The story of my first steps in WoW, continues… Before we dive into what I remember to be true… key word remember, I want to talk about this series in general. When I started this out I was not planning on having it be this long, I think the original outline was for 4 articles. However as I started writing it became apparent to me that I had a lot more to put down then I originally thought. I do understand that to no one out there is my trip down memory lane important, but to me it is, and to me it is nice to be able to pull those memories and put them down in writing before I forget them. I am sure there are a ton of details that I have already forgotten so I am happy at least with what I do remember. Maybe one day my kids will read this and laugh at the struggles we gamers dealt with, because they will probably be living in virtual worlds instead of playing them. But enough about that, let’s get back to remembering
In the last article we talked about the effect that WoW had on the world of MMO and on me personally. Let’s talk a little more about the effect it had on me.
Before the game even released there was a website for it, and it had very little information about the game. We had the basic knowledge of what the races were going to be and what the classes were going to be. But the rest was kind of obscure stuff that we guessed at. But even that was enough for me to want the game so bad. The image that comes to mind right now is there was a page about the hunter class and it had a dwarf there and a picture of a campfire that he was standing by or near, I can’t remember exactly, I wanted to be that hunter by that camp fire. I wanted to feel the adventure and the coziness of a campfire. I was very young at that point, but even then I knew the stories that you could role play or write from that would be incredible.
I wanted to get into the game so bad… there was a beta, but of course I did’t get in, I did get into the stress test for one weekend and it was awesome everything I dreamt it would be. It was then that I got to create that dwarf hunter that I wanted so bad, and learn a skill that allowed me to create campfires for sitting around. The campfire in the game used to give you a stat boost, I don’t remember what it was, but it was actually good to make a campfire for other people too. I loved every minute of it. The first quests, the first time you get out of the starting zone, the very first time you make the climb to Ironforge… it was all so incredible. It was this stress test that got my IRL friend to invest into cable internet. It took him all weekend to download the game and he got to play very little of it, so he ordered internet that same weekend!
While in the stress test, I met a group of people that invited me into their guild, it was a pirate based guild, I don’t remember the name of it. They were so cool!!! For the young me I couldn’t believe that people were nice online, and you could do stuff together, and talk about life, and and and… many many other things that we all long for when trying to fit into a community.
This pirate guild was the very first group I did a dungeon(Deadmines) with. It was one of those experiences you don’t easily forget, no group finder or phasing in or anything like that, just met them and they liked me and we started playing together.
The one part about our visit to Deadmines that stood out, was a part where you had to use a canon to blow up a door. One of the people in the group found out that it was my first time in the dungeon or, as we call them in WoW, instance and let me do the blowing up! It was such a cool experience to see that the prop in the instance had a reason to be there other than aesthetics. I don’t remember if we ever killed the final boss in there, but I do remember that group and that canon.
After a couple days of that the stress test was over, and I never saw those people again.
Once the game released I didn’t play it right away, I waited a couple months and then jumped in. There were many guilds since the stress test and many more instances and way cooler mechanics, but it’s that first one that I remember the most.
As I was leveling, I met really cool people through the process and some not so nice. WoW was the first virtual world where I cared how people felt about me. So yes the friendships that were formed in that world were real, I don’t keep in touch with anyone from that time, but I did for a really long time, via MSN messenger and now its dead! So I lost most of my contacts at that point.
I want to talk about a couple of examples of stuff that happened in the game that I clearly remember to this day.
I met a cool guy we will call him Bob, he lead a guild that I got invited to they were called the Exiled Few. All of this was on the Shadowsong PVE server. He had a little brother I don’t know what his little brother’s name was, we did not get along at all. Bob and I become really good friends, we both played paladins, and were around the same level. So one of us would tank the other would dps in groups, it was very convenient because we both had a lot of armor and could stay in the fight for a really long time.
There was one time when we were in Gnomeregan, our whole group died, including our healer, and the two of us survived through all of the elite adds and then the respawns until our group got back together. Out healer said that she never had a group survive after she has died. But Bob and I played together for so long and really knew what each other were capable of. So we knew exactly what skills we had and how much mana and when to cast what. So surviving that fight was kind of a testament to our knowledge of each other’s capabilities.
After a while though of having to deal with the little brother that was part of the guilds leadership, I decided to leave. I joined another guild Light’s Crusade, the only reason at the time I joined up is because they had a really cool tabard, it was white with a black cross. I have never seen one like that so I joined up, ended up being a great group of people that were lead by a husband and wife duo. I enjoyed myself a ton.
After a while I ran into Bob, and we got to talking again and he asked me to join back up. I told him that I would join only if he would invite me at the same guild rank as his little brother. Bob told me that they had a rule that all of the people that are in the officer ranks and higher in the guild have to have been in their previous guild that started out in Everquest. So initially he refused, after a little bit of conversation, he came up with a story of what we were going to tell the officers when I joined up. I don’t remember who I was supposed to be from his past, but it worked. I guess at the time the main problem with his little brother that I had was that he kept threatening to kick me out of the guild if I didn’t do what he wanted and I got sick of it and left. Being put in the officer rank he couldn’t do that. Now I remember why I wanted to be in that rank. This remembering stuff is really helpful!
Eventually people started leaving Exiled Few, the guild landscape was changing, and we weren’t adapting. Exiled Few were offered a merger with another guild, I wasn’t there for that part, when I came back online we were already part of that guild so I joined up. And right after I joined up the guild decided to do some pruning, and declared that those who are not level 60 by a certain date were going to get kicked from guild… I wasn’t going to be 60 by that date and left myself. And that was that. There a few more times that I joined up with Bob and his crew, but it was never for long and never to the same level of friendship that we had when we first started.
Eventually I lost touch with him. I wish Bob all the best and if you ever read this and recognize yourself reach out to me I would love to catch up!
One other memory I wanted to share before I close this out, coming from Lineage 2, the gear you wore you mostly bought from the store, or if it dropped it was the same stuff you could get from the store. I remember I would save up money and go to the armor vendors and buy gear with no stats or anything, just so I could have a matching outfit. It looked really cool, but then I learned from a friend that the gear that drops is “green” and has additional stat boosts, so all of the gear I bought was crap. That was very disappointing, because none of the gear that dropped matched and you looked like a clown until you got into sets at much later levels.
So looks like we are going to need a part 3 for this one, because I would still like to touch upon a couple more topics while living the life of a WoW player.
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