I got into the game pretty late around the beginning of WoD. I had just built my first gaming PC and my cousin invited me through the referral program. I remember dropping into Mulgore, him rolling in on a two-seater rocket, us flying to the other end of the continent towards Orgrimmar, and me not knowing at all what was going on. It wasn’t until my first Alliance character and running off on my own that I was really hooked.
I believe the thing that got me the most was the sheer size of the world. I came from traditional single player RPGs (Skyrim, Fable, etc.), and the only MMO I had played prior was vanilla ESO earlier that year. In WoW, I felt like it was an actual world. Landmasses felt huge, there were a multitude of quests to complete and locations to explore, and everything was new to me. It took me until BFA to actually level a character to max.
That, and you could play as a werewolf (albeit, not a particularly attractive one at the time).
I dabbled in WoW in the past when I was a kid/teenager, but it never really got me hooked in.
I joined an RP server to see what that was like and just- The amount of player-made content available and just how much socializing you did with people from a variety of guilds and backgrounds was incredible. I made more friends roleplaying than I ever did raiding back when I was a smol Rhonako. (Well, smoller Rhonako)
Seriously, if 9.0 is a drag, I encourage people to at least give roleplaying a shot. It’s a much needed breath of fresh air and EVERY day is different.
two moments, one more major and closer to my heart, and one that just made me feel a sense of awe.
the first, i was on my undead hunter, listening to dragonforce riding across the dunes of tanaris on my undead steed with my spider clikker following along faithfully… felt like i was a goddang heavy-metal album cover, it was the most epic feeling i ever felt in all my years of playing WoW. it was just… mmph! can’t give even word it, was just a fantastic moment.
the second was the first time i travelled to the peak of serenity on one of my early characters. leaving the little temple-area, following initiate chuang around… hearing that beautiful music and knowing full-well that this area was a hint- a taste of what lay ahead of me… was just awe-inspiring, and sealed monks as my favorite class.
man, traveling by foot to the Eastern Kindoms, going through the wetlands. Vanilla was special
Starting in Teldrassil, the music and atmosphere of Darnassus and Ashenvale
This reminds me of guildies escorting my noob self through the zones and helping me collect flight paths. What a time to be alive. No two-seaters back then!
I came from EQ, we had just moved and got the new internet up. I was talking to some friends from EQ that had started playing WoW and they had said how much better WoW was. The one thing I do remember them mentioning was that you could fly around to get to your destination instead of running everywhere by grabbing FPs. I had decided I would try it instead of going back to EQ, so I researched all day to decide what I would want to play. (Ofc it had to be alliance since they were alliance.)
I would say, the customization of characters, the classes and choices (my first toon was a NE druid). The openness, beauty and ambience of the world, the music and the multitudes of quests are what really got me hooked. (I too was shocked you could go over a zone line and there was no loading screen, which made the world seem massive!)
knocking around westfall and someone started questing with me. We ended up running around the entire zone together, ran deadmines, added each other as friends.
ETA: I had no idea what I was doing, my now husband and his brother were raving about the game so I decided to try it. Im sure my nooblevel was obvious so this friendly person was helping me do the quest objectives, figure out how to track quests and actually play. She helped me through the entire westfall zone then showed me what a dungeon was by taking me through dead mines on her max level mage and 3 other random lowbies.
I cant say if it was MoP or legion where I started enjoying the more solo exploration aspects of the game. BFA for sure got me back into the team player role.
I was in City of Heroes since the beta, and only came to WoW in Jan 2005 because coworkers could not stop talking about it.
I think the thing that hooked me, before anything else, was the intro scrolls before playing a new character. It felt like so much effort had been put into them, to explain the race, give a visual of the surrounding area, and get you ready to play. I had to see them all. My altaholism has not waned, to this day.
