As World of Warcraft approaches it’s 10th
anniversary I thought this would be a great time to take a look back on some
humorous memories I have of when I first started playing. 2004 was the year it
began for me. Halfway through my first year at University and at the age of 17
I took my first foray into the world of MMORPGs. Armed with and a copy of World
of Warcraft and 4 friends who had been pushing me to get the game since I stepped
foot into my first lecture. It was on that fabled Boxing Day that a Dwarf
Warrior with 2 handed axe in hand stepped foot into Kharanos, and my World of
Warcraft story was to begin.
172 Days of game time later (yeah, really) I can now look
back on my time with WoW with fondness. For me, Warcraft was never about
pushing to have the best gear or the most achievements or even being just that
little bit better than your peers. No. For me, it was all about the social
interactions. I could babble on about Stratholme 45minute runs, Sunday evening
Upper-Black Rock Spire or 6 day long Alterac Valley fights but those are
atypical of the nostalgia of Vanilla Warcraft. I’d like to share some of the
less desirable pastimes that my companions and I were fond of participating in.
For those of you unfamiliar with World of Warcraft or its “Vanilla”
version. Stranglethorn Vale was one of the most evil places in all of Azeroth.
Being on a PvP server (Thanks James) meant that we could be ambushed by higher
level players from the opposing faction with relative ease and dispatched
before you could utter “oh not a-fucking-gain”. However, every cloud has a
silver lining as they say and this opened up some fun ways for the 5 of us to
bully lower level characters, for example, by drowning them.
Back in Vanilla, you had a pretty realistic breath meter. As
far as I remember you had maybe a minute tops before you started to take damage
from being underwater. They did change this and you now can breathe for a lot
longer, making this pretty much impossible nowadays. Our Warlock at the time
made sure we could breathe underwater and we went hunting.
It all started with our Priest mind controlling a low level
hunter into the water, my warrior landed a concussion blow (5 seconds in those
days), James, our mage would frost nova, the rogue would gouge. We’d cycle this
round until the last droplets of breath escaped and the corpse fell to the
ground. Yeah we probably could have just killed the poor fellow on the shore,
but, where’s the fun in that? It’s a bit sadistic, but we planned that forced
drowning very carefully! Happy with our handiwork, we’d then wait for him to
respawn again under the water and well…drown him again. It was malicious but
our Ventrillo was full of hilarity!
It wasn’t just the Horde that felt the force of our
nastiness. Oh no, this is to date, one of my most favourite memories within a
game. I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard at a game like I did on this night in
a long, LONG time. Volchan, a level 60 elite (powerful) creature resided within
Burning Steppes, an end level zone. This creature was formidable, he’s what’s
known as a Molten Giant, a huge lumbering behemoth, dripping in lava and rock
and on occasion firing off a huge fire blast in a circle from his feet outwards,
causing some pretty hefty damage to end level players.
Close to Burning Steppes is a very low level area known as
Redridge. Within Redridge is a town called Lakeshire, safe haven for the
inexperienced and weak. Well not on the day we decided to take Volchan for a
walk. Back in Vanilla you could partake in a technique known as “Kiting”,
kiting works by periodically attacking a creature whilst moving away, then
attacking, then moving away. Again, nowadays it’s pretty much impossible, the
vast majority of creatures will only chase for a certain distance and then run
back to where they were. Volchan liked to be kited.
After several failed attempts and a lot of patience, Volchan
was a new resident of Lakeshire. I made sure that I kept Volchan’s attention
our Priest would be heal my health back to full after each fire blast and our
band of merry bandits were riling up support from the locals: “Come help us
slay the giant” they’d yell, often followed by “We need help” and the most
blatantly nasty one of them all “He drops Epic Loot!”. In their bucketloads the
newbies responded. Volchan disposing of their puny attempts at battle with ease,
one fire blast after another. Guards and NPCs fell like leaves in the wind and
with each satisfying death yell from members of our own faction we laughed. Oh
how we laughed and laughed. Eventually our priest forgot to heal me, or I
forgot to attack (could have been both due to the giggles) and Volchan was now
free to pilage as he pleased. A few minutes later he ran back, undefeated, to
his magma covered home of Burning Steppes. We still laughed.
To be honest though, we weren’t that bad all the time. We
had several enjoyable evenings and weekends working as a team to kill enemies
and become closer friends. World of Warcraft gains a bad reputation at times
and sometimes it is deserved. However, if you can disfranchise yourself with
the game there’s some solid foundations of social interaction and it’s with
these I remember Vanilla Warcraft with fondness. I’ve built quite a few
friendships through Warcraft to the point of being one of my Uni mates
Groomsman at his wedding (She plays too in case you were wondering) and
although I may have spent 172 days in the last 10 or so years playing Warcraft.
Most of the time, it was time well spent. Who knows if I’ll be playing and if
it’ll even last another 10 years. One thing’s for sure though, we’ll still be
laughing at the memories.
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