Hello there! My name is Sean (or if you know me from in game it’s Drex) and I am addicted to World of Warcraft.
I grew up with video games being part of my life, dating back to 1987 when my family got an NES that my younger brother and I would play for hours on end. Games were always a family event in our house with Mom and Dad often joining us in solving puzzles in Zelda, beating hard levels in Super Mario and exploring alien worlds in Metroid. Early on Final Fantasy dug its hooks in and never let go. The feel of being a hero in an RPG was something that instantly resonated with Mark (that’s my brother, you might have known him as Forix, the fire mage, if you played Vanilla WoW two decades ago) and I right from the beginning.
In ’95, Warcraft 2 came out and my uncle let me play it on his Pentium 133. I never looked back.
As a mostly console household until the mid 90s we lived and breathed Nintendo and through them Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior. We enjoyed all types of other games including Lost Dwarves and Blackthorne – 2 entries from Blizzard Entertainment. Little did I know then that this was a company that would shape my life going forward. In ’95, Warcraft 2 came out and my uncle let me play it on his Pentium 133. I never looked back.
Mark and I dove full on into the world of PC gaming with Diablo, StarCraft, EverQuest, City of Heroes, Warhammer Online and, then eventually World of Warcraft. My first ever character in WoW was an Undead Rogue that lasted about 10 levels before getting deleted and remade as a Human rogue. You see I’ve always been driven by visuals and I just can’t get with the look of the hunched over Horde races. But then on a rainy day in Nova Scotia, The Burning Crusade launched and brought Blood Elves to the game and Paladin’s to the Horde. I swapped over to a Protection Paladin and never looked back.
I joined the Canadian Navy at 27 years old. I tried to make my career and playing Warcraft work, but as I mentioned, I can’t do things casually.
I’ve never been able to do anything casually. I’m all in all the time (to probably unhealthy levels) and Warcraft was no different. I started tanking, built a raid team and started raid leading in TBC and that carried over into Wrath of the Lich King (an expansion to this day that I consider to be the peak of Warcraft).
However despite my in game life flourishing I found my real life to be less glorious. By this time I had been bartending for 5 years and I knew I didn’t want to wake up one day as a 40 year old serving college students every night while Sandstorm (shoutout to Da Rude and the best EDM anthem of all time) pumped in the background. So I joined the Canadian Navy at 27 years old. I tried to make my career and playing Warcraft work but as I mentioned I can’t do things casually. I wanted to focus on my career to be the best technician I could (spoiler, I achieved this was awarded the Rheinmetall Award in 2014 for being the top technician in the Fleet) so after Icecrown Citadel fell I took a step back and walked away from Azeroth. For what I believed would be forever.
Ten years went by where I completely ignored everything that was happening in Warcraft. In 2012 my brother and I developed a retro video game hobby and started a YouTube channel where we could chronicle our adventures and review old games from our childhood (shoutout to CartridgeBros, my Twitter handle and the name of our channel) and then in 2014 we started the Cartridge Club, a game of the month podcast – We were basically Oprah’s Book Club for video game nerds. It was awesome and is still going strong today (probably because we knew when to step down and hand control over to some amazingly passionate people in the community back in 2018).
I had gotten extremely busy with work in the years of 2015-2019 serving 3 deployments in that span and visiting over 24 different countries while sailing on 3 different ships. While I was deployed in the Summer/Fall of 2018 my then wife sent me a Facebook message informing me that she wouldn’t be there when I got home. This news took me by surprise and my life got turned on its head. During this same trip I was unfortunately working for a Chief who had been singling me out and harassing me. It was not a great 6 months. I organized the sale of my home, had a friend pick up my Australian Cattle Dog, Shadow, from my now ex and renovated my parents basement all while touring the Mediterranean and then the Baltic seas.
My brain had shifted into survival mode and all I wanted to do was get somewhere safe, at 37 years old the only place I could think of that fit the bill was with my parents.
Fast forward to November 1, 2019. I found myself sitting in my basement apartment watching Blizzcon news and there’s Sylvanas walking up to Icecrown Citadel. When I had left the game it was standing at the base of the Frozen Throne, and now a decade later Blizzard was calling me back to the place I had loved, a place I had felt so much joy and had had so much success. After a little debate with myself on November 11th 2019 I bought Battle For Azeroth and re subscribed to the World of Warcraft. As I’ve said before, casual isn’t a thing I do. I levelled my character to 120 in the tail end of 8.2 and hit 8.3 Visions of N’Zoth running. I achieved my first AOTC, my first Mythic End boss kill (1 week shy of CE) and had fallen in love with M+ and the rest as they say, is history.
The content creation bug grabbed me again in 2022 and I started the Recruit a Friend podcast. I had spent 2 years watching streamers and content creators and I wanted to know who they were behind the keyboard. So I just started interviewing them.
I made it a project for myself to seek out those places where people are embraced for their differences and lifted up, valued and welcome.
That’s how I found VALOR.
I also left the Navy in 2022 because I could no longer spend my days in a place where the culture of abuse and neglect was so rampant. We as people deserve better. People should be lifted up, not broken down. Encouraged, not discouraged. Cared for and valued, not worked to the bone and tossed away at the first sign of wearing down. Ironically I found a lot of these same issues in some Warcraft communities and I made it a project for myself to seek out those places where people are embraced for their differences and lifted up, valued and welcome. That’s how I found VALOR.
The community immediately stands out as different. Better. I joined the discord and attended some Town Halls, Academy events and Community Raid Nights. Then when I built up the courage I applied to be a mentor for tanks (now specializing in Protection Warrior, Thane Gang rise up) and was accepted.
Heading into The War Within I hope to see VALOR flourish and grow. I’d like to see them get their first Cutting Edge (CE) as a guild and to get one of the Mythic+ teams on the main stage at a Mythic Dungeon International (MDI) or The Great Push (TGP) (It’s gotta be VALOR Rain, right?!)
If you’re still here, thanks for reading and I look forward to seeing you in Azeroth!
Sean’s excitement and enthusiasm when finding VALOR is the reason why we created this community. His deep understanding of our vision, combined with his success and dedication to the game we all love, continues to inspire us. We’re truly honored to have him as an integral part of our community.
