When WoW first announced I was totally onboard. I had been a huge fan of the original Warcraft series since back when I had a PC that couldn't even run it. I played it at a friends house and wished for the day to be able to enjoy it. I played the demo of the first game as soon as I had a rig capable enough to run it. I wore that thing out, and never did get a full version of it. When the second came out, that was my new goal. I wanted to be able to play it AND get a full copy of the first. I managed to get the two games together in a BattleChest. This was before Battle.Net, so patches had to be randomly found on crappy internet sites and then applied later while holding your breath or you just dealt with whatever bugs came with the game.
I took that BattleChest home and I set it on the shelf and I waited until I had a PC good enough to play it. Well, the second one at least. The first one I was able to play and I played it plenty. I even managed to get my dad hooked. To this day Warcraft 2 is one of his favorite games, though I've managed to get him into Warcraft 3 a time or two. I eventually got a PC capable of actually playing Warcraft 2 and it was amazing. The game was gripping and added so much more to the game. It was the first time that I saw storytelling evolve and a real story push through a video game and feel so epic. Sure, I had seen and played a lot of great games, but you knew Warcraft was going to be special.
By the time the third game came out I was an adult and as an avid PC gamer I had an uber rig and was easily able to handle it. Warcraft 3 was a benchmark to the RTS/RPG genre. It was so good that people STILL play it and even modify it slightly and market it as a different/better game. I had two of my close friends come over and experience Warcraft 3 with me. We each took turns playing the game and never let each other miss out. We would always save and go back. We slept in shifts and ate in stages. We lived off of very little of both food and sleep for about a week and we watched every glorious pixel of Warcraft 3 together. It was a great week and a damn good time. Again, we all knew that we were watching a huge franchise make some serious moves.
World of Warcraft was the icing. It was THE thing I wanted the most in the world. I had played other MMO games and had played dozens of RPGs and I knew that Blizzard would find a way to bring it all together perfectly. They did.
I invited one of my friends over to the house the first time I ever logged into WoW, during the closed beta. We watched as the magical world we had seen unfolded in front of us and we watched the different skills and effects and how gorgeous this whole world was. It was amazing. Something I am not sure that I can ever duplicate. Two grown men with our jaws dropped running around on this tree in the middle of the ocean killing off the random demon creatures and spiders. Sure it wasn't a raid and we didn't get any super epics, but it was amazing back then. The world hadn't seen anything like this before.
I played through the beta and into open beta. I watched the game change many times just before it was released. I played the game loyally. I picked a server with some friends and we made it our home. We founded a guild, we played together and had a great time. Slowly the friends slipped out of touch with WoW and went on to play other things, but I remained. WoW sucked me in. I wanted to see all of the world, I wanted to play all of the classes, I wanted to know the most and be the best. I memorized all of the cooldowns and spells and all of the formulas for calculating DPS and crit chance for melee or spell. I was never in a dominating guild, but I managed to get in a few server firsts.
My video card died and ended the early raiding career I had. I managed to level a lot of other classes and become very proficient in PvP, because of this. I met a lot of great people and made a lot of great friends, but mostly I had a lot of fun. I laughed and laughed and enjoyed the victories and I hated the losses. I was emotionally attached to pixels and a fictional world and these people that I'd never met. That is what still keeps me playing. The fun that I once had and I hope to relive. Sometimes there are glimmers of hope and every now and then I run into someone who knew me way back then, 5 or 6 years ago. I see people who recognize my name from the old days and respect the asses I kicked or faces I healed and it's nice.
Now days my brother plays off and on and most of my real life friends either don't play, or don't play with me. The friends I met in the game have mostly dwindled and the few I still see aren't around too much. I just recently came back because I want to be around when they blow up the world that I've come to know and love so much for so long. The shitty banks of Darkshore, with Murlocs and hydras. The forever-stretching Barrens that honed your skills as a young Horde player. The fields of Elwynn and the shores of Darkshire where I lured many newbies to death.
Many changes have been made to the game that I believe will help me relive a bit of the old school and some seem very interesting and give me hope for the new direction of the game. I always expect to see a few old faces at the beginning of every expansion, even if they just take off a couple months later. I wish that I was able to go back and play those days all over again. Not that I'd do much different or not that I'd want to. I'd probably do just about the same, but I wouldn't take for granted all of the fun that I had in the game or some of the friends I had made and hope to see again.
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