Oh my, the embarrassing story of how horrible I was as a new player.  Now this took a bit of research on my part.  I remember what happened so ridiculously clearly that it could have happened earlier today, but the names are all gone.  I remember at the time there was a HUGE guild on Thorium Brotherhood, and after some Warcraft Realms research, I remember it was named The Ceyhil Empire.  I remember that there was a whole pile of stink concerning this guild buying up all the greens in the AH and re-listing them at stupid expensive prices.  I remember trade chat just going nuts on Ceyhil, the GM.  I also remember being such an inexperienced player that I had no idea what weapon enchants were or how to get them.  I had about 4 gold on my person, I was leveling in Menethil Harbor, so I must have been around level 20 or so.  I have no idea why I was back in Ironforge, but I was.  I also hadn’t really done a lot of interaction.  To this point I had pretty much played WoW as a single player game, which, especially at that time, took large parts of the game away.  Anyway, back to IF.  I saw Ceyhil and remembered the guild that was making such waves on my server and say his amazing glowing daggers.  I thought, crap, I NEED to find out what that is all about.  So I actually whispered another player.  GASP, I know.  I actually asked him how he was able to get his weapons to glow like that.  He must have thought it was a joke at first.  He must have thought I was a low level alt who was about to start fucking with him about the server drama over his guild, but after I just waited for a response and didn’t start trolling him, he asked me to link my gear and I just kind of froze…  (What?  How?  Shit, maybe I should just log out!!!)After a minute of silence  he sent me a party invite and found me next to the bank.

Now what happened next has stayed with me for over half a decade.  It only took this other player five minutes and probably cost him 2-3 gold, but it forever changed my view of this game.  He said hey and told me to wait a sec.  After, I assume, he inspected my gear and had a good chuckle, he disappeared for a minute or so and returned.  Immediately, a trade chat window opened.  What was this?  I hadn’t seen one of these before.  Ok…  Cool.  He then proceeded to load the slots with a completely new set of gear for me.  I shyly told him that I only had 4 gold, but it was all his.  He told me to keep my gold, that this was just to get me going and not to worry about it.  After a couple of trades, I equipped my new gear and actually felt kind of cool.  He then taught me how to put bound items in the trade window so others could enchant them.  Ahhhhhh, glowing daggers.  Just like the big boys.

When he was done enchanting my weapons, he asked if I needed any help with anything else.  I told him how thankful I was and asked if there was anything at all I could do to thank him for his generosity.  He just said your welcome and he was happy to help.  No “happy to help a n00b” or “well, you could join my guild” or really anything.  Just a happy to help and on his way.  I remember this clearly.  I remember being in awe of his philanthropy and finally feeling like I was part of the games community.  Ceyhil’s actions forever changed the game for me and I will probably never forget it.  I hope I never forget it.

Thank you Ceyhil of Thorium Brotherhood, I wish just half of the players were half as generous as you were to a dumb human rogue in whites and greys asking for “glowing weapons”.  So, next time any of you see a sheepish, unguilded Tauren keeping to himself on Thunder Bluff, or a human mage  with an agility dagger equipped, remember, you might have the chance to give that person a gift that’ll change how they play the game we’ve all come to love.

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