I am sitting inside today on a cold day in December 2009. The year is nearly at an end and to be completely honest, so is my “career” in WoW. That being said, I must be fair and admit that my career in World of Warcraft has been over for quite a while. I don’t enjoy raiding anymore, I don’t enjoy PvP, and I don’t really enjoy exploring, dailies or anything really. Oh wait…! I do enjoy something, I enjoy cheating, bugabusing and exploiting the game. However even that is beginning to bore me, the struggle of having to go through selling 15 tabs of various guildbanks full of stuff that I have gained when botting just doesn’t entertain me anymore. Sure I can make easy money in real life by selling my gold, but even that can’t bring a smile on my face when pressing the damn WoW.exe icon.
I am trying to think of, why and when, it became a struggle find something in the game that I enjoy rather than sit back and let the hours fly by. Therefore I think I will need to take you through my journey in the universe of World of Warcraft.
Press your way through my thougts by clicking next page.
[BREAK=Getting Started]
Introduction
My introduction to World of Warcraft was through my little brother, I saw him playing a game and I can remember my exact words to him “I will never enjoy that game, it looks shit, the gameplay is rubbish and I will never play it”. Two weeks later I had a level 25 hunter on my brothers account.
I started off as a Night Elf hunter, two of my friends were playing human mages or something like that and I wanted to level with them, so I left Darnassus to travel towards the place where my friends were. I can to this day still remember the rush of Adrenaline when I had to run past the crocs in wetlands, this is also where I met up with my friend who came to my rescue just as I was about to feed a croc with my own leg.
I was invited into a Danish guild where I quickly felt the feeling of friendship through a game, a feeling that I had not felt since my days playing CounterStrike. At this time I was level 40 with my hunter and my brother was angry that I was using his account, I prefer to say that he was mad jealous that I was leveling way faster than him even though I only played 25% of the time that he did.
One of my friends whom I used to play with had to go to jail and therefore gave me his account and his 46 NE hunter. The change wasn’t too big for me, only 6 levels, so I accepted and just played his hunter from that day on. I was the first to hit 60 in the guild and after just a few days I wanted more, the other guy were level 55 or less. This is back when Ragnaros or Onyxia was not even killed on our server.
[BREAK=Raiding]
Raiding
I got into a bigger guild, the biggest on the server, yet we were only 4-5 hunters. I immediately felt that I had found my home and was happy. 4 days later the guild split, I followed a few others into the newly formed guild with other rules and guidelines. We only wanted level 60 players and no stupid teens and we didn’t accept every level 60 out there either.
We started raiding and damn it was tough and oh god did we wipe. J I remember our first kill at Luci haha it was awesome. We continued to go through the various encounters in MC until we had enough people attuned for Onyxia. After killing most of the content in MC we were stuck at a big dumb boss… RAGNAROS.. We struggled with him for about 2½ weeks, we were dedicated every night in our task to get him down, remember this is when a raid took 40 people + replacements.
“YAEEAAAAAA RGRGRGRGRGRRARARARYAYRAYRYARYARYARARRWOOOOOOOOOOYEARRRARARRR”
That is approximately how it sounded on our vent when we finally downed raggy, as server first. The whole server (at least alliance) partied in IF and cheered, this went on for 1½ hours. Incredible feeling, you actually felt as if you had accomplished something big. Like the first time you ride your bike without help from your parents.
Not much to say about ony or bwl as the feeling was the same for those instances, I will instead tell you about PvP.
PvP when it was fun - World PvP and the battle was pulsating back and forth between Southshore and Tarren Mill. I had the best of time fighting in world pvp, the new players would admire your leadership and others would be annoyed that you yelled at them for running into the town bringing all the guards. Battles went on for hours and hours.
[BREAK=Changes]
Changes
PVP
Then we had the first addition as I really look at it, battlegrounds. Battlegrounds ruined world pvp, yet it was fun, you could join as a team and if you wanted good gear from it then you had to bring an effort into it.
