My fondest gaming memories are easily my early days of playing World of Waracraft, 2007 - 2009/2010. I have several to list so I'm just going to indulge in some nostalgic memories for a bit... I ended up reminiscing for about an hour as I typed this and got a bit carried away so I'll shrink the text so I'm not hogging the page, can't work out if I'm able to get a spoiler minimise thingy for it.
- I became interested in playing it after watching the South Park episode about it, I spent a while browsing the site and I just fell in love with the concept of it, I'd never heard of an MMO before and everything about the world and concept of an MMO sounded awesome so I decided to give it a download. Two problems: One, our internet at the time was shit. It was awful. Two, I didn't realise but I was downloading the American version of the game instead of the European one, so I was using a foreign server that was slower to me. All in all this added up to it taking two days to download. I spent the whole time browsing the site and hyping myself up for it, then when it finally installed I fired up my trial account and jumped in. Made my first ever WoW character, Jasonater (I was like 13 don't judge), Night Elf Hunter on the Vashj server. I remember starting up in Teldrassil for the first time and just being in awe of the world and everything I was seeing. I spent my entire trial account exploring the world, I kept making loads of new characters so I could look at their areas and their capital cities and check out their class abilities, then I started venturing out and corpse-running across the world so I could see all the different places, it was all amazing to me. I never got higher than level 5 but I was having fun anyway. This was when the 2007 Brewfest was on too so I had that whole nice vibe going on outside Ironforge. My sister's then-boyfriend decided to try out WoW while I was on my trial account, he actually got a European account and not being able to see him was how we worked out I had an American account, but he was on Darkspear because his boss played WoW on that server, so when my trial account ended after successfully begging my mum to let me subscribe for a full account I made my first European character who is still one of my mains today, Jasonaterr ('Jasonater' was taken) on the Darkspear server, Night Elf Hunter as before. Hell yeah. We both played Hunters but I was Beast Mastery at the time and he was Marksmanship, always used to brag about his Aimed Shot.
- I have a few fond memories of dicking around with my sister's then-boyfriend on it, one was we two-manned Blackfathom Deeps somehow (I think he was slightly overleveled for it but I was around the expected level), another was low-level attacking Crossroads with him. That was fun.
- Ever since I started my account I wanted a mount more than anything, it's different now but at the time you had to be level 40 to have a normal mount, it was a shitton more expensive, money was harder to get and levelling took forever. I never really bothered levelling properly, I just spent all my time exploring or dicking around in places, meeting other players and chatting with them or with my IRL friend who I talked into playing, etc. But one day I finally, finally pulled my way to level 40 after several months of playing (I remember I was questing in Stranglethorn Vale at the time), I don't remember how I got the money for it but I know it was hard and I was desperate, then I finally learned the riding skill and got my Nightsaber and it was like the best day of my life. Good times.
- Bit earlier on, since starting I'd also wanted to see Outland for the longest time (this was during The Burning Crusade, since I joined when it was already out Outland felt like the 'final level' of the game to me in a way and looking at it on the map I could tell it had a completely different feel to the rest of the game so it had this mystique about it to me) but at the time you couldn't go through the Dark Portal to get there unless you were level 58 (not sure if that's changed), but one day while I was level 21 I stumbled across a mage who offered to send me to Shattrath via portal, I thought why not, and in I went, and I got to explore Outland while I was 60 levels too low for it and it was epic. That was also when I got to see the flying mounts I'd heard about for the longest time, I remember seeing lots of gryphons, Netherwing Drakes, Nether Rays and flying gnome machines, some occasional flying carpets, one Ashes of Al'Ar, the Netherwing Drakes were my favourite though and I remember being like I WANT ONE OF THOSE. TBC Shattrath lag aside I fell in love with the whole place, set my hearthstone to the Aldor Rise so I could go back whenever I wanted. I did a circuit all around Outland corpse running the whole way, I took a flight path to the Dark Portal in Hellfire Peninsula and used that as my starting point, got insulted by people in general chat and got into a shitty mood, ran through to Zangarmarsh and the people in the general chat there were really nice to me and I remember it was raining at the time and it all had a really nice soothing ambience, tried to get to Blade's Edge Mountains but the only way was through a passage full of spiders that'd one-shit me so I ran down to Nagrand instead, wasn't a huge fan but checked out Halaa, poked about, then went back through to Terokkar, got the shit kicked out of me because I went off the path for some reason, then ran through to Shadowmoon Valley, joined a party of people who were killing Uvuros there for a quest and got to shoot my little level 21 bow at him and miss every time but I had fun, then finally I had to hearth back to Shattrath and take the Darnassus portal back but I had my hearthstone set to Shattrath so I could go back later, I used it as a hub to get to the city portals easily, but that first visit is a really fond memory of mine.
