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I took a break from MMORPGs after Final Fantasy XI, but it wasn’t too long until I heard about a new game: World of Warcraft. Some notable EverQuest alumni were involved and I found myself checking out details on the website. The description sounded interesting enough and I really liked the way the site described the survival specialization for the hunter class. Setting traps, then drawing enemies into them with a mix of both melee and ranged attacks with a pet companion. Of course, the melee turned out to be minimal in practice, but I didn’t know that just yet.

I bit the bullet and bought the game in January, activating my free month on 1/29/2005. This proved to be good, akin to my EverQuest experience, as starting near the beginning of an MMO’s release puts players on equal footing in awe and wonder and a good dose of uncertainty. I had settled on playing that survival hunter and chose to play a night elf rather than a dwarf. I named the character Faroth from my Tolkien Elvish Dictionary instead (yep, I’m a nerd).

Starting WoW was quite an experience after the past two MMORPGs I had played. The clear ! indication over NPCs for quests was a nice guide and I read every word of text as I began my adventures in Teldrassil. I quickly learned that WoW was not designed as vicious as EverQuest when I had my first scare by seeing an Ancient Protector on my way out of the starting area and on to the first small town. I freaked out, expecting it to be a high level enemy about to crush me. Though it was max level, it was friendly and not there to crush me. I quickly learned that there were no randomly high level enemies roaming zones to slaughter players.

I thought this was going to crush me the first time I saw it.

I moved on to Darnassus, the night elf capital, and beyond. Now, I could have stayed in the next zone on the continent of Kalimdor, but I wanted to learn to use one-handed swords. So, as many players did, I stocked up on food for my Nightsaber (a large cat) pet, Aratiel, and headed for the Eastern Kingdoms. Per my EverQuest and Final Fantasy XI training, this would surely be an arduous journey.

The entrance to the center of Darnassus, night elf capital.

I arrived in the Wetlands of the continent in the east, the Eastern Kingdoms and started down the road for the dwarf city of Ironforge. This was the most EQ-like experience as I ran from mobs many levels higher than me, often only rescued by sending my pet after them first and racing past them until the pet despawned due to distance or was killed by the high level enemy. Either of these options, or even dismissing the pet, resulted in me having to either resummon or revive her and then having to feed her. Originally, hunter pets had a happiness status. At full happiness, they did extra damage, but if they were unhappy for too long, they would abandon you!

Eventually I made it through the Wetlands, Loch Modan, Dun Morogh, Ironforge, and to Stormwind to learn to use swords and returned home to continue questing. As I leveled, I upgraded to new cat models for Aratiel, but always favored the dark striped ones similar to her original model and kept the name as I changed them. She became a lifelong companion for my hunter and I still have her today with the model of an elite named cat from Stranglethorn Vale.

Faithful companion for over a decade

The world seemed vast as I explored every zone, doing every quest, the conveniences of the hearthstone and flight paths helping, but not eliminating travel while the thought of a base speed mount was far away due to the high cost. I was probably five or more levels above the requirement when I could finally afford my first racial mount.

For me, endgame content consisted of running dungeons for my dungeon set, particularly Stratholme Baron runs, which refused to drop the Beaststalker Pants for months on end. I never got into really raiding in Classic WoW, but one day my guild asked if I had the leaf from Molten Core. I was attuned to enter the raid, but had never set foot inside. They pulled me in and let me loot it rather than let it rot. As I thanked them again and again, not fully knowing the quest it led to, I was told I was staying for the Ragnaros fight. With only my dungeon set. And no fire resist gear. Oh boy.

I died, but saw the raid’s victory and returned once in a while as a substitute for missing members, acquiring pieces of the hideous Giantstalker armor set. Primarily, I turned my attention to completing the quest from the Ancient Leaf my guild had gifted me. It required the player to really master different aspects of the hunter class and ultimately granted me the weapon Rhok’delar, a bow, and Lhok’delar, a staff.

Rhok’delar!

I never really did much more 40 man raiding other than Onyxia, but I joined a 15 man my guild formed and ran Zul’Gurub with them weekly. We never saw the tiger or panther mounts drop, though. We were still farming it when the next 40 and 15 man raids came with Anh’Qiraj. The opening of these raids was definitely interesting as the story began with a war effort in preparation for the gates to open. Entire servers were farming materials to donate to the war effort, gathering leather, making bandages, and such. I wasn’t in the raid group itself, but I was able to participate in the final step’s fight in Moonglade on the Feathermoon server that acquired the final component to open the gates.

