I got into WoW around the start of Burning Crusade when a few old friends of mine travelled across to Italy from Australia to say hello to me and take advantage of my hospitality while they went skiing. Everyone brought along their own laptop, and one of the group was into WoW. We had all played D&D together in the past, and he convinced us all to give it a shot. Even though I was sceptical I ordered the WoW Battlechest on Amazon, as did a few others, and pretty soon we were spending less time skiing and more time sitting around the house yelling at each other from our computers as we died in Westfall.
But before my Battlechest arrived I spent some time checking out the game on my friend’s account. I rolled up, wait for it, you’re going to be shocked … a human warrior. I can’t remember his name but I think he was bald. Anyway, I was on my own in a relatively new realm, and I bumbled around having fun and trying to work things out. I had no knowledge of what specs to have, or what the different talent trees were for. I also had no idea of the holy trinity of the tank/healer/DPS roles in instances. Come to think of it, I didn’t really understand what instances were either. But I was having fun and I wasn’t bothering anybody.
I had got up to level 18 or so when a new found friend of a similar level and I decided to give The Deadmines a shot. He was a priest, so he could heal. I was a warrior, so I could bash things. And in we went. We worked our way up to the first ogre boss, the one that drops that nice blue hammer. I wanted that blue hammer. I had seen it before when I had done the instance with another group. My role had been DPS as far as I knew. I was most probably crap on that run, but they had seemed to like me and there wasn’t any recount to make them hate me.
Anyway, so we started to have a go at this boss, just the two of us. He was healing and I was getting the shit knocked out of me. And we died. So we rezzed, and ran back in to where we were, and we had another shot at it, but changing our tactics slightly. And we died again, but we did better this time. And back we came. This ogre must have been getting sick of the sight of us. We probably spent a good hour and a half trying to get him down. On our final attempt we got him to about 5% before the priest ran out of mana and we were cactus. So we decided to call it there. And we left the instance happy and in good spirits. Sure we hadn’t got the boss down. But we had tried, and we had had a great time.
Did I have the best spec for this situation? I think you know the answer to that one. Did my priest buddy? I highly doubt it. The next day the priest whispered me in game. He said that he had looked at his specs and had changed them around a bit so as to have more mana. I didn’t even know that you could do that. We looked at mine and decided to change a few of them as well. The priest had to lend me the gold as I only had some silvers to my name. And we went in there and we got him down on the first attempt. And I got the blue hammer, or whatever it was that he dropped. And we agreed that our performance had been most optimal. And a hell of a lot of fun.
May 6, 2011 at 3:04 am
I have a very old rogue that I’ve never deleted that didn’t make it past level 16. In the time it took that character to reach level 16 I have been able to level another rogue from 1-85.
May 6, 2011 at 7:59 am
My first toon was human warrior, and my current main is bald. Must be some noob thing. When I get tired of rotten community of Stormwind and leet of Grim Batol or BWD I usually roll new toon. Running under calming shades of Elwyn forest gives me peace. From time to time I try to start conversation in general chat, give few free advices here and there. Or I idle in Goldshire crossroads and wait for some random to challenge me to a duel. Just before accepting duel I throw on all my heirlooms and oneshot poor bastard. Much fun in starter zones;)
May 10, 2011 at 12:59 am
Thank you for giving me a great chuckle amidst my lunch break!
May 6, 2011 at 8:10 am
I miss running around, having no clue but enjoying my time. Before, I became aware, I was not knowledgeable of the power of crowdsourcing and the information to be found in teh interwebz. Now I have make a conscious decision weather or not I wish to deprive myself of available information. Perhaps this is the biggest reason why I quit playing WoW. /shrug
May 6, 2011 at 7:16 pm
“Feeling wrong has a very specific feeling. It feels a lot like being right. It’s finding out that you’re wrong that feels horrible.”
May 6, 2011 at 10:58 pm
That does sound like a darned good time. The best times I can remember were with me and one other person, also. One time I remember my friend and I in Everquest decided to camp Bonecracker in Najena for Barbed whips and large bronze armor. Then I decked out a new Troll in the bronze armor and it was awesome.
May 6, 2011 at 10:59 pm
This makes me happy and I wish the playerbase was still like this.
May 7, 2011 at 4:53 am
The two things that I loved most early on: stupid deaths and learning. Eventually I ran out of things to learn and got bored. To make it worse, engineering became progressively less deadly and the stupid deaths mostly went away as well. If I can’t learn or die stupidly, what’s the point?
May 7, 2011 at 10:32 am
I wish I had such fond memories of my noob days. Those were dark times. I don’t even know why I kept playing. I guess it worked out for the best though 😀
May 7, 2011 at 5:49 pm
Last summer, before Cata came around, I’d got the LK down and so I decided to roll a warrior on a pvp server. I had no clue how to play a warrior or what to expect from a pvp realm but it was the most excellent fun just learning, no pressure, I didn’t care if it didn’t work I was just amusing myself.
Ah heady days, now back to getting 12/12 on my rogue and having to care again. I’m not sure which I enjoy more.
May 10, 2011 at 7:43 am
My first toon was a rogue. I had a blast learning the game from the ground up. I played her until the LK runs got old and borring and started a gnome warrior with looms. I had a blast tanking untill hit lvl 80 and had trouble holding aggro in lvl 80 heroics against Icc geared dps. I levled a worgen priest to 85 but never left SW and pugged my way to max lvl. I miss the questing and exploring days. I think I need to roll another dps and explore the “new” old world. The game is starting to become full of trolls. Its starting to get exspensive to move all my toons to new servers. Mabey I need to try a pvp server or roll a horde toon for a change.
cheers!
May 12, 2011 at 6:22 pm
Sometimes I think WoW was a lot more fun when you were a noob and didn’t know about boss tactics, specs, recount and all that.
I still remember my first instance, BFT. Sheesh, people don’t even know what BFT is these days (they totally screwed the German translation). My very first char was… tadaaa… a HUNTER! You know I just had to have one of those big fluffy cats *giggles*.
Anyway, I already knew to have a pet out back then (2006) was a no go. But I was just totally baffled when the tank told me: “Hunter, you put your mark on one, everyone else hits on that.” Right, I didn’t even know what a hunter’s mark was. After the tank kept yelling for the hunter’s mark I asked him what that was. *facepalm* Well, he told me and we did the dungeon in 2 1/2 hours without a wipe. 😉
Fun fun times back then, sometimes I miss being new to the game. To explore everyting by foot, to not now if there is a monster in that lake. 😀