Eltorogrande

Eltorogrande, sometimes known as "Eltoro" or (if you're into the whole brevity thing) "Toro" was my first Horde character. His name was actually gonna be "Hookem" initially, not because I'm so much a fan of the University of Texas as I am interested in comic relief and, well.... he looked like him and it was all that really struck me at the time. It was taken, though, and so I resorted to the next best thing that came to mind. My wife is from Spain, so while Spanish is not spoken very much in the house (her English skills are excellent), I still think Spanish thoughts from time to time... and, knowing that non-english names were likely to be available I said to myself, "He's a big bull..." and the rest is history.

Early Toro was an excercise in noobdom. Hey, I had rolled a Hunter after all! Once again this was based on some loose quantitative assessment of the game (decent armor? fair melee skills? guns? pet? Sold!) that sounded really survivable and easy to learn in practice. I'm happy to admit, though, that I was "That Guy" for some time. One of the funnier memories I have is me, somewhere around level 14 or so (and, more appropriately, in The Barrens) running around doing my Noob thing when someone asked me, "where's your pet?" Yeah, you read that right. I couldn't be bothered to learn the mechanics of this "pet" thing, so I was truckin' around without one (sort of). I actually *did* have one at the time, but never had it summoned as the awesome and complex responsibility that is the "attack" button had eluded me to that point. Somewhere around there, I started to "Lrn2ply". Noob.

I took Toro all the way to 20 (even turned in a few quests for money since my experience was capped!) while I was on the trial, then did what any red-blooded burgeoning WoW addict would do - bought the game. Yippee!

As an aside, and since it's important to the Hunter story, I wound up taming Takk The Leaper out of The Barrens as my pet. Rechristened "ChompyChompy", he's been my runnin' buddy ever since. I'm sure that I could get a pet that is more effective, does more damage, blah blah blah... but I don't really care, I'm not specced for BM. Chompy is my boy, and I'm never getting rid of him. :)

In time, Toro would become my strongest Character, the one that I'd turn to when I was running on an alt with a friend and they *really* needed help, or when one of those pesky "Local Defense: Thunder Bluff is under attack!" messages would pop up. Toro moved up the levelling ladder at a pretty reasonable pace... right up 'til 60. I had bought the Expansion. I could go to Outlands - but I was scared of Outlands!

I'm kind of a weenie that way. I don't like to fail, so Iwasn't going to come with him until I was comfortable. I like my deck nice and stacked. Consequently, Toro sat at 60 for a long time (ZOMG 475k for lvl ?!?!?) and it wasn't until my wife got 60 that I made the push to get him to 70.

Toro was my first 70, dinged in September of 2007. These days, I admittedly don't use him much - just wheel him out for something relating to Leatherworking and that's about it. I plan to do more with him, but the "Alt Project" is overriding all of that at the moment. He's still good for a good "pew pew" every now and then, though... just that everybody and their mom has a Hunter already.