Once the gates opened, lag consumed all. However, I still managed to fight enemies in other zones away from the raid opening itself. As classic WoW drew to a close with the final raid, Naxxramas, I had started my first alt by recreating my EverQuest paladin, Feneril. I managed to get him to 50 with a bit of gear just a week or two before the first expansion: The Burning Crusade.

As fond as my memories of roleplaying in EverQuest are, I’d say WoW is more where I really stretched my legs. I was on a RP server in a RP guild with players who really developed their characters and focused on their views on the world, the game’s current stories of raids and events, and their place in the guild rather than focusing on personal character relationship drama. Much like EverQuest, I have fond memories of my friends and guildmates and our adventures together. Hanstall, Tziva, Lapheer, Alhena, Zaria, Rautrix and Lochlaen, Cynvia, and many more.

Guild gathered in a tavern

Faroth was fleshed out into his own character, as was Azeroth’s version of Feneril. Over time, I went on to create six more alts, all with their own character concepts, personalities, and focus when playing them. One was a sort of homage to an EverQuest guild member in my dwarf warrior.

WoW’s first expansion was a lot of fun and introduced flying, though it was a pretty big achievement, much like epic speed riding. Although Faroth remained my main, I got Feneril up more quickly and wound up with both getting into raiding and their roles slowly reversing in the process. I always thought the expansion had a good pacing of gearing up from faction reps, dungeon drops, and then heroic dungeons before raiding. I actually have some really fun memories due to survival hunter’s design at the time.

The first was in Hellfire Ramparts where a pull went wrong. I activated my pet’s growl (a taunt to get enemy attention) to hold one target while I kept mend pet up to heal  the pet and kept a second enemy frozen in a trap while I held a third myself. It was enough to impress the guildmate I was with, a rogue, after so many bad experiences with bad hunters.

The next dungeon memory I love is from heroic Shadow Labyrinth. I think it was the first pull to start clearing the first boss’ room. I was able to double trap two enemies, pet tank a third, wyvern sting a fourth, and kite/temporarily tank a fourth while the group burned the fifth target. They would then move to the wyvern sting target just as it was about to wake up or right after it had. I would continue to kite while keeping my pet healed and re-trap the first ice trap just as it was about to wear off. Usually the second trap would break as they killed the second enemy. Once that was down, they’d pick up the pet’s target, then my kited, and finally we’d take down the remaining enemy in an ice trap. It was a lot of fun juggling all of that and it let skilled survival hunters show off a bit.

My first raid experience in TBC was fairly random. Someone was shouting in a zone about needing one more and I joined them. That became a static group that I continued to run Karazhan with on my hunter, where I made new friends in Errdo and Hayleybrianna. Being geared from that led me to Gruul’s Lair and Magtheridon with members of my guild who had raided together since Classic along with other members gathered through the Molten Core Alliance. The raid was called MCA: Shrieky and I made two new friends here: Dulcea and Aryaltel, both of whom I’ve met in person and see a couple times a year.

MCA: Shrieky needed a tank later, so I ran Karazhan with members of that raid and found my paladin raid ready in all of two weeks. Over the course of Tier 5 and Tier 6 raiding, my paladin became my main raid character. We didn’t get through Sunwell, but we did take down Illidan not long before the next expansion.

Feneril in his Tier 6 armor

Moving into the second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, WoW was at its peak in popularity. I was excited for the story, wrapping up one of the biggest stories in Warcraft’s history with Arthas, the Lich King. The questin/leveling experience was mostly the same, but with some new tools allowing for more immserive experiences as the story went on, such as phasing and the addition of cut scenes in game. Even the outdoor PvP zone proved pretty fun for players who didn’t often PvP.

This expansion really drew me in and had me writing fan fiction for myself to better piece together how I saw my characters fitting in with the big stories. I never liked the idea of my character defeating all the raids and threats or even playing a part in all of them, so I divided them up a bit with Faroth primarily involved in the dragon war against Malygos and Feneril involved in the Alliance’s efforts against the Scourge.

At end game, I raided with a 25 man in the start, but it dissolved in the second raid, Ulduar. I formed my own 10 man raid with Trial of the Crusader, largely with real life friends and their own guild mates. Once again raiding on my paladin, we cleared Trial of the Crusader and Icecrown Citadel to complete the expansion. We didn’t, however, really bother with the added Ruby Sanctum.

