So, I actually picked up WoW this time around. I mean, I’ve been playing a bit before, but I decided that while I wait for New World to come out, I’m actually going to get my MMO itch a scratch, and what’s better than playing “the best at its prime”?
Many years ago now, summer of 2009, I decided to try out WoW. My then father-in-law and my sister-in-laws were playing a bunch and had recommended it, several other people I knew were into it.. but me being a complete newbie into MMO’s had no idea what to expect. The fact that the population were divided into realms (servers) were new to me and something I didnt expect, so when I decided to start playing I just picked up a RPPvE-server, because I thought that was a tag for my character, not a tag on the servers. Mind you, I thought that everyone in an area played together, so everyone in the EU were on one gigantic server, etc., so these tags I thought were for the way you intended to play, in a way signalling to others that you were not PvP’ing much. The whole idea of populations sectioned off into separate islands, sort of, werent intuitive for me. It is now, ofcourse, but back then.. it was the first time I came into contact with the principle. Anyway, I wanted to roleplay a bit and be somewhat immersed and play with people who had “good” names, and not just “Tank1” or “DroopDog” or something stupid, I wanted to check out the lore, do some questing, fight alongside others in dungeons, so PvE sounded like my sort of tea. So RPPvE server with as high population I could find without having to wait around for hours to log in seemed like a good idea. Thus, The Sha’tar was the realm I started with.
I remember picking up the Nightelf faction, got a hunter there (he’s still around today) and just doing every quest I could find, reading every book, note and scroll I could. In the end I felt like I knew Nightelf lore like the back of my hand, and I loved it! I spent weeks playing this, it didnt matter to me that there’s entire expansions out for the game that I never touched – by this time, there wasnt just WoW “vanilla”, but also The Burning Crusade that had added The Outland, as well as Wrath of the Lich King that had Northrend added. I loved the slow-playing of discovering each new area, doing every quest, realising new mechanics for the Hunter-class I had chosen. I remember taming different pets (the first one being a black sabretooth I named Memnoch which is still around today), I remember constantly going back with a full inventory of stuff to sell – mostly garbage, because I didnt know about the existence of addons that told you the worth of stuff, or any addons for that matter. My daughter was born at this time, but she and her mother had moved cross-borders for a job, leaving me home alone with nothing to do. This was months on end, meaning I was basically living all alone with more time to kill than I knew what to do with, so losing myself in WoW was probably the best way I could spend my time. I mean, there’s probably better ways, but it was the best way to make time flow, so that I didnt have to feel so alone. But I loved it, every second of every day. I dont remember much of the days as such, I know I installed the game around June, and in between cross-border phone calls, sleeping, eating and going to the bathroom, everything is a blur until they came back home. It was only WoW at that time, my entire life was WoW.
It probably sounds dangerous, and in some ways it most definitely was. Had this continued unsupervised for long enough, I probably would’ve gotten sick. I barely ate – just enough to keep hungerpangs away, I barely slept – just decided to go to sleep whenever my eyes werent able to read anymore and as soon as I woke up I started playing again. I had moved the computer into the bedroom, opted to lift one of the two matresses out of the frame and put my computer-dedicated table there, so that I could sit and play in my own bed and just lie down when I was going to sleep, I had moved my coffeemaker and teapot inside the frame onto another small table, and I had a one litre of bottle I had water in, that I refilled every time I went to the bathroom. I dont know how often I ate every day as I didnt have a set dining schedule. Several times I noticed I was screamingly hungry and decided to make food and it was in the middle of the night, others it was broad daylight. There were no days, it was as if time didnt really flow. It was dangerous unsupervised for sure, and thinking back on it I realise how bad it was. There were no days, there was only the west coast of Kalimdor. There was only WoW, and how I loved it.
Even so, I progressed slowly, I took my time exploring as much as I could – the fact that there was two entire expansions were something I knew, but I wasnt done getting to know the game – besides, I didnt own Wrath of the Lich King yet even if it was out, I only owned the Battle Chest, which meant the basegame and the first expansion. I had all the time in the world to go check out both Outland as well as Northrend. Once I was done with Kalimdor I was going to check out Eastern Kingdoms and when I did I found Stranglethorn Vale. It was at this point I finally got the urge to gain levels, because I couldnt fight the pirates there, and talking with people in the chat I realised that there were companions in the game. Pets, not fighting pets such as the hunters pets, or warlock minions – actual pets that were only there to “keep you company”. And I decided to kill enough pirates to get some of those pets, but that meant leveling up enough. I forgot how long I was playing around there, but I farmed those pirates into oblivion until I got my macaw and a few more that I tossed up on the auction house for a dozen of thousands of gold each or so, then I was ready to move on. I did get them all sold, by the way. I guess that was the start of how I decided to be a collector as well. I poured more gold and time into getting those mounts and pets, companions, than in clearing levels and getting gear.
By this time, I was also using the Battle Chest Guide-books that came with the game (this was during a time where you bought physical copies of games, actual CD’s/DVD’s, and with them came books that told you lots of stuff about the game, such as maps, points of interest, the basics of dungeon groups, etc). So I knew a bit more what to expect, where to go, where not to go if I wanted to avoid getting killed on sight..
