Your first experience playing WOW

[Simeon Ivanov]

Started an Orc Warrior in vanilla and I LOVED it! It was so exciting - leveling up, learning new skills, getting armor, getting a mount, killing shit, exploring the world. I played WoW all the way up the Wrath the Lich King, then it wasn't exciting anymore. I knew every quest, every zone, every spell, evey time I was gonna die, how much I was gonna die, where I was supposed to go ... it became an automated spamtastic grindfest.

 

[Michael Logan]

Started a human warrior during the end of BC because a friend told me to play it, and I hated it, it was the most boring game Ive ever played. Stopped playing, a few months later the same friend convinced me to play again, it was a bit funnier this time, but stopped playing again after a while. a few months later the same friend convinced me again!

And it kept going like that. Hopefully this time I quit for real.

 

[Ferrious]

My first thoughts? "This isn't like Star Wars:Galaxies at all". Followed by "Actually, that's a good thing". Followed by "I really need a guild, solo is dullsville". Got into a Guild and loved the game from there.

Played it from launch to about four months into Cataclysm, raiding from Molten Core to end of Classic, then sporadic BC raiding (oh God how I hated BC), then Wrath raiding all the way up to the Lich King. Had a great time leading my guild for about a year and a half of that, and Main Tanking about two years of it. Asked my fiancée out over WoW while she was first levelling her Priest back in Classic.

Finally killed the Lich King about a week before my son was born (his mother, the aforementioned fiancée, was raidhealing the group that we killed him in - "We've got to get him this week, I'm already over-due for this baby!"), and felt I'd achieved what I set out to do in WoW. Arthas was always my goal.

Played into Cataclysm, had some limited fun, but nothing like the old days. Then noticed that life with a child is more work than I'd realised and quit, some six years after I'd started.

Long run, gave me a lot of good times (I'll never forget the ear-piercing cheer that went up from 40 people on our first Ragnaros kill all the way back in classic). I still miss the good old days, but that's more the people than the game.

How's that for detail (if you add a Master's degree and my relationship into there you end up with nearly my life story)?

 

[enzilewulf]

Well at first I kept making fuck around classes. Then I actually started hunter when BC first launched and then my brother got that account shut down. I played some more, got a lock up to 70 and then me and my guild terrorized the Horde on that server with our massive numbers. We actually had the Undead's city on lock down once. That was awesome, best time of my WoW career. Then there was a guild that was made just to stop us, we met on the bridge from the wetlands to some other place (You know the big broken one?) and had one big battle and defeated them. That was a highlight of our career as a guild. Then one day the GM vanished and us generals were left and a conflict broke out between two of my mates. Most of the guild left to each side and we would try to make it work but it never did. Then WOTLK came out and some of us oldies got back together and raided again once we were lv 80 but just never came back. *sigh* then I quit. Never went back. My days of WoW are over.

 

[feauxx]

started playing for the first time little over a month ago. main char is a night elf mage at 59 right now. but if i had bought burning crusade right away i would have rolled a draenei.

leveled a draenei, blood elf and a worgen to the 10-15 range, prolly gonna mess around some more with the blood elf and level the draenei properly. kinda regret making both hunters. but i guess it's ok since i'm really bad at melee in wow.

it definitely took me a while to get used to playing. i never really got into pc gaming because i always feel very awkward playing left handed, but with a ranged class it's been manageable so far.

 

[Togs]

Always been interested in it but couldnt be asked until a mate go into it, first time I logged on I was dumbstruck by the size of Stormwind City.
I started playing at the beginning of BC and stopped shortly after WOTLK, recently returned and Im mildly horrified by how much simpler everything is, whilst alot of its good stuff (low level questing is so much more fun now) stuff like not having ot walk to dungeons, being able to fly everywhere and getting mounts at 20 just makes the game world feel so much smaller.

My relationship with the game is probably best described as love/hate- I love how immersive it can get but i hate how it ultimately feels like Im pissing my life away by playing it.

 

[Minjoltr]

I've wanted to play WoW for a while and I've tried a few times over the years to play on the free trial but I never managed to connect, which was disappointing. After an invite from a friend and two days of fighting with the launcher and my internet connection, I started playing in November just before Cataclysm was released and if I'd grinned any harder, my head would have split in half.

I love the environments but I'm not much of a fan of the repeated 'Do X to Y of Z' quest structure. Kill 10 boars, find 50 bones, heal 8 buddies etc etc. I've heard levelling in Cataclysm is quicker than it was previously and I don't think I'd have stuck with it if I'd had to grind my way up to level 85.

I still enjoy playing but not as much as I used to simply because I've run out of things to do now except for dailies and the odd low-end raid although it might be more engaging if I had a guild to play with.

 

[DanielBrown]

Started playing back when the game was pretty newly relased, I believe. Made an orc warrior and was really amazed by the game. It was my first encounter with such a massive world. My previous computer gaming experience consisted of Counter-Strike, so it was quite a difference.
Needless to say, I not only fell in love with the game. I also became extremly addicted.

Don't like the game these days. The expansions and updates since have of course improved the game, but overall it's not fun to play anymore. It just feels like a task. Only stayed the last few years because of my friends.

