Thoughts VS Opinions “World of Warcraft Back in the Days”
Mists Of Pandaria the 4th expansion pack to be launched on the 25th of September this year from the biggest MMORPG ever, World of Warcraft. That at one point had 12 million subscribers and now “only” 9.1 million subscribers worldwide. Has Blizzard for definate killed WoW? Even though they have announced that they have plans for a 5th expansion.
World of Warcraft a game that was to change the gaming industry and everything that came with it was announced on September 2, 2001.
It was later released on the 23rd of November, 2004 on the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise.
It all began on that 23rd of November, 200.000 WoW accounts were created in 1 single day, all 40 servers were filled to max capacity that created 30 minutes of que times to enter a server.
“We were all extremely pleased with the success of World of Warcraft on its first day of launch,” said Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment. “Once we saw the numbers for the first day, we knew that we had to immediately increase capacity to accommodate the huge numbers of players joining our game. We’re glad so many people are enjoying World of Warcraft, and we are dedicated to supporting a fun and smooth game experience for everyone.”
After the third war Arthas and his Scourage had changed the way Azeroth was, into a world with different factions at war. The heroes of the past pass the torch on to new upcoming heroes, not the NPCs but the players themselves who can choose between the Horde and the Alliance. You will earn your reputation and levels by doing Quests, Dungeons, PvP etc. Azeroth that was once green and vibrant, became grey and dead. Creatures of the world found themselves corrupted by the evil force of the Lich King.
The Lich King who trapped King Terenas`s only son Arthas who then became undead and later served as the greatest death knight of the Lich King. The first and second war was between the Horde and the Alliance as the Horde entered through the Dark Portal from Draenor. Now all relatively old threats, The main threat in Vanilla WoW was Ragnaros who was located in the Blackrock mountain/MC who later us heroes would defeat. And ofcourse all the older gods from AQ and ZG that the Lich King left swamping around.
Vanilla WoW was just simply wicked. I get a nostalgic feeling everytime I think about it. Leveling to 60 would take 3 months! (Unless you were a Hunter)
When you had to buy different ranks of spells, and for a time you would use rank 2 or 3 spells to avoid going oom if you were a caster.
Reputation mattered.
Twinks.
At Level 40 you would get your first mount.
In the times when top guilds had names like:
“Your Mom Is My Mount”
“Crit My Clit”
“OMG BRB ICECREAM TRUCK”
And my personal favorite:
“Sapped Girls Cant Say No”
PvP
The PvP ranking system I sure do miss that, If you saw someone with Rank 14 Field Marshel/High Warlord then he/she was either a Chinese locked in a basement or someone with no life outside WoW at all. In other words grinding to Rank 14 took 6 months of playing 24 hours a day.
World PvP was active, Legendary fights between Tarren Mill and Southshore or what about the Ganking that went on in Lakeshire, Gadgetzan and not to forget STV!
BGs could last for days, And you had to que at Battlemasters that leads me on to my next point.
In Vanilla I made a notepad file with a list of people i was gonna corpse camp when I hit 60. The list was pretty long.
The Community
Oh my goodness, the community. I could list the memorable people from the Ahn`Qiraj server in Vanilla without a second thought but if you asked me to name someone memorable I’ve met in the last 3 years, I could name off one or two.
When Battlegrounds were implemented, you had to que up at the entrance to the BG to play it. You know what we did while we waited? We talked. We dueled. And Raided the opposite factions entrance.
Lowbie towns were interesting.Goldshire was a dueling hotspot. At level 18 a guildie gave me a Searing Blade for my warrior, I thought I was invincible. It was a blue item! A BLUE! You knew your top PvPers, top PvErs, people on the opposite faction you would avoid at all costs.
Epics were epic. A phrase often referred to alot when talking about Vanilla WoW You know why? Because it was true. Epics are handed out like candy nowadays. I felt accomplished when I got full BLUE items.
PvE
PvE required more time and effort but you had a sense of accomplishment when you completed a Raid or Dungeon. St , Strat , Scholo , Brd , took HOURS to clear and had rewarding loot for everyone. The game in itself was very easy to understand, yet required an immense investment of time to reach the top. Questing and leveling was simplistic, repetitive and non-streamlined.
Remember how good it felt to finally down Ragnaros or Hakkar in Vanilla. At a time when others were already progressing in Naxxramas, and how good it felt to kill Vashj and Kael prior to 3.0, when others already farmed Archimonde and Illidan. Today, we all know, Anything but heroic LK is worthless l2p already!
Hunters? Grats you hit 60 in 3 days and rolled on every weapon you saw, also every 8 year old is playing one, for the next 8 years you will be known as
huntards.
Shamans? One button god mode, FROST SHOCK!
Mages? You want to DPS as fire? Sorry, everything is immune to fire. Try frost. Arcane is for . . . umm. . . having more intellect.
To conclude I’m not going to pretend Vanilla was better in every sense of the word. It certainly wasn’t. Bugs were rampant, one copper node in Elwynn had you looting it for days, and gold certainly wasn’t easy to make if you weren’t some stockbroker playing in his spare time. PvE was not as complicated, just long and arduous. Getting 40 people for raids was like herding narcoleptic cats. Long grinding sessions, Douchebags would Ninja gear. Unbalanced classes in PvP.
But there is one thing i think we all should agree on and that is that the community has suffered from the Expansions. Dungeon/Raid Finder, Not having to use the Battlemasters to que anymore, Hardly any World PvP, Empty lowbie zones all contribute to it.
The Game has certainly improved in many aspects, maybe it was because the game was new to me back then and it was a different phase of my life that i enjoyed it so much compared to now.
WoW certainly held more magic for me back in the day. Or I’m just growing up.
Nostalgia is a powerful thing.
Thoughts VS Opinions is where the writers express their thoughts on games and news so
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