You can always depend on the kindness of strangers

Since I began studying the social and community nature of WoW, was lucky enough to land a job here at WoW Insider, and joined twitter not long after, I've been blown away by the WoW community. Sure, it's not always perfect, sometimes we have our ups and downs, but most of the time this game brings people together in ways that, to this day, continue to surprise me.

So, when I received an email from Dtail of Vashj EU, in which he asked about a particular addon, and also mentioned that his server had such a low population that he couldn't find anyone to sign his guild charter to get a guild bank set up, I suddenly thought "hold on a minute, I bet the WoW community could help Dtail out!"

When I wrote up the Addon Spotlight, I included a plea for help getting Dtail's guild charter signed, and to my surprise I received a fair few responses! I then took to twitter, thinking that asking there could be a good move, and that I could hopefully communicate with anyone who was interested in helping out. It wasn't a lofty goal, particularly, to get 3 players together, but asking for help from what are essentially strangers is always a little daunting.

So, at 10pm UK time, I logged on to my level one priest on Vashj, hoping that I would be able to work out some way of helping Dtail out, and I saw this:

At first, I didn't actually notice the neatly arranged priests on the step, until they started all waving at me in time, and spied that they were all called some version of my name! Flattering, nobody did actually tell me whose priests they were! I was also joined by several others, including Ottahz of GGW Podcast fame, Danslate, of dying a lot fame, Shiny164 and a few more!

We proceeded to Stormwind, and located Rohrschach, Dtail's bank alt, pretty easily, given that he was one of only three players there. I am really sincerely hoping that Blizzard's cross-realm zones go some way to fixing zones like Vashj, having never been in a really low-population realm's alliance capital before it was quite a shock to me, and some of my merry band.

So, we got Dtail's guild set up, and thought it was only right that, flanked by some higher level bodyguards we'd picked up along the way, we go and take down the eternal enemy of Alliance level one players: Hogger. And we did, although I admit that the two high-level warriors shouldered a lot of the heavy lifting. We were slightly delayed by Danslate's regular, yet untimely deaths to any hostile mob along the way!

Like I said, I didn't have a particularly ambitious target, but it was really wonderful and touching to see even just a few players coming together to help someone out. Thanks very much to all those who came along! It's an experience I'd very much like to repeat, so if you have any ideas for EU-based gatherings, or are in dire need of help with something that a roving army of level one alts could achieve, email me on olivia@wowinsider.com or drop a comment in, and let's talk!