Who is Skeleton Jack?

Personal History

I go by the name Micky in the real world and I am in my 30′s.  I currently live in New Orleans, LA and have lived here most of my life.  However I’ve lived in several other states, visited every state on the eastern seaboard short of Maine, and been to Europe once.  Oddly, I’ve never stepped one foot west of LA for some reason…

My life has been “colorful” to say the least.  I had an abusive parent, I was homeless at 18, I’ve worked in all kinds of industries from manual labor to clerical to management, been engaged twice, have a life threatening medical condition (which is currently in hiding), and I’ve seen an astoundingly varied range of both wonderful and terrible, awful things in this world.

Currently I have a job I love, have an amazing cat named Shadow (she’s a companion more than a pet), and live a pretty standard/normal life.  I work, eat, sleep, game, hang with friends, etc…  You know the drill.

Introduction to Gaming

I’ve been an avid gamer since the age of 10 when I was introduced to my first table top RPG at summer camp, Gamma World.  As a teen I joined the “Gaming Society”, a club at my high school, delving deeper into tabletop RPG’s until I eventually expanded out to computer games with the advent of Tele-Arena.

Tele-Arena was a text based RPG prior to MUD’s (the predecessor of MMO’s) hosted on a local BBS that you had to connect with by a 2400 baud modem while paying for every minute you were connected.  We’re talking old school here people.  ;)

While I continued to play computer and table top games since then, it took many years before I became a hardcore MMO player.  I first dabbled in MMO’s with EverQuest, but I was never more than a casual player.  Though the hardcore camping required in Lower Guk for that god damned SMR is forever etched in my memory…  If you got that reference, mad props.

And while I played a multitude of games ranging from tabletop RPG’s, to board games, to video games, to online games, and even LARP’s; it wasn’t until City of Heroes (CoH) that I became a hardcore MMO player.  Why CoH?  I have no idea honestly.  But that was where it started.

Becoming a Hardcore MMO Player

I started playing City of Heroes only because all of my friends bought it first.  The 2nd day of release I picked it up as well, and the next thing you know I’m doing endless Hamidon raids, own 3 accounts, and have 5 totally tricked out max level heroes in full Hamidon “gear”.  o.O  I still don’t know how that happened…  I just got sucked in.

At that time a good friend of mine (named Eriss in WoW) convinced our entire SG (Super Group, which is essentially a Guild) to try the WoW trial for 10 days.  Well I wasn’t having any of it I tell you.

I had been pissed at Blizzard for years after my rl friend (Mythra in WoW) lost 2 of his hardcore mode characters in D2 to a hacker, and then me as well right after (my hardcore was a level 86 Jabazon).  But the next thing you know one of my roomies at the time hears them trying to cajole me over ventrilo, and she tells them she’ll get me a copy of WoW. /sigh

They dragged me kicking and screaming in WoW.  I wanted none of it.  And then I played for one hour and promptly deactivated my subscriptions to City of Heroes, heh.

From there I started up Elorien, a Night Elf Warrior, and leveled up as a Protection Warrior in Vanilla WoW.  Yes, it was pure hell.  ;)  But I fell in love with instances and started forming up my own groups, eventually creating a core group of regulars while we leveled running 5mans exclusively.

One of us got into the guild Category 5 on Bronzebeard-US and I followed.  From there, I began the process of getting my entire little group into the guild and starting down the path of becoming a raider.  As a backdrop note, I played my Warrior to be a DPS character.  I tanked in 5mans simply because I could never find someone to tank for me.  Little did I know the same held true for raiding.

In Cat5 (Category 5) I found my first home in WoW, becoming the 2nd main tank of the guild, and assisting in launching us into a top raiding guild for our server at that time.  Full clears and speed runs of MC, clearing AQ20, BWL, the works…  I became a guild Raid Leader and Warrior Class lead, and just fell in love with the game.

But working on AQ40 was when things changed.

Sleepless Knights

Shortly before BC released I got /gkicked from Cat5.  Very long story short, the GM of Cat5 was breaking the guild rules he helped create in order to get free BoE’s to sell for in game gold without spending DKP.  I called him out on it publicly, and I got kicked for it.  Take that for what you will.  But that ended up being the best thing possible for me.

So in Vanilla WoW, if you’re a Warrior in full T2 Wrath 8/8, and you sit in Ironforge without a guild tag, you will be spammed to ever living hell with anyone and everyone begging you to join their guild.  True story.  So as you might imagine I started to hate incoming tells…

But one day this priest from SK just starts randomly talking to me.  But that dreaded “Will you join my guild” never comes.  He just chatted me up and wanted to know if I’d like to get some PvP in with his friends.  Hells to the yes I would!!  I loves me some PvP!!

Within a week I applied to join SK, who it turned out was the rank 1 guild on my server, and I stayed with them for over 3 years.  Sure that priest knew what he was doing and only talked to me because he wanted to recruit me.  But taking the time to get to know me first and just being a nice guy goes a long way with me.

