Meet VALOR: Pitt
Hey everyone! I’m Anthony, but you’d know me in Discord and in guild as Pitt.
I am one of the newest members of VALOR leadership in the position of Community Moderator. As part of that role, I will be spearheading the revival of our Community Spotlight articles. For the newer members, these spotlight articles are designed to give a little insight into the people you see in Discord and in game and let you know get to know everyone a little better. We do these based on community feedback so feel free to reach out via a Mod Ticket if you would like to nominate someone for a spotlight! Thank you for taking the time to read a bit about me.
So as far as IRL me, I am a 29-year-old Mechanical/Marine Engineer, former Merchant Mariner from Long Island, NY. Growing up, I was always fascinated by how things work, and being by water my whole life it only made sense to pursue opportunities that combined the two. I decided becoming an engineer on a ship was my best course of action. Working on ships combined my love for working with my hands and traveling, and allowed me to see parts of the world while getting paid to do so. For a few years now, I have put sailing aside and now work in NYC on new construction and renovations projects across the tri-state area (and sometimes beyond).
Outside of gaming my free time is spent working on my seemingly never-ending list of house projects, running around parks taking pictures with my fiancé or riding my jet ski around the Bay in the summer.
Like most players, I am a “lifer” that always finds themselves coming back to WoW after a break.
Gaming has been part of my life since as far as I can remember. I was introduced to gaming through my older cousin. Every time we would get together, we would restart games from the beginning because we never had a memory card to save our data and would always get to about the same part before we would have to leave. From there I spent a lot of hours playing the early 2000’s PlayStation 2 staple single player games ( i.e. Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, Kingdom Hearts, etc.). It wasn’t until around 2007/2008 to be introduced to multiplayer/online games. By this time I had a Xbox 360 and was constantly on Call of Duty 4 and Gears of War. This is the same year I was introduced to WoW but at the time it came secondary to the Xbox titles and Runescape. Since then, I haven’t looked back and am always looking forward to the next new game.
I found and joined VALOR back in October of last year after seeing a tweet about recruiting. I had taken a break from WoW sometime around the beginning of Dragonflight. Like most players, I am a “lifer” that always finds themselves coming back to WoW after a break. I’ve been playing on and off since The Burning Crusade but have never taken the game too seriously. I was always just here for the exploration, lore and occasionally some PvP but always struggled to find people to play with so never got into any serious PvE. My original toon was a Blood Elf Paladin and I always find myself falling back, including during The War Within where I find myself maining my pally. It’s mainly because the blood elf storylines are my favorite lore, and I’ve spent countless hours just walking around Eversong Woods. During Legion I branched out and mained a Rogue but was mainly PvP focused. Have been toying with the idea of making it my main alt again. At the time I had found, what I thought to be, a pretty good guild on the Arthas server. But as the story goes, that guild only lasted so long and eventually was disbanded due to infighting.
Having found people who were just looking to play games and have a good time was exactly what I needed, and the joking around or getting yelled at by prawfeT for how bad our team work was, was exactly the kind of banter the doctor ordered.
I’m happy and fortunate to have found a home with VALOR. At the time of finding VALOR, I had entered what at the point was the most stressful time of my life. I had just bought a house and was (still am!) planning a wedding and I needed an outlet to escape it all so WoW is where I fell back to. Fast forward a few months and I found myself in even more of stressful spot. My dad had developed a very aggressive form of cancer in mid December which would ultimately end to him passing away at the end of January. Taking us all by surprise and leaving my family is a state of disarray, an escape from reality for myself was necessary. I leaned hard on the friends I made in VALOR. Without them knowing of the situation, I found myself getting into voice comms every night with them and playing Valorant way past the point I should have been. Having found people who were just looking to play games and have a good time was exactly what I needed, and the joking around or getting yelled at by prawfeT for how bad our team work was, was exactly the kind of banter the doctor ordered. The reason I share this story is not for sympathy but more so to highlight the value of having a good group of people to be able to play games with.
I look forward to branching out in the future and being more comfortable with my game play to push myself into the PvE side of the game more in The War Within. I hope that you also find your place in VALOR and begin to love it as much as I do.
That’s about all I got! Thanks again for taking the time to read my little slice of life. Feel free to reach out to me in Discord or in game if I’m online if you want to chat! Hopefully I’ll get to meet most of you at BlizzCon (if they don’t cancel it again) next year or another VALOR event in the future!
