(WoW) What a Strange, Long Trip It's Been

Four years ago today I started a 10-day trial of World of Warcraft. It's strange to think back on how much has changed in terms of the game itself and my experience with it.


I had actually sampled the game before, playing a new hunter on a friend's account at a con. It was okay, but didn't grab me. So I wasn't really expecting all that much when I started up a trial account in my own name. I had always thought Final Fantasy XI would be the only MMORPG that could draw me in, and I had instead been disappointed by it (this without even having actually played).

I made a priest, thinking "Well, every group/guild needs some support classes, right?" and this became my soloing character. It probably wasn't a good choice, considering priests have been historically toward the low end of the "good characters to solo with" list. I quested around Darnassus and bopped over to Darkshore with minimal interaction with others, though observing the presence of other players around frequently.

And then I got to the point of picking professions. With relatively little knowledge of the game, I picked tailoring and enchanting. Both seemed to work okay for a cloth-wearing caster class. Thankfully, the two work together fairly well. And really, that's part of what sold me on the game right there. As I've found over the years, for a game to hold my interest, I need some form of goal - whether furthering plotlines or pursing accomplishments. Tailoring presented me with a list of things my character could learn to make and use, but there was work involved in getting there. Collecting cloth, skilling up, learning new skills, and making cool stuff that beats what's dropping randomly. It gave me something to do beyond reading quests and killing things. That aspect of the game is probably 90 percent responsible for me deciding to buy in and start playing on a full account.

My priest only slowly lost ground as my "main" character to the paladin I made specifically to run with friends. A paladin running around all the time with two rogues. That's not the most balanced group, but we seemed perfectly capable of carving through what most quests had to offer. I was urged to take protection talents, because the guild didn't have much in the way of tanks. And even though we rarely played in a full group, that suited me fine - get the enemies' attention while the rogues dice them up. With my paladin, I pursued blacksmithing and the complimentary mining, pounding out some of my own armor and weapons while leveling. More and more, playing the protection paladin felt right.

When Burning Crusade was released, I remember a fair measure of excitement. I also remember lots of expansion-related technical issues. ;) As I recall, I wasn't quite to the point of diving straight through the Black Portal, so there was still some leveling to be done, but this cut short time I would have spend in zones like the Eastern Plaguelands, Silithus, and Winterspring. Upon reaching level 58, it was more profitable, effective, and interesting to travel to Outland. During BC, I watched the guild come together more - or at least it did in my own perception. There were more guild runs. More people took up specific roles. As we worked through those ten (well, twelve) levels, the game was less like playing with a few friends and more like playing with a family (in a good way).

I remember being flattened by a Fel Reaver.
I remember pre-work sessions of running laps around the Black Portal to mine fel iron (until they realized that was too easily exploitable and redistributed the nodes).
I remember thinking how neat it would be to have a little cottage on the floating chunks of ground above the rather pretty Nagrand.
I remember the awesomeness of acquiring my first flying mount, and how radically that changed everything.
I remember when I finally upgraded to a swift flying mount, and wondering how I ever thought the old one was "fast."
I remember busting my tail to get a "good" spell damage weapon, and still feeling like a second-class tank next to our guild's main druid.
I remember paladins being buffed, and the incredible sense of greatness that came with realizing my best way to kill mobs looking for a drop was not to slowly go through them one by one, but rather to pull a pack of 5-10 at once and go to town.
I remember Laj, and his frustrating refusal to drop the Spaulders of the Righteous that I was after until too late to matter.
I remember, nearing the release of the next expansion, finally getting 8-10 guild members together and going into Karazhan. We didn't get very far, but it felt so strange and impressive to finally be in a raid.
I remember fighting in the second Scourge Invasion and the zombie assault on Stormwind (and I still have some momentos of that).

Then Wrath of the Lich King was released. By this time, my paladin was my main, through and through, and I was ready to jump on the ships and head unto Northrend with everyone else. On and off, I still leveled together with my original rogue partners, though we got out of synch at times. Early on, I found a sweet spot in Scholazar Basin for mining saronite ore to get my skill up. Northrend didn't seem to have as many continent-spanning quests as before, though there were some great plotlines. We were introduced to phasing - the ups and downs of it. Grizzly Hills introduced me to some small measure of "forced" PVP, which I never really got into, but I got some good stories out of. I pushed pretty hard and, in some ways, hit an early plateau. Dragonblight showed us a lot of history. Icecrown became a personal crusade against the Scourge. And, fairly early on, we made a decision to move the guild to another server. Even in hindsight, I don't know if that was good or bad, but it was a shake up.

I'm sure I wasn't the first level 80 character in the guild, but I wasn't very far behind. I worked on important reputations and scrounged up materials to craft myself the best gear I could get by myself I even soloed some quests for things that not everyone would be able to do. We did guild runs of dungeons with some measure of regularity along the way, and I tried to be ready for it all. I did more research out of game on how to be a tankadin. Gone were spellpower weapons, which was just as well. I sought out my first epic weapon in the Red Sword of Courage. I condensed guides of advice from elsewhere for benefit of myself and others. Basically, I did everything I could to be on the front line of the guild.

I like to think it paid off. We started perhaps a tier "late," but we fought our way through Naxxramas and the Obsidian Sanctum. We later clawed our way to the end of Ulduar, though with new things coming out there wasn't enough incentive to finish off Yogg Saron. We spent little time on Trial of the Crusader, but cleared it readily enough. We've now fought our way to the pinnacle of Icecrown Citadel, and the next expansion doesn't yet have a firm release date. The guild has gone through a lot, and come a long way. Honestly, thinking about that all now and knowing I was a part of it feels a little bit... humbling.

I've spent longer on Furryfaire, and MUCKs in general, but that's got to be the longest stretch as far as any paid form of entertainment for me. World of Warcraft is not everyone's cup of tea and it's not perfect, but it's the "gold standard" in MMORPGs because it does manage to appeal to a broad range of players. And even personally, I'll have highs and lows with it - moments of triumph and periods of burnout. But I don't regret playing it. As far as the game goes, it's been a good four years, and I'm very interested to see how many more there are.

Long live The Knights Penumbra!