My World of Warcraft Story

[gokule]

Evening everyone, I’d just like to share my Story with everyone else... Hopefully you find this entertaining or somewhat a good-read.

I’m warning you now, this might be a long read, so please, if you do post, read it through.

First ill introduce myself.

My name is Nicholas, I am Danish, 17 years old and living in Denmark.
Though I have lived in Spain for 13 years and just moved back this Christmas.

Enough of that, now you know me.

The year was 2001 when World of Warcraft was announced, I remember it barely.. But I was excited as I was but a boy at the time, even though I actually had the Warcraft 3 Collectors edition, which has some World of Warcraft info in an Artbook that came with it. The artwork didn’t say a lot of World of Warcraft, but did give you an idea about what might come in World of Warcraft once it was released.

The Pre-release

Well, the so called nowadays 'Vanilla-WoW' Meaning the 'plain' version.
Wasn't the absolute first release we had, of course there were the Beta release before hand.
I was in the beta, and after hours of downloading I finally made it in. I made an Undead Warlock, because I always played Undead on WC3 in Battle.net
It didn’t take me long to fall in love with it, them zombies falling quickly.. I did indeed love it, I had never seen a world so imaginative and well-created. This was my first MMORPG and for that reason I liked it even more.

It didn't take me long to learn the moves, find my way with the interface, so I quickly moved out of the starting area, followed the road, and found a massive number of undead jumping around, talking doing quests, etc.

They were all about level 5-7 myself being level 5 I felt quite small, so I was quick to get new quests, read them and finish them. When I reached level 20, if I recall, I changed my character to, this time, a dwarf warrior. Started up, and as before, loved it.. Questing in to the late of the night.. And finally when my Dad woke up, shouted once or twice and pulled the plug on the computer, I went to bed.

Vanilla WoW

Well, the original version was the one that I most liked to be honest with all of you.
I bought the game, if I remember correctly 2-3 weeks after the release, because at the time of the actually release, I was unable to buy it for some reason I cant recall.

So as you can imagine, people were already high in level when I started to play the retail version.
But anyhow I decided to level up a Mage, because I already did a Warrior and a Warlock.
I started up as in the Beta, leveling and having fun exploring the new zones talking to fellow players, taking time to read the quests, as I found it nice to learn about the Defia that had been spotted on the other side of the River, it was a fun way to listen to a story, to live it.

So I leveled up, and at about level 15, I saw a dwarf warrior running past me, and this were (as I thought) quite strange to see a dwarf in the human zone, so I asked him what he was doing.. It took him a while to answer because he was dueling some wolves, after he slayed them he told me he came to explore as he got bored of his zone, and found this part much more exciting, and that moment was the first moment I found an actual friend in WoW. We decided to go questing together and I ended up adding him to my Friends List.

About 30 levels past, I was now in a guild and leveling in Desolace with 2 friends, which were brothers that lived in the UK. We ended up pretty fund of each other, exchanging hotmail and basically, having a good time playing World of Warcraft. All this time by the way, which I forgot to mention, I played in the realm 'Silvermoon'. When I reached level 55, I found out that you could transfer your characters to other realms. As I had experienced loads of lag because of the insanely huge amount of people that were playing on Silvermoon, I decided to transfer to a new realm, a realm they just created called Kul'Tiras.

So I whispered all my friends goodbye, and transferred. After some time being unable to get on the character, I finally connected and there it was, in Kul'Tiras, the server was exactly the same, no change, the only thing missing were people, there were a couple of 60s as not many low-levels transferred, and besides myself, maybe a dozen 40-50s.

So well, I did the only thing I could, level up.. After sometime, I was on the edge of level 59, now in a new guild which was raiding already, I found myself in the Burning Steps. My last kill, and I dinged.
The people in my guild cheered once or twice, congratulated me, I was happy.
But then I noticed, there was nothing, no change.. I am the highest level, what can I do now? I could PvP in the Battlegrounds with the other 60s.. But PvP was really my greatest side.. So I asked in my guild, 'What now?'
And I got a quick answer from our leader, Busty, if I recall, 'Raid.'
So I got on the next raid to Molten Core, it was exciting, I remember 40 people, everyone talking in Teamspeak and trying to organize it all so we could down the first boss. We succeeded, and I got my first epic on the first run, I was quite happy.

So a week or two passed before we made it to Ragnaros, I had never seen a boss so big before, I was like a mouse besides an elephant.. Ragnaros was huge, with flames, and held his hammer high in the air.. I didn't wait to fire away the Print Screen button to take as many Screenshots as I could..

We started - it didn’t take long before people were shouting over Teamspeak and what fools we were because we didn't know what to do.

So, we wiped, the first try of the night, though we tried again and again, but we didn’t succeed..
The time was nearly 1 am, and had been raiding for over 5 Hours now, busty was saying to quit.. But everyone just wanted 1 last try.. So he agreed as we all did, last try.
So we started attacking, everything was going well, I was shooting my frostbolts insanely, using all my mana.. Tank was still up.. Healers are good.. Couple of DPS dead but we could just make it.. Everyone was pretty tense looking at the green line on the portrait.. He was going down, slowly, but he was going down.. His life was so close to 0, some actually starting shouting 'YES!' 'OH MY GOD'
I felt a rush run through me and then Ragnaros exploded and his hammer went flying to the ground..
40 People now shouting over teamspeak, it was insane, its hard to explain, we downed Ragnaros.

Maybe some of you might have experienced this, same as me.. You might understand what it was like.
The loot was awesome, I loved seeing those epics getting handed out and people getting pretty happy.

So there it was, the first time I downed Ragnaros, a whole new experience.