- The Wrath of the Lich King announcement was like BOOOOM, smashed my world right open. Like holy FUCK, BRAND NEW CONTENT. I saw the Death Knight reveal trailer and immediately I wanted one so bad, but I was still level 42 at the time and I couldn't be bothered to quest to get to the required level 55 to make one, so I just.. didn't. But then the release date for Wrath got dangerously close and I was still level 42 so I was like FUCK, okay, I need to level up but I literally can not be bothered to quest, I can't think of anything else I'd rather do less right now (at the time questing in WoW suuuucked. Best comparison to any WoW players who started playing after Cataclysm is think of Bloodmyst Isle or Ghostlands, they're perfect preservations of what questing was like in the old game. Then picture every zone in the game like that). Outland sucks too but it feels a bit different to vanilla zone questing, then Northrend was the first time questing felt fun), but yeah, still level 42 and didn't want to quest, so I decided to farm exp from mobs instead. For 13 levels. I went to Blasted Lands and literally spent weeks of my life killing boars and hyenas there. The whole time I was there I was playing the album The Scattering of Ashes by Into Eternity there because I loved it and I always associate that album with that farm now, but then Wrath dropped and I was still somewhere between level 50 and 55, I was like SHIT, but then when I got to level 53 I moved to Hellfire Peninsula and started killing hellboars there, finally reached level 55, high fived myself, and I could not have created that Death Knight faster. My boy Nightmares became my main for several years and I still have him level capped today.
- Going to the interim of the above paragraph, the pre-launch event for Wrath was amazing, I've never had that much fun in WoW in my life, maybe even in any other game. Basically for about a week during the run-up period to the release of the Wrath expansion a zombie plague was added to the game, and if you contracted it (either by standing near infected cockroaches or being attacked by other infected players) your character would die and then come back to life as a zombie. While a zombie all zombie players were friendly to you even if they were in the enemy faction, and all non-zombies were hostile to you. Only other zombies could understand what you were saying, anyone else reading your messages would just see "Braaains! ...Brraaaiinns...!". On top of that, as a zombie you could infect other players... OR NPCS. THIS. WAS. AMAZING. Those zombie NPCs would become hostile to all non-zombie players and kill, and on occasion infect any players or non-zombie NPCs they saw. What we would do was we'd gather massive raiding parties of players, all get infected and tear across the game world infecting entire towns, turning all the NPCs there into zombies, and basically taking over places. We infected the whole of Goldshire, then we went and took over Sentinel Hill, then we went to Redridge and took over Lakeshire, that basically became our base for a while. Players questing in the area would come back to Lakeshire to turn their quests in and suddenly find the entire town replaced with zombies chasing after them trying to kill them and they'd be wondering what in god's name was going on and oh my god it was so much fun you have no idea. Then when we or the NPCs infected any other players we'd bring them into our group and they'd come along for the ride with us. I was so sad when it was over. It was amazing. We just ruined the entire game for a week and it was awesome. There would always be killjoy players complaining loudly about all the zombie players running around 'ruining' the game for them so we'd just kill them and raise them as zombies too! CATHARSIS!
- Very very early on in my time playing my DK (in fact I think it might have been while I was still in the DK starting area) I spoke to a guildie I'd befriended from the guild I was in at the time (called British Elites, doesn't exist anymore) and she'd joined a new guild, asked if I wanted to join, I was like why not, and I got invited to a guild called The NuGen Alliance and there began probably my fondest memories of all playing WoW. At the time I was going through a really shit time at school, was a complete social outcast, bullied to hell, I only had two friends and one of them didn't go to our school, self esteem was in the shitter and I was lonely and starved for affection, my mum's then-boyfriend who lived with us casted a bit of a shadow over me and I was never really comfortable at home either, and I ended up making some really really valued friends in that guild who really kept me going, I loved talking to them so much. I became known as the loudest/chattiest person in the guild because I'd never shut up in the guild chat (in a joking way, I don't think they had a problem with it) because I just loved chatting with them so much, I had such good times and I felt so happy. Really loved those guys. The guild eventually fell apart because the guild leaders moved servers and people stopped playing, no-one still in the guild logs in anymore, it's completely dead now but still hasn't been disbanded, think it died sometimes during early Mists. The guild's called Compromised now though, long story behind that. But I'll always love those memories.
- At some point during Wrath I met this dude in Goldshire and became friends with him, started talking to him outside of WoW, the guy was actually a complete bellend and a pathological liar, didn't actually like him much, but the good memory is that he had his own personal private server that he used kind of as a sandbox and he let me play on it, at that time I didn't have any level capped characters so getting to play level 80 felt really really weird. He'd set up this 'mall' with vendors selling stuff you couldn't actually get ingame and I got loads of weird flying mounts like the Swift Nether Drakes, Frostwyrms and stuff and it was a hell of a good time. He also used his GM powers to fuck around with me while I was playing, kept teleporting me to weird places, changing my player model, changing my running speed, etc. I also became Illidan, I had him change my player model to Illidan's model and give me all the skills that Illidan uses during his fight at the Black Temple, using those against enemies in the game felt epic. Though when I summoned the Flames of Azzinoth they attacked me rather than my target... but that was a lot of fun. I got to fly around Dalaran on an armoured Nether Drake and there was no lag because there were no players. Nice.
Then Cataclysm rolled along and WoW's been on a downward slope ever since, it's not even the same game anymore, but man, those are some fond memories.
Now I'm stuck in memory lane and I can't get out.
