Has WoW lost its innocence?

[KuRIoS]

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

[mag1212]

WoW is way too easy now

[Innit]

Very good and interesting read, I have almost exactly the same Warcraft story, it's nice to hear the disgruntled ramblings of some-one else who actually has any idea what pre-bc was really like, and not from a kids PoV.

[ReidE96]

I miss vanilla.... ;-;

[Gash]

missing it aswell :S

[Forever]

to become grand marshall you had to be ranked 1st for 3 weeks in a row

Was indeed such a horrible task to get the most honor of anyone on the server for 3 weeks in a row. I attempted it a few times but I never even got close to it. Best I achieved was R11 and that was with account sharing


I don't play the game anymore either and the main factors for that are that the challenge is almost completely gone. The only challenge you will see now is making sure the other 9 or 24 ppl don't screw up since that will be the reason you wipe 99% of the time. Solo content is way too dumb now and it almost feels like a singleplayer game while leveling up. Group quests are just short for actually using your brain for once..

Have some cool memories of clearing MC and such and then mainly big-name bosses such as onyxia and ragnaros. TBC was way too dull. There was too much content there imo, in the start at least. So even though you may have been good enough you couldn't go as far as you wanted because then the raid had already reset. I must admit though I really enjoyed that lvl 70 10man troll instances of which I forgot the name, but that was probably because we had a group of 10 friends rolling around in S1/S3 wellfare pvp gear at that time.

WotLK was nice in the start but became a huge fail for me quite quickly. Challenge was nowhere to be found and the raid content was just way too little later on.

It's just a new generation playing WoW now, those of 12-16 year old screaming teens that want everything handed to them. You won't find them in the better guilds but the game is shaped more and more to the teens..

[Zoidberg]

I remember starting out as a Nelf Hunter too. I haven't played WoW for over a ½ year, but the only reason I don't play, is because I find leveling extremely boring.

[Ket]

Nice read, thanks for sharing your experiences. There is always a love hate relationship it seems with MMOs that become a passion for players.

[Trollblod]

Agree on almost every part here KuR.

[maigol]

+1 on all the story,i loved wow preBC,though i wasn't lvl 60 for that days,but a friend let me play with his account with a lvl 60 druid and i loved raiding so much ,and it's a shame that i hadn't done full BWL yet and the old NAXX(we always get owned in the same spot:sapphiron and the low gear of our healers


and now it's hard to get a 40ppl raid,cause everyone is doing arenas or bgs...that's my guild main problem,we are the same 10 doing raids,and rarely we can fill a 25 raid in this days :S

edit:grammar

[Catface]

i also miss vanilla i remember it took me around 2 years to get to 60 even with help from a few of my friends :tard:, but after reaching level 60 it was awesome. i was so happy to finally be level 60. i also remember that i took the wrong 'facial hair' with my tauren but i was level 10 and thought im not going to do 1-10 again!
oh, and i always spirit ressed, didnt know you could run to your body :3

i miss those days

[[Sadistic]]

i also miss vanilla i remember it
oh, and i always spirit ressed, didnt know you could run to your body :3

i miss those days

haha same here man!!

[Dale93]

I must agree, walking through Wetlands as a level 10-ish was horrible, yet. Somehow, it was almost fun, trying to avoid all the crocs... It was a good read, and I must say, the world was a better place before TBC...

[Chuck12345]

Very nice read there Kurios

I started on november 24 2004 (release date of wow) on a tauren hunter.
I quickly switched to another server to play with my best friends (was a human mage) I remember that it took me at least 2 weeks to get to level 17 lmao.. I remember being extremly jealou of that kid at school that was constantle 3-4 levels over me haha. Memories of darkshore and those god damn nagas at that tower... and those stupid "buzz boxes" haha

I share your same opinion. Wow as lost it's flavor.. I'm not too sure what was THAT epic about vanilla. I guess it was the "challenge" that is no where to be found in the game anymore.

Two days ago, I had to go thru menethil on my new alt. GOD did I get some shivers when I passed near that small city(right near the destroyed bridge liking arathi and dustwallow marsh) hold by the dark iron dwarves.

I then had to go through the "dwarven tunnels" ... I remember me and my friend being escorted by a level 30ish dwarf hunter back then when I was still a lowby haha..

====================
It's really sad that I can't get over this game though, been bored with it since mid TBC.

TBH I think flying mounts and blizzard taking the "casual" path is what killed this game. Exploring continents (with flying mounts) isn't the same anymore... Also.. i don't know for you guys ..but I hate seeing every god damn NPCs with the coolest gear around.. I liked it better when they wore the same *shitty looking gear* that we had leveling to 60.

I also dislike all the god damn *outside the game* websites. There's like a guide for ****ing everything... I hate it. Also dislike the fact that pve is now rounded around theory crafting and getting the maximum out of every stats instead of *hardness/tough challenge*. (sup gearscore..). When was the last time you picked up a talent (that isnt on the "max efficienty talent template" because you liked what it gave to you?


To me, it seems this game as gotten way to much polished. I loved exploring and discovering bugs. I think humanity always love small imperfections.

I also think that it we will never ever be able to have this amazing feeling again. Other devs have learned too much about wow.. and so did people. I tried out warhammer and aion.. didn't even enjoy leveling. All I wanted was to level the fastest...

[Glynbeard]

Awesome article! I can definitely relate to your story in a couple different places.