Alterac Valley battles would last an entire night before a winner was found it was good fun, yet frustrating, to this day I am still sure that the Horde somehow cheated. Nevertheless I still missed the world pvp and sometimes my guild arranged battles to be fought old school. If I remember correctly, to become grand marshall you had to be ranked 1st for 3 weeks in a row, this was an accomplishment that caused you to have a good team and the determination to even risk the shady PUG’s in battlegrounds.
RAID INSTANCE
Then the first addition in raid instances hit, AQ 20 and AQ 40. This addition happened with a server event where we had all pitched in to get the “Gates of Ahn’Qiraj” opened. An awesome event, it was truly epic. We farmed reputation all night long from killing the Guardians that spawned throughout silithus.
A wicked instance full of tough encounters. We had a fast progress through AQ40, until we hit C’thun. C’thun is to this day still one of the best bosses/encounters that I have fought in WoW. The entire instance was awesome as well just remember the sounds when u were in there “Your friends will abandon you”, “Your hearth will explode” etc.
Naxx arrived shortly after we had cleared AQ40. We didn’t really have time to go full in on Naxx as the guild had minor problems at that time.
Expansion
Then came the day when The Burning Crusade hit the shelves. We all knew that the developers were giving us a higher levelcap, but everything else should be great. DAMN JESUS’ GRANDMA IN HELL I was disappointed I remember not being able to log on until 2 days after the expansion had been released. Went to outlands only to see a guy in full level 61 greens having better gear than I had spent months upon months in front of the screen to receive. Shortly after I was banned in one of the Banwaves, I had long lost the passion for WoW and just couldn’t be bothered anymore. Shit happens I have lost an account, so what?.
However I still wanted to play and I had just won the guy4game contest here on MMOwned so I bought some powerleveling and was soon level 70.
[BREAK=Conclusion]
Conclusion
I do not think that there is any reason to bore you any more with my way through outlands and such. Having thought back of my way through the World of Warcraft I think that my interest in WoW stopped when it wasn’t “pure” anymore. There are a number of factors that I think caused me to lose interest in almost every perspective of the game.
PVP
World PvP was ruined and brought into “closed combat areas”. When I thought of Horde vs alliance battles I always thought of it being in the open with vendors, travelers etc getting in the way and killed. It wasn’t as much the Battleground as it was the Arenas that made me angry.
Even on a PvE server the people that did arena or battlegrounds could easily gain gear that was on par with what you had spent ages on getting in instances. This was an own goal from Blizzard in my eyes, they should have made different systems for PvE and PvP servers. On a server where the focus is on the game itself (PVE) there should be greater rewards for putting down such content. On servers where the focus is on your opponents (PvP) the gear should be better from achieving greatly in Player versus Player action.
Instances
With the first expansion Blizzard said that they wanted more players to see and experience the endgame content. A good thought but not necessarily the way that they added it into the game, this was on expense of the hardcore players that had spent months trying to kill the bosses of Molten Core and Blackwing Lair etc.
I believed, and still do, that the 40 man instances were better than the 10-25 mans today. Sure it could be hard to find 40 players for raids, but if we could do it back then, then it should be possible today as well.
Personally
I don’t think that anything can fix World of Warcraft for me. The developers have chosen the easy way out and are mainly listening to the whiny bunch (13-16). If you want something changed in WoW, whine about it until it gets changed. Nor is it possible to change anything until Blizzard changes the way that the boss encounters are fought and made.
Today you can read a guide before being able to try the encounter, then go in and win over the boss within a few tries. Take a look at ICC we cleared the first night in there, why? Because we knew every encounter and what was going to happen.
I don’t know if I actually answered my own questions, but this is my ramblings from a boring cold day in my apartment without any Internet.
I hope that you are willing to discuss my points and views on it, the facts of my memory may be wrong, but I’m writing this from my own drunken memory.
KuRIoS