I started my World of Warcraft journey when a friend got me hooked on the beta. From there, I leveled my mage Atraira on NA-Skullcrusher and was recruited to join the guild Transcendence.

Being in one of top competing guilds at a time when strategy guides and in-depth parses didn't exist was an amazing experience. I have fond memories of shenanigans with the world dragons between us, Nightmare's Asylum, and Exodia. (I swear I have no idea which hunter kited Azuregos off the cliff, clearly they were unguilded.)

Massive server populations and the queues they brought had us transfer to NA-Smolderthorn. While I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Transcendence, I burned myself out with the constant, relentless pace of hardcore raiding. After hitting the ungodly wall that was pre-nerf C’Thun, I took a break.

I returned to a hacked account, and started playing again after recovering it. Vanilla was in its final year; Naxxramas was out but I instead opted to join a more casual guild - Direct Defiance - and help them along with their own progression.

While the relaxed atmosphere was welcome, I began to want something more challenging than topping damage meters with an overgeared mage. That’s where the idea for tanking on my paladin alt, Invisusira, was born.

Paladins were wildly unequipped to tank efficiently in Vanilla, and I had a fantastic time learning how to manage mana, engage at range, and maintain aggro. Once TBC came around, a Shattered Halls run where our delighted GM Nasgrill was able to AoE to his heart's content cemented my place as the guild’s main tank.

I would sometimes record videos of our boss kills just for the guild’s sake, and the video of our first Curator kill started getting more views because a paladin happened to be doing the tanking. Since people were taking interest in my videos, I decided to make them more entertaining.

Between machinima and boss videos there were plenty of hits and misses, but I had a lot of fun. It culminated with Ulduar: Defiance, which brought all the aspects of progression tanking and machinima cinematics together into a single video.

Direct Defiance sailed off quietly into the sunset at the end of Wrath. I came back to WoW a couple of times, once on EU realms to play Cataclysm and Pandaria with some UK friends, and again once Classic was announced to properly tank all the raids in Vanilla and TBC.

It’s been an honor to be a part of so many different peoples’ lives, be it guild mates, fans, or anyone who’s been inspired to try tanking or making videos themselves. I hope you enjoy the archive!

-Invisusira/Atraira