In Vanilla WoW I got the opportunity to full clear ZG, MC, BWL, AQ20, AQ40, and Spider Wing of Naxx40.
In BC I full cleared ALL raiding content before the huge 3.0 nerf except for Kil’jaeden.  Yes, I killed Mu’ru before the 3.0 nerf.

It took 3 solid months (5 or more days a week) for my guild to do it.  But we fucking did it before that nerf came in!  To this day, killing Mu’ru in Sunwell is still my highest in game accomplishment.  We dropped Mu’ru twice before the 3.0 nerf, and then dropped KJ the week 3.0 hit.

I also swapped over to Bigeasy, a Draenei Shaman, for Burning Crusade.  I was an Elemental Shaman for PvE, and Enhancement for PvP.

But then during LK is where things started to change…

SJ Blogging

During the end of BC my rl friend Mythra was playing WoW and had stumbled across the Big Red Kitty site, a hunter blog.  And he’s telling me every week that I have to go read it because of how funny and awesome it is.

My reaction?  I had no idea wtf a blog was, let alone why he would ignore my “pristine advice” to only listen to what the EJ Forums say and ignore everything else.  Yeah, I used to be one of “those guys” way back when.

But eventually one day I went and checked it out when BRK happened to write up a “BRK and Brain” post.  I nearly fell over laughing, it was so damn good.  And after checking out several other different blogs (already planning on rolling a Death Knight for LK), I said to myself, “I can do that!”

So I did.

I purchased a server provider contract, registered my address, found a WP Template that was tolerable, and got to writing.

Two of the really cool things that also happened because of this website was being featured by WoW.com once for my “Best in Slot” posts, and then later being interviewed by World of Raids as a front page story.

But the best thing that came from this website was being fortunate enough to use my popularity for a good cause.  A guild mate of mine in SK had a daughter, Eleanor, diagnosed with some pretty nasty Cancer.  So I started a fund raiser raffling off 20k of my in game gold, and my fans/readers raised up over $5,000.00 for their family to help with all of their costs.

That’s fucking epic if you ask me.

So no matter what anyone ever has to say about this website, I will always know it was worth it for that fact alone.

SJ Burnout

The worst thing you can do when you are burned out on something is to ignore that feeling and cave into peer pressure from your friends.  Just saying…

After about 3 years of being in SK, SK changed.  75% of the guild was entirely new people.  It happens.  But I just wasn’t “feeling it” anymore.  And there was a small clique in the guild that I just couldn’t stand.  So I picked up toons and left to join Paragon on Bronzebeard-US (server rank 2 at the time).

But after being with Paragon for a short period of time I quit WoW altogether, to only come back a few short months later.  Huge mistake.

You see, what was really going on was that I had been hardcore raiding for about 5-6 years total at that point and just needed to take a break from MMO’s in general.  But I didn’t figure that out and I just kept waffling constantly which lead to a massive level of inconsistency in both my writing and my in game time.

To complicate the matter, after I came back I finally got the job I had been after for over a year, which required me to now work nights when guilds normally raid.  So what to do then?  Go Oceanic!

I spent a lot of time picking the right guild.  A lot.  And I finally settled on Insurrection on Dath’remar.  And at first it was awesome and lovely!!  Yeah, I said lovely.  But then about 2 weeks later they announce a merger with Severed to form Heretic Horde side.  Yuck.

I hate Horde.  Sorry, but I do.  I played Alliance for 5 years.  I’m not going to magically start liking Horde out of nowhere here people.  I’ve been killing Horde for too long!!

Anyways, within a month I pretty much decide to quit WoW again.  So how come?

In the span of 6 months I went through 3 guilds, 2 factions, and got forced into playing Horde when I didn’t want to.  I was already burned out on MMO’s in general.  And then on top of all of that, I didn’t like the direction Heretic was taking or even some of the people there.  Combine that with previously being in Cat 5 for 1 1/2 years and SK for 3 years, all of this drama and BS was just too much for me so I said fuck it.  It’s that simple.

In retrospect I wish I had just quit WoW when I decided to leave SK.  I needed some serious time away from MMO’s in general.  But hindsight is always 20/20.

And just so you know if you are ever feeling that burn out as well, taking over a year off from MMO’s does wonders.

Current Day SJ

I have started over with this website by deleting over 700 posts about Death Knights, WoW, and gaming.  And I am moving on to focus on SWTOR as my new game of choice, playing a Jedi Knight Sentinel.

I don’t have the skills or savvy to improve this website the way I’d like to, so hopefully I can find someone to help me out down the road.  But I am introducing for the first time ever Live Streaming, so I hope you guys enjoy.

So who am I?  I am Skeleton Jack.

I’m a blogger, a raider, a pvp’er, a writer, a theory crafter, a jokester, a gamer, and a Jedi Knight.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…