Oh yeah huh … guess I should have delved into that one a little, my bad.

In the beginning, there was a hobbit, or maybe it was a Tcheekin? I don't remember …

Holy Crap … an expansion!!! We were so pumped over this one, having had beta invites (friends/family) and play tested the new content. But we wanted to try out some new things, too … so we moved the entire guild to a new server: Dragonmaw. And we swapped to a new faction: Alliance. And we went PvP … and did we ever :D

Completely leveled new characters through Vanilla (or Basic back then) and hit Burning Crusade running. We got into world PvP fights all over Hellfire. The guild also started to swell in ranks. Then a former Bloke went and built her own guild that hit the 40o member mark (largest on server at that time) and we became the adopted black sheep uncle … Blokes ended up going on all their RAIDs and PvP wars … partner guilds wrecking the server for Alliance. 

However, after some time the excitement died down and our guild just started having fun with the more simplistic stuff (40 man RAIDS are fun but a PAIN to run or coordinate). Then news came from our friends of the next beta and expansion: Wrath of the Lich King.

Won't lie … when Wrath hit and after playing in the beta, we were more pumped than ever. This was the tie into our long loved Warcraft RTS connections. The lands were jaw dropping, the quest lines were full of the richest stories ever and … well, there's an undead ice dragon … dude …

Right before this one dropped, we decided to return to the Horde … it's where we've always belonged. We had a few core Blokes that did not go Alliance with us and we missed them. So we moved the guild again … this time to the PvP Server Dark Iron and restarted all our characters once more, grinding all the way to end game before Wrath hit. It felt good to have the band back together and we hit Wrath at full speed. I think everyone made more Alts in Wrath than any other expansion. It was just so damn fun to run through Wrath. Still our favorite of all time.

We had left our "sister" guild back on Dragonmaw (they were slowly petering out I'm sad to say) but now we were unified as Blokes and adding more to the mix. We were discovering gamers that just wanted to enjoy Wrath like we game … slowly, steady pace, soaking it all in as a group. We eventually hit full RAID strength and began dabbling in a full schedule of end game content.

And then three of us (including myself) opened a Gaming Café in real life. That drained my WoW time completely … I watched others play at the café but found myself with no spare time to game myself. Leadership in the Blokes started to pull apart, as several of us were working to make the café succeed. Hindsight shows the store's timing was just off by a year or two … we did a lot of things there that were plenty ahead of their time (eSports for example and streaming tournaments pre-Twitch). However, our guild suffered. 

Barely had the time to play in the beta for Cataclysm and our guild had quieted down to a small peep led to an initially slow response to the new expansion. We found ourselves a bit in a limbo state … the officers and many of the long term Blokes were still around now and then … we are all close friends anyways, so we never lose track of each other … just different entertainments.

We had also just closed the gaming café … it had not worked out due to several unforeseen challenges (including never seeing my family). Eventually this expansion clicked and we began to "get into it". The changes to the natural world were solid and it was fun to explore a new version of what we had grown up on. So we played through for a couple of years. The guild had shrunk, the server populations had shrunk, everything was scraping by to stay relevant. I had more time to play (no more store to run) so I worked on modernizing the guild and refacing to make sure anyone out there looking for a comfortable home would find us … we don't really recruit we just make sure everyone knows we are here incase its what they are looking for.

However, in doing this, I noticed the server, Dark Iron, had dropped to an almost non-existent population. This game is really challenging if there are no other people around to play. Take the "Massive" out of MMO and the whole game type changes drastically. At this point, we no longer had a majority PvP base (only two of us liked the aspect), so I began looking at other servers PvE wise. Ironically, Kilrogg, our original server (which still had some original characters place keeping the guild) was booming.

So as the next expansion loomed on the horizon, we had a long discussion as a team and decided maybe it was just time to go home … so we did … we moved our characters (that we wanted to keep) back home to Horde Kilrogg Daffy Blokes.

And so it was, we had returned to Kilrogg. The homecoming was sweet, there were other day 1 guilds still around and there were new players abound. The Blokes awoke from their deep sleep and began to grow once more. By this time, many of us older Blokes had kids that had grown up watching WoW and now were of an age to jump in … we had our first Kids of Blokes rank in the guild. 

Pandas were flooding the guild alt ranks and we grinding through all the content. At endgame, once more the Blokes were farming Timeless stuff, making RAIDs and dungeon runs and just having a hoot of a time playing with each other. It was a good time once more and although Panda content was no where near that of Wrath it was still fun.

Eventually, real life once more showed its head but this time most of us felt comfortable with where we were with the guild and how it had evolved. So Blokes didn't disappear they just went into stasis or on extended holidays. However, we found ourselves playing other games with each other: Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, Diablo to name a few. So we were still around and still gaming.

We became deeply involved with the beta on Warlords of Draenor so when  it released, the Blokes were all over the content. Despite the general meme complaint of Garrisonville, we actually enjoyed it immensely as a mechanic. We also discovered the new generation of Blokes loved it as well ... way better than Farmville.

The Blokes leveled together, farmed together and even managed to get back to a loose schedule of Wednesday night RAIDs. It was a good time of easy going gaming so when some of the Blokes drifted to other games we were still good. Hearthstone in particular hooked a few of us quite tightly. However, that game only impassioned our desire to play WoW, too. We even RAIDed Blizzcon once more … each year our numbers growing.

It got a bit exciting in the real world, though. Officers started having more kids and we had one of our founding members move his family to the central coast (CA) for a new job putting him smack in the center of Blokes territory (most the officers live here). Although this was exciting it also reduced our online presence due to the real life demands. To top it off, as Warlords of Draenor started to wind down, our Top Chief guy (me) bought a house, moved his family and got a puppy (think infant with 2 year old attitude). Things became very quiet once more … again, no one left, just busy with life and playing other Blizzard games.

Few of us tried Legion out in Beta despite friends at Blizzard telling us this one was going to compete with Wrath in its awesomeness. We just didn't have the time. However, when Legion DID hit it swept the Blokes off their feet. Yes .. it was nearly as good as Wrath. They returned to their old roots of story telling, game mechanics and zone design. We were absolutely hooked. 

The Blokes played the CRAP out of Legion XD

We met some amazing people who eventually became Blokes, the guild grew in size and we were back to endgame RAIDs and basically messing with everything we could get our hands on. This expansion needed to be completely and fully played to the limit (like Wrath). Content consumed vigorously. To quote my daughter when she started playing it "OMG this is AMAZING ... why didn't they make the last few like this, dad??" .. how do you answer that?

We hit the Blizzcons each year and even got to meet several new Blokes at these ones. Beer was had, food was had, laughing was had, good times for all.