The coolest sword I ever obtained in a video game is the Phantom Blade in World of Warcraft. In fact, it’s so cool to me that I never parted with it. It’s still sitting in my original character’s bank vault, some 19 years after I first got it — even though its stats have been squished almost to nothing by the multiple math resets the venerable online game has had over the years, and even though that character has now far outleveled the point at which the sword would be useful.
What makes the Phantom Blade cool? It’s not a special weapon, although it’s not bad. It’s not some Legendary boss drop earned through the blood, sweat, and tantrums of a raid party. It’s not even Epic — just a run-of-the-mill blue Rare. It doesn’t hold a special place within Warcraft lore, it’s no Ashbringer or Frostmourne. It’s just… a sword. But to me, it’s not just any sword.
Back in 2005 — or now, if you’re playing on Blizzard’s Classic servers that (more or less) replicate the game as it was then — the Phantom Blade was a decent, crafted weapon for mid- to high-level characters, though definitely not endgame gear. It could be used from level 44 (the cap was then 60), at which point it was pretty nifty, and would stay competitive until probably the early 50s.
The damage stats are OK, and it has a useful “proc” (a chance to trigger an effect on hit): it decreases the target’s armor for 20 seconds, and prevents them from entering stealth or turning invisible during that time. This made it a coveted weapon in WoW’s player-versus-player community for dealing with annoying Rogue players (and was thus hated by Rogues). The thing is, I never played PvP.
My original WoW character was a Warrior. I didn’t want to play a Warrior, really; I fancied either a Hunter or a Druid, but when I joined the game, my friends’ guild already had plenty of those and was short of tanks, so it was deemed that a Warrior I should be. I did not take to it — I’m terrible at tanking, and when it comes to playing a damage-dealing role, WoW has other classes I prefer. I moved on to a Hunter main eventually, but that Warrior still has a special place in my heart. In my headcanon he has an endearing, good-natured ineptitude about him, and the adventures we went on, discovering Blizzard’s extraordinary creation together, are unforgettable. Anyway, while not a specifically great weapon for Warriors, the Phantom Blade’s armor debuff was quite handy when tanking.
But that wasn’t why I coveted it either. No, I wanted a Phantom Blade for two, very shallow, reasons. One: true to its name, it is a ghostly sword with a curving, translucent blade that gives off a soft, bluish glow. It looks sick. Two: unlike almost every other one-handed weapon in the game, the Phantom Blade shows across the character’s back when at rest, rather than at the side as if hanging off the belt. For a tanking warrior, that means it’s carried diagonally underneath a shield. This looks unique — and sick as hell.
Man, I wanted a Phantom Blade so much. Have you ever gotten like this, when you covet a virtual item with an intense, almost painful hunger, just as much as you could want something in real life? That’s how much I wanted a Phantom Blade.
The only way to get a Phantom Blade is for a character with the blacksmithing profession to craft one. I couldn’t afford the prices it was going for at the auction house, and my Warrior character was an engineer, so I needed our guild blacksmith to make it for me. These things weren’t that easy or cheap to make — you needed mithril and truesilver bars, several aquamarine gems, some rarish Breath of Wind drops, plus two lesser invisibility potions, meaning an alchemist needed to get involved too.
As I remember it, I mined the raw metals myself, but my guildmates pulled together the rest of it as a gift to me. Maybe they knew I didn’t really enjoy the tanking they’d made me do, and were making up for that. Maybe they were just being nice. We would do stuff like that for each other, in those days before every WoW expansion became a ruthlessly optimized race to the finish line. One reason my Warrior-engineer leveled slowly and wasn’t a very good Warrior is that I set myself the goal of crafting an entirely pointless mechanical squirrel pet for every single member of the guild. This took ages, and it was a real chore, but also maybe the most fun I ever had playing WoW.
So that’s why I still hang on to my Phantom Blade. My friends made it for me, and it reminds me of them — and of a time when this incredible game was an all-consuming engine of wonder for us to discover together.
Also, it looks really fucking cool.
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