (US-PVP)—except that on Mal’ganis, I play a Balance specced Tauren Druid. You know, for now.
The Player
I enjoy makeouts, high fives, and challenging games of Tetris. No, seriously. I majored in creative writing with a background in marine and microbiology. After school, I wrote technical manuals for a major bioprocessing corporation for over a year until my contract ended, and now, I write professionally and implement new corporate language for a nationally known insurance company. I am a New Englander at heart, but I recently moved to the Midwest to live with my now-husband and our two cats, Luciren and Boomer—named for the fat puking zombies in L4D, not the Cylon in BSG.
Other than adventuring in the World of Wacraft, I enjoy a multitude of varied activities. I am an extraordinarily avid reader, follow politics with much enthusiasm, enjoy sarcasm and sci-fi television shows, cook with great zeal (and am self-publishing a cookbook later this year), SCUBA dive, sail, pretend to be a ninja, knit, garden, take and develop pictures, and generally feed my intense curiosity about the world around me.
I miss the ocean.