I did that for a few weeks again, until I finally reached Outland. I decided to try to knock off as much “important” things in Outland, such as the profession skills, riding skills and so on, didnt want to spend too much time there, partly because the area was somewhat confusing and most people were found in Northrend which was the new expansion, but also because the area besides professions felt outdated. There wasnt much reason to slog through old content alone when noone was there to teach you or play with you, when they were all away doing the fun stuff. But mostly because I for some reason had seen the area Northrend was, finally. I hadnt looked it up on youtube before, but when I did… it was an ice area. Snow, ice, mountains, chilled streams of water. Now, that looked like my sort of place, so now I felt the urge to get up there, to play that content, to run those mountains, to fight those beasts. Unfortunately, I needed the profession skills, riding skills, the gold, and the levels to “be relevant” to Northrend. I made sure to reach those parts, then I bought Wrath of the Lich King – though I have no idea where from, but it’s a physical copy so perhaps from one of the retailers in town – and I had such a great time of my life. I was playing with people again – actually participating in raids, dungeons, I was part of the economy with my gathering professions, I made bank selling all those skins and herbs. I LOVED playing WoW. I lost count on how much time I eventually spent playing, but I do still own seven “pre-paid card”-packages and I know I lost some, and eventually I just started to buy the game-time digitally. I must’ve played as much as I could for years.
Cataclysm came out in 2010 and I was still playing at this time. I bought it and by this time I had bought a couple of other stuff, like themed mousepads, in-game pets, authenticators, and a very expensive subscription magazine that they cancelled after 5 magazines (I still have all of them, read, but otherwise great condition) and replaced with PCGamer magazine for a few years. They’re all unopened, still in their plastic wrapping, except for a few that had some promotional game codes for games I later played, Neverwinter I believe. Looking around some sites for codes, I saw mentions to promotional codes for pets, items, and such in some of the very magazines I owned, so I opened those up to use the codes, that’s all I had those magazines for. I was so dissapointed in that whole debacle I honestly didnt care about the PCGamer stuff, but I still kept it. I was dissapointed, but getting the Kwurky plushy along with the magazines were good enough I told myself. Paying as much as I did to get only 5 magazines of the stuff I wanted, and then years of worth of stuff I didnt want… that was a bummer to say the least. Atleast I got a Murloc plushy.
When I googled more about it, because I’ve forgotten a lot of details regarding this, the first issue apparently came out early 2010, despite being announced an entire year earlier, and it was often late and simply not enough material in the magazines to warrant the price according to many. I’m partially inclined to agree, especially since they only gave out 3 issues the first year and then discontinued it after issue 5. Though, I must admit, they were gorgeous and the presentation was on point, the page quality was superb and there was no advertisements. Such a shame it sank. I was especially bitter that I got a PCGamer subscription instead. Just for the fun of it, I actually looked it up on eBay and Amazon, and the magazines goes for basically nothing – even if they’re first prints – but the plushy goes for $70/€58/£50. Not selling, by the way, but that’s what I gave for the two-year subscription to the magazine that gave me the plushy, excluding the shipping. Basically, I paid for a plushy, and got five awesome magazines and a couple of years worth of paperweights for the same cost the shipping and handling were. While the plushy wasn’t what I was going for, I still call that sort of a win, now that I’m thinking about it.
Back to the topic – Cataclysm came out in December 2010, the entire world changed. Both literally and figuratively, as not only did the world of warcraft change basically every map it had, but that’s also when I moved out the first time with my kid. Being a single parent alone with a kid, I didnt have much time to play anymore, so it kinda got shelved. I didnt play at all the entirety of 2011, despite having bought Cataclysm on release. All in all, I got very little playtime out of this expansion, playing for about 2 weeks on launch, and nothing more between that and April 2012, which was when I got a three month subscription to play, which if I remember correctly, I hardly ever used. I know I did play some, just not enough to get three months worth out of it. Looking through my email history of the time, I was really busy with CNC-training and the unemployment office, and I believe I had the idea that WoW would be a great winding down-tool, which..it apparently didnt function as, since I hardly played.