These days I play LOTRO. It's awesome and it still offers a challenge. The playerbase is very mature, so you don't have to deal with ignorant kids as much as in WoW.

 

[The Madman]

I was in the open beta shortly before the game was released, my very first character a human Warlock. As a long-time fan of the Warcraft rts series the first time I walked into Stormwind and saw the statues of the previous games heroes all lined up while that damned epic music played in the background I was hooked. Remember when the beta was closing the last day was chaotic as the servers GM's just had fun summoning demons and monsters into the player cities and causing chaos. Fun times!

Back in yonder days Wowhead and thottbot didn't exist yet either so the world was, more or less, a mystery. When I bought the retail version I ended up playing a Gnome rogue and my favourite element of the game was just exploring all the locations. At first all the locations you were supposed to visit, then later on the places you weren't. Wall-walking was still possible then so if you knew how and you were patient you could get just about anywhere. PVP was fun as well, since battlegrounds didn't exist yet most players vented their fury with city raids and the old Southshore vs. Tarren Mill conflict.

Unfortunately that's all gone now. There's no sense of adventure left because dataminers have gone through every tidbit of game data and posted it all on websites. Just raiding, endless raiding and stat min/maxing. Hell, SouthShore doesn't even exist in-game anymore save, as I recall, a glowing puddle of green goo thanks to the Horde scum.

That made me kinda sad when I was exploring Cataclysms content. Played for the month of time I'd gotten along with the expac as a gift and didn't renew. Guess I'm just being a curmudgeon who misses yonder olden days of exploration and world pvp.

 

[Otterwuff]

I started WoW in '06. At first I was wary of it, because it was sorta a "new low" in regards of gaming nerds around where I lived - but I wasn't exactly conforming to society, and I found that I actually liked World of Warcraft. So I played, and had fun doing so.

When Burning Crusade was released, I was kinda upset. I wasn't a hardcore raider or anything, so from what I could tell the changes to the end-game content were all for the better - no 40-man raids, no AFK-type bosses (what I've been relayed) - but the inflation of loot was a little disappointing. It was too easy to get decked in epics. Having said that, Burning Crusade was my favourite expansion, and my favourite rendition of WoW overall. The fact that the classes weren't balanced is generally what I, as a layman, would call 'poor' game design - but it was that imbalance that made the classes unique, and the game fun.

Wrath of the Lich King aimed for balance. They succeeded. A bit too well. Instead of each class bringing something different to the table, every class were given 3-4 (may be wrong here) buffs, raid-wide, that did not stack with one another - a way to include every class into the raiding metagame. You no longer needed Enhancement Shamans for Windfury totems - or Paladins for Blessing of Wisdom. The unique buffs were replaced, and given to more classes. Ultimately, I didn't like it. I still played through as much content as I could bother to do, but it was no longer the old, clunky, poorly-designed fun World of Warcraft that I loved. It was too polished, too streamlined.

I barely played Cataclysm - but it wasn't my cup of tea. It was, like Wrath, polished to a blinding sheen. It was bland. The classes were distinct enough and it had its moments of difficulty, but making away with class-specific quests and unique buffs (which they did in WotLK) really... killed it for me. Compared to WoW four years ago, it was simply too easy.

To me, WoW as it was in its early days and WoW: Cataclysm are comparable to D&D 3.5 and D&D 4th. 3.5 was horrendously imbalanced, it struggled with some poor game mechanics, playing rogues and fighters were eventually pointless because Wizards and Clerics outdid them in everything (on a meta-powergaming level, at least). 4th tried to fix this by... making every single class play the same, more or less. Sure, each class has mechanical differences but ultimately, since every single class more or less has the same number of at-will powers, encounter powers, daily powers, and utility powers, healing is streamlined, ect., it... doesn't do anything for me. Of course, I don't play either of these anymore.

So yeah... might be my nostalgia-tinted glasses are glued to my face, but pre-expansion WoW and Burning Crusade were my two favourite renditions.

 

[J-dog42]

Got home to my flat one day. My usually lovely flat mate screamed at me for interrupting him during a raid, because I asked how he was. Experienced the same with three different, normally nice and pleasant people. Never went near the thing.

 

[Arrionso]

My first real experience with WoW was after a classmate of mine back in high school started getting into it. He bought it around the beginning of the semester and wouldn't stop talking about it by the end. He eventually talked me into getting a trial and giving it a shot.

Made a dwarf called Santa Clause and did a few of the starting quests out in the field. Then I got bored and saw a group of players running by and decided to follow them to see what they were up to. They eventually lead me to a nearby city who's name I forget. I just remember it was massive looking and inside a mountain. Snowy area too.

I spent the next 30 ~ 60 minutes just lost in there. It was fun exploring but when I would try and talk to the players hanging around the town no one would respond to me. Every once in a while I'd get a "Hello" or someone would do a random action in front of me then run off again. I eventually got bored and just logged out. Logged in again briefly the next day but ended up uninstalling the game soon after.


To be fair, I didn't give WoW a real chance to hook me in since I was already playing another MMO at the time. I'm sure if I had made a proper character and gone through the quests without skimming the text I'd enjoy it. The game seemed great at the time. I just wasn't interested in playing another game yet.