Burning Crusade - Private Beta

The Burning Crusade was announced, and with it the private beta, my spark was reignited, new content, new stuff, I wanted on the beta so bad. I signed up for it quickly and waited a few days hoping that I would get in, and be one of the first to try it out.. Though it didn’t happen, I didn’t get any email from blizzard.. So I lost the hope, and started playing on the retail again.. Sad I coulnd't get in, but accepting it none the less..
So I checked the forums in general chat, as I had done many times, there was a post about 10 Keys to the private beta being given out at an IRC chat on a web page. I just cant remember which website it was.

You could win a key just by being in the chat, you got chosen at random, all you had to do is stay online on the chat. So I quickly joined the IRC channel, and found that 4 of the 10 keys were already given out.
So, I waited out, I think it was random when they gave out a key.
The moderator muted everyone when the time came to elect someone for a new key. And then said the name of the user and then unmuted everyone again, of course later the moderator opened a private chat with him and then they talked.

4 Keys were given out while I was in the chat, the 8th though, was given to me.
What I did was talk to the moderators without getting too annoying, because I wasn’t stupid, he was probably getting spammed from everyone wanting a key. So I just talked to him, you know, made me get noticed a bit, so I wasn’t just some other guy.

And when I saw my name being said by the admin, I was like WTF.
I couldn’t believe it, I won my key to the beta in an IRC Channel, what are the odds?

So I was quick to get signed up for it, I found out the key worked, got my email and starting my 5 hours long downloading time.

I finally got on the Beta Servers, and I started leveling, I liked it, I found there was much new stuff to do.. But there was something.. You know, it wasn’t quite the same.. It was different, but I didn’t find out until later.. After much leveling I reached level 69 and just had to kill like 5 mobs more to Level up to 70. But as it was late I decided to connect the next day and level up then.. The next morning I download the update that I had to, without reading the patch notes though, connected and found my character already level 70., I was a bit confused, though later on I found out that they had diminished the experienced necessary to level up, so I actually leveled up without even being online, I found the thought funny.

The Burning Crusade

So the beta was over, and I went back to playing on retail.. I got to level 62 when I got bored.. I just couldn’t do it, WoW wasn’t the same for me.. So I cancelled the subscription and took a break from WoW for at least 5 months.. Well, a friend of mine in real life in Spain also had an Account on another Server called Minahonda, which is where I am currently playing, he gave me the expansion for my birthday, so I thought what the hell, bought some gametime and started playing, I leveled up to 70 quickly as I already had done it once before, I joined a guild called Forkrul Assail, and started raiding Karazhan and Zul'Aman as well after it got released.
I had some problems with the leaders so I decided to quit the guild, and I joined another guild called Quintessence, where I raided Gruul, Tempest Keep and SSC. But about a month later I stopped playing again, all this time my character name has been Themagician. WoW lost something when the expansion came out, I don’t know what it is.. But its just not the same as it used to be, it doesn’t give me that spark anymore.

When I got tired of it again, my friend talked me into paying for a transfer to his realm, where I am now currently playing, and leveling up in Northrend, as you can see I am now level 79, because I don’t play to often as I don’t find it so enthusiastic as I have before.

Well, to say the least WoW is a great game. But for me, it has degraded with time, it started as the best game I have ever tried, but right now, its lacking something, if it ever gets to the same point as it was before, ill be the first playing, but for now, I need to get on with life.

So, farewell players, I will still play, but not as I used to.


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Note

This is a Post i posted some time ago on the Retail forums, though you might want to read it, if you have the time anyways. And ofcourse nothing of my Emu experience is posted here, as i dont want that on the Retails^^ Oh well, enjoy!

[gokule]

Oh yeah, i might just posts my WotlK experience Later.

[MaxiPads]

Good read. +rep =], I thought it was gonna be another "Omg i remember when i killed a gnome and then got hacked and quit"

Some bits made me chuckle xD

[gokule]

Thanks mate, appriciate it
Oh btw, i won that key in the worldofwar.net IRC chat, if anyone remember being in such a thing, where you could win a private beta key, say so.

[OrangeKingdom]

^ think i remember something like that.

[gokule]

Hehe, did you win?

[Nanubz]

nice story +Rep , btw i think what the game is missing is those 40 man raids that follow the warcraft story...really hard raids made the game challenging and it was fun...cant say the same about wow now

[gokule]

Thanks for the rep, hopefully i can get out of leecher status soon

[Hunterplay]

Great read +2 Rep

[Pedregon]

awesome story
+3 rep

[Mitron]

woooooow, really nice story
btw.... the part where you say you only play sometimes... it's same for me.... i logon check AH and talk to some guildies... maybe do a BG or a dungeon run. But not much lvling.... stucked at 50 -.- dinged it yesterday tho. was lucky to get boost in BRD and i had more than 2 lvls rested soo 1 full lvl in BRD and 0.5 of questing and i reached 50 but now.... i dunno what to do.... i only want boost boost boost.... i hate lvling so always creating new alts... i wanna get lvl 80 and start raiding and PvP... ^^

[ugly_rocket]

It is a very interesting story, but is there any point to it? Or is it another good bye WoW story?

[xian00]

This story reminds me of when WoW was still fun

[gokule]

Hopefully you dont see this as a goodbye-story. As i do still play.

But i guess blizzard is just blizzard, like every other company trying to make money - cant blame em can you.

Oh well, everyone that missed out on PreTBC hasn't experienced the best time of WoW.

What i posted here is my experience, my story, no goodbye shit, just my 2 cents.

[stoneharry]

It's a good story Makes me miss pre-tbc... I brought WoW near the date of release, and played it since, but I never actually hit 60 till TBC because I was to busy roleplaying and dancing in stormwind >.> Regreting it now.