September 2012 however, Mists of Pandaria released, and this time around I actually bought the Collectors Edition. I have no idea from where I bought it, I own the physical edition, but it doesn’t show up on my order history of either websites I would’ve bought it from, nor in my email. I have legitimately no idea from where I got it, but I played enough to join a guild eventually. I changed my main character from the Nightelf Ledorion, to Garnam the Pandaren Monk, and the guild I eventually joined was Immortalis. According to my purchase history on Blizzard though, I had a race change in January on one of my characters, and in April a paid character transfer. I dont remember what the race change was, because there’s no characters I have that I remember being something else at one point. In all honesty, it could even be a Dwarf I remade into a Pandaren, because Garnam sounds more like something I would name a Dwarf. In April, Immortalis made the move from The Sha’tar to Argent Dawn, and after a bit of thought I joined them. They were lovely people, they helped me get started in Pandaria. From what I remember, I bought Pandaria, shelved it after playing a few weeks, picked it back up in January and just kept playing for a while. I did drop the game before Warlords of Draenor though, that was November 2014. By this time I’ve moved back in with the mother of my children, and I guess I just didnt play as much because I had too little time to invest in an MMO, as well as having other games to play, that didn’t consume as much time. I was a stay-at-home dad by this point after all, with school to balance on top of it all. August 2016 had the Legion expansion released, and I contemplated on starting, but viewing the game on Twitch..the game just didn’t look fun at all anymore. Warlords introduced so many new mini-game mechanics that didnt interest me and everyone used both those and the new artifact mechanic, as well as were playing the new “overpowered” class Demon Hunter. I can’t really say that it was like that, but the game felt diluted and cluttered with pointless stuff and to compensate for that they introduced a bonkers class that were basically “spam buttons to get high damage and dont think, just spam”. Battle for Azeroth in August 2018 just reworked everything, and by that point I knew I wouldn’t be able to “get back into it” without some serious time investment just for understand what was going on – not to mention doing dungeons, raids, any sort of PvP.. Then in November 2020, with the expansion Shadowlands, they just reworked everything again, brought back max level from 120 and all it’s inflated numbers, down to 60 again, which was the original max level.
I looked around my account and found my Garnam, the monk I’ve been maining mostly during my last visit, and noticed they had introduced a transmog system – basically reskinning your gear. Apparently, auction house prices had changed alot over the years as well, so I managed to snag a couple of things off the auction house that I have had my eyes on for a while, the few things I actively worked towards when I was playing, and that was a couple of “mega bags”, profession specific large bags with 36 slots each, a couple of mounts that could carry other players, shops and a transmog station, as well as a very expensive mount. There’s loads of resources needed for that mount, and a specific profession was needed to craft it, but in turn you became the mount and could carry a teammate on your back. Behold, the Sandstone Drake, from the Vial of the Sands.
That’s me. I’m not sitting on the back of it, that thing is me.
That drake wasn’t the only thing I got, though, I got a couple of other mounts as well, one that looks like a hovercraft, another one that is a cold-looking version of Aladdin’s flying carpet, a couple of yaks, two mammoths and a lizard?
Anyway, as much as I’ve digressed, I’m going to try to get to the point. Since New World is releasing in a few months, and as much as I would love to play the closed Alpha, it doesn’t seem like I will be getting a key. So, my thoughts were that I was going to play a bit of WoW instead. Not the game like it is now – even though I did check in and got a few stuff and “became done” with all goals I had set for myself – but the classic versions. WoW have been plagued for years by pirate servers, basically people joining and playing old-school WoW on their own servers, which Blizzard hasn’t been too happy about, so eventually Blizzard caught up and got the idea that, yeah, maybe they should re-release the old-school WoW to let players play it. In August 2019, they actually released the original WoW, they picked a few patches that were “good” and decided to run the re-run of WoW off of those patches. I actually played a fair bit of this, according to my purchase history I paid (not necessarily played) for a 3 month subscription back in September 2019, just to experience some of the old school WoW. I didnt have an enjoyable time..but I did level a few characters up a bit.
In case you dont know why, games like this often get patched, re-balanced and have stuff added or removed, changed or stability issues corrected or something like it, and each fix comes in update patches. These get labled, so for instance, a complete fresh release would be 1.0 or something like it, but after enough patches, they get to, say, 1.12.1 which is the launch-patch for the August 2019 re-release. After a new expansion, version 2.0 will come out, etc, bringing the latest retail patch up to 9.0.5.38556 (yes, that’s actually the patch number). Desciphering it, it basically means that it’s the 8th expansion (original+8 expansions=9), and it’s a bunch of small and larger fixes that has come out since Shadowlands’ release.
Anyway, this re-release of the original WoW is now up from patch 1.12.1, to 2.5.1.38892, and with it’s patch update June 1st, I decided to finally pick the game back up for real. Atleast until New World comes out. And if you have been paying attention to the last part I wrote, then you’d understand that the Classics is now up to..indeed, The Burning Crusade. The first expansion, set in Outland, the broken homeworld of the Orcs, Draenor. The expansion that I’ve heard been called The Best Expansion of WoW.
So yeah, the last few days I’ve been playing a bit of WoW. I’ve been having a blast in Outland, leveling up, crafting, exploring, fighting. I’m contemplating changing server though, because the one I’m playing on now is almost empty of players and the few there is is trying to grief other players. But either I’m levelling up a new character on a different server, or I’m paying $30/€25 for a transfer. And honestly, I’m not sure which one I’m going to do. I dont look forward spending all that time leveling up a different character, but then again, that’s so much money.
I’m being as careful as I can for this not to be turned into another summer of 2009, since I’m now a single parent of three kids that I actually have custody of, and not as last time, when I was a parent but living alone with no responsibilities other than to keep myself alive. But oh boy, the nostalgia kicks in, let me tell you.