Our first time defeating the Lich King

I admit with Cataclysm, I started to lose steam. I didn’t find the added 5 levels as interesting and the story was very disjointed as the 1-50 leveling experience tied into the overall story of the new war between Horde and Alliance as well as some information about the story dealing with Deathwing. I felt that the expansion offered the least new additions and features, likely due to how much effort went into redesigning the world for flying and reworking the leveling experience. Transmogrification, allowing players to customize their armor appearance, was the best feature after a long and hard fought debate. The feature had been requested for years and I was quite active on the forums in support of it. Due to a lack of things to do, though, this was the expansion that I got all eight of my alts to max level.

Next came my final full expansion: Mists of Pandaria. I had no issue with the pandaren race nor the Asian aesthetic of the expansion. The content was fun and I liked the story overall. Cut scenes were taken to a new level and voice acting was improved. I didn’t even mind the daily quests as I felt they gave players what they’d asked for in removing the gating of them and removing the daily limit. I think they probably should have kept the limit, but not had previous expansion daily quests count towards it.

I did feel the Alliance players got shafted in Cataclysm’s story and that continued heavily in Mists of Pandaria. Everything Alliance players experienced resulted in loss, failure, and being told even their victories were colossal failures as well. The major “fist pump” moment that Blizzard promised was immediately reprimanded by King Varian as the absolute worst thing we could have done. How being told you’ve ruined a major victory is a “fist pump” moment has never made sense to me. I could probably write a couple posts on where I felt Blizzard went wrong in these two expansions and what I think would have been a better balanced approach.

Also, this is what happens when everyone is funneled into one zone on launch night.

I raided the expansion via Looking for Raid, or LFR, tool, which was not the most enjoyable experience due to the ridiculous ease of content along with player attitude. WoW had gotten a reputation for having a fairly toxic community by this point and LFR brought out the worst in those toxic players. Once I ran the final raid, Siege of Orgrimmar, once, I had no inclination to farm it for gear and the Timeless Isle addition felt like an EverQuest inspired grind fairly quickly. After nine continuous, uninterrupted, years of World of Warcraft, I cancelled my subscription.

Warlords of Draenor didn’t seem like a great idea story wise and the added $10 cost of the game didn’t draw me back, so I waited to pick up the Collector’s Edition on sale during Black Friday and Christmas sales. I didn’t resubscribe, however, until the following spring. I played for a month to see the zone stories, which I enjoyed, but was really irritated by the conclusion where Thrall takes all the glory for what the players have been working towards. After Cataclysm revolved around him and he had been the forefront of so many stories, I was tired of Thrall. For him to show up at the end of this expansion and take the victory was just disappointing. I never ran a single dungeon and never resubscribed to see the rest of the story, just following with information online.

When Blizzard announced Legion, it looked much better than Warlords of Draenor, but I was still uncertain. I waited until release and found the collector’s edition was sold out and appeared to be legitimate limited stock, but I fortunately managed to get one. I planned the same routine as Warlords – subscribe for a month to see the zone stories. What I found was, in my opinion, the best expansion since Wrath of the Lich King. The added features such as world quests replacing daily quests and the gear flow were welcome additions. Mythic dungeons brought back a sense of Heroics from Burning Crusade. I even found myself really liking the class order hall with Faroth where I expected to not like it at all. The story has been well done and Suramar is one of the best cities Blizzard had designed in the entire game (hopefully it becomes a player friendly city post-expansion). However, I don’t like the retcon they pulled in order to bring Illidan back as a hero. A redemption story I could deal with, but “everyone is stupid and Illidan is smart” didn’t hit the mark for me.

This post is definitely one of the longer in this series, but it spans over 10 years of gaming and has been a large part of my gaming life, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise. I’m still playing World of Warcraft occasionally for a month here and there, though another MMO has the majority of my attention in that realm now. For a couple of expansions now, I’ve said it was likely my last and Legion looks like it might be wrapping up a lot of major plotlines. Will it be my final expansion? Or will I give the next one a shot for a month here and there? The latter is probably likely, but I suppose one can never be sure.

One thing is certain, though: It’s hard to walk away from characters you’ve come to know and love over a decade, because you’ve crafted them and come to know them. It’s like a good book series, except you’ve been a part of thee characters’ lives in a way no other media can offer. They’re a part of you.

Since this post took us all the way from 2005 to 2017, we’ll go back to where we were in the next post, which will be the final in this series as I go over my memories and experiences with the Playstation 3.