Greetings, internet.

I’ll have to ask my legions of adoring fans to please calm down for a few minutes, so that I may introduce myself to my new audience here at Diabolical Minds.

I am the one and only Samodean that all your friends have told you about. I am a self-professed nerd. A huge one, massive, even. Video games, comic books, anime, movies, you name it, I live it.

I’m an old-school gamer dating back to the Atari days. No, not the Jaguar, the 2600. I’ve been in the PC Gaming scene since the mid-90s. While I grew up loving RPGs, I did not enter the MMO community until Final Fantasy XI came out.

I played FFXI for about a year. It was a very fun game, very community-oriented, but restrictively so. Aside from fishing, there were very few things you could do without a full group. There were even less things you could do without several hours to dedicate. I found myself wishing for something a little less demanding, and soon heard the Siren’s Call of World of Warcraft.

I started playing WoW shortly after it launched on the Azjol-Nerub server, which most of my characters still call home to this day. I started out as a Hunter, leveling it all the way to my first 60. However, my heart had a more… diabolical calling. I rolled Samodean in early 2006 and never looked back. The Warlock class just contained so many things I loved. Sustained damage, survivability and just the sheer awesome factor.

Over the years, in addition to Hunter and Warlock, I’ve leveled Paladin and Shaman to high levels, even spending an extended amount of time with the Death Knight class.

I have a thirst for knowledge. I extensively research any game I play, delving into message boards and websites. In 2008, I stumbled on to the budding World of Warcraft blogging community. Spending hours some nights reading other blogs, I started coming up with topics I’d like to address, myself.

One late night, I let inspiration take me. One year ago, today, I started up Hardcore Casual. I swear, at the time, I thought I was being clever and original. While I liked having a creative outlet, what I LOVED was the community. It felt great to be a part of something.

Through the Blog Azeroth forums I met wonderful people like Byaghro and Syrana, even if B reverse-ripped-off my blog name. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.) We even collaborated on an awesome creative writing project.

That sense of community is what brings me to Diabolical minds. I’m honored that B invited me on board. I really think we can make something here.

For those who would like to read more of my work, Hardcore Casual has a large archive, but for the last several months, I have called Massive Nerd my home. This past summer, I decided to branch off from Hardcore Casual’s WoW-focused posting, so i created a new blog. Sound familiar, Byaghro?

I kid, of course. It’s my roll in the community to poke fun at these other guys and keep them honest.

I look forward to posting here on Diabolical Minds. While I may not post as frequently as some of the other writers here, I hope to deliver on the content end. I’ll mostly be looking at the mechanics of the games we play, trying to improve the community as a whole one blog post at a time.