For me, it was seeing the Wrath of the Lich King cinematic for the first time. I had only been playing since just after the Sunwell patch was released, and really had no idea of hardly any of the lore, but just the sheer quality and epicness of that cinematic sealed the deal for me, and I’ve never even come close to looking at another game since
First dungeon run in Deadmines while leveling. I was amazed at the team effort required to make it to the end and beat Van Cleef. Then futher along first raid in AQ20 and ramping up that teamwork to 20 people.
I started getting into it due to never having played an mmo before and not knowing anything about it or even much about other rpgs. I had no idea what a dungeon looked like or how I could enter it but it sounded like some awesome adventure. This was back when you still had to walk to the entrance and discover the dungeon. So having later experienced that, Death Knights, and leveling through a lot of content I got pretty hooked. Trying different builds and using BoA was pretty fun too.
I jist started playing this xpac. But have lurked these forums since legion lolol but finly built a pc and started playing it and ive honestly enjoyed it. Ive made a lot kf classes to see what i like. Ive even tried a normal castle run. I just gotta find me a guild and stick to a class to main
Well, I enjoyed Warcraft and WC 2 the RTS games but only had a free demo of WC 3 from a music CD so never got too into that one. Played the crap out of the RTS games and knew some of the lore from them.
Some time after that I was reading one of the gaming mags I use to pick up about WoW and saw that they had hunters that could tame pets and some were rare. I was so excited to get into that type of fantasy game but didn’t start playing WoW till a while after that.
When I started playing WoW I was actually an Alliance Night Elf of all things. I dislike NE’s the most of all races because of my PvP days and always running across them and their death rattle. Not sure why I chose them since I only play Horde and started playing Horde only within a month of originally starting.
What got me into Horde was that my brother and a mutual buddy knew someone they worked with that played WoW so we were going to group up. He only played Alliance at the time but wanted to try Horde so we all made Horde characters.
The 3 of them made taurens and I think I made a troll. Well, when I saw everyone playing tauren I remade mine into a tauren and we just started questing and exploring. I remember us all getting up to Bloodhoof Village. Funny thing is that I deleted that tauren soon afterward and made a troll again, lol. I still can’t play taurens for some reason.
The fact that it was one big continuous world barring the split of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, of course. In Vanilla that concept didn’t exist in many other games, so knowing I could (and did) go on a journey from Ashenvale to Tanaris without ever hitting a loading screen was amazing to me.
Still is today, even with other games and MMOs coming out, and I do enjoy the feel of a connected world.
I remember the day, I was sitting on my laptop in the lounge room with my mum watching TV
Darlark the human warrior (darlark was the name I got from a RuneScape quest) was about level 13 in west fall, there I saw him, a powerful Tauren hunter standing at the top of a hill, bow drawn with two weapons at his side
I logged off that human warrior, went on to barth and made a tauren warrior
Then it happen again in STV, getting killed by someone the troll mage called jinx saved me from death at the hands of alliance, captivated by mages and I rerolled a troll mage like him and levelled all the way up to 70.
He got me into a raid for the first time in tier 1 of BC
Then it happened again, I saw the PvP prowess of an undead mage called Ga and a rogue called hotspot
I rolled an undead rogue, took an extremely long time to level and I janked around fighting higher level players in durotar, a player called chopperau took notice of me and told me I need to get to 70 and start doing arena
Finally I levelled this very rogue to 70, entered raiding on a rogue and played a rogue as a main from that time forward
Until legion when they killed pvp progression, destroyed rogues combat spec which was my main spec for the majority of the game and turned me into a bitter old man at the age of 26
Open Beta on my Orc Rogue where I was playing right outside the Valley of Trials and realized this game had no rubberbanding and the games response to my keystrokes was seamless… unheard of in MMOs at that time.
first time I crit for over 1k on my warrior. I spent so much time in wsg/AV farming honor and slowly getting my gear up. I was lucky enough to get spinal reaper one night, and the following AV I popped a rogue for over a G and watched his lifeless body go limp.
not sure why 1k was so monumental for me, but it felt amazing.
