Post your "back in the day" stories here.

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• Homitu Member UncommonPosts: 2,030

  February 2013

  Since I've contributed to a few WoW threads today and I'm feeling all nostalgic now, I'll tell a story or two here as well.  These two stories are of how vanilla WoW pulled me away from FFXI, which was my first MMO.  

  The first was a very standard starting zone experience.  Unlike FFXI, my character in WoW was given a purpose from the very beginning.  I spoke with a character, and he informed me of some tasks that needed to be done.  Tangible goals were set before me as part of the ultimate effort to prove myself as a capable night elf druid.   Anyway, I found someone who had gone missing, but it looked to be too late, for she had suffered a grevious giant spider wound.  I raced back to the village to inform her friend, who calmly sent me out to gather ingredients to make an antivenom.  He required petals from a specific flower that grew around ponds in the region.  I recalled passing ponds on my way back from the spider cave, so I returned to them to, sure enough, find the flowers the elf spoke of.  As I bent down to gather my first petals, I plummeted into the water!  I paniced, sure I was about to die!  Memories of Sonic the Hedgehog flooded back.  But after I oriented myself, I saw the breath timer and I knew that I wasn't going to die...at least not immediately.  I still had no idea how to get out though.  I had never swam before!  After some effort, I stabilized myself.  I rose to the surface and saw my breath meter had refilled.  I then worked up the courage to dive under once again.  It was like I entered a whole new world!  There were even flowers down at the bottom for me to gather.  Anyway, after playing around for some time, I remembered that someone was dying of spider venom, and I had to return with haste.  So I ran back, made the antivenom, returned to the injured elf near the cave and saved him.  I was the hero of the hour.

  Like I said, this is an insanely simple story.  It's an experience that every single player who rolls a night elf will encounter.  But it was so drastically different from my time in FFXI, that it just stood out so much and I'll remember it forever.  The context provided by quests was glorious in contrast to FFXI, where you basically just set out to start killing stuff over and over again.  Constantly interacting with characters and having a role in the local area's events made the world feel so much more alive.  You also couldn't interact with water in FFXI, thus my surprise when I fell in.  I expected to bump against an invisible barrier.  You couldn't jump over things or climb mountains in FFXI; and here I was climbing up this great tree and jumping off onto rooftops to get down.  It was so much more immersive!  

  Second story.  I'll make it quick.  This one just highlights the difference in combat between FFXI and WoW.  

  I had made it to level 30 and found myself questing in the northeastern edge of the Wetlands, near the border to Arathi.  A band of elite blackiron dwarves controlled the bridge that connected the two zones, making it difficult for solo adventurers to pass.  By happenstance, I bumped into two other adventurers, a warrior and a hunter, who had already engaged the dwarves.  The ensuing battle was a blur.  

  It was also the most interactive gameplay experience I had ever had in a video game up to that point.  The fight must have lasted for 20+ minutes.  When you get a humanoid's health low in WoW, they try to run away.  If you let them run close enough to other enemies, the new enemies aggro and join the battle.  This occured repeatedly in waves.  I had to make full use of my skillset in order to survive.  I tanked in bear form, mauling and swiping dwarven faces.  I did damage from behind as a cat when the warrior had aggro, clawing at their kidneys.  I tangled fleeing dwarves to the ground with giant roots.  I casted spells at enemies from range while running.  I threw heals at the warrior and ranger, which drew aggro from clusters of dwarves at a time.  Then I kited them all in cheeta form (this was probably the most fun for me), allowing the hunter to pick them off and the warrior to hamstring them from behind.  We were depleted in both health and mana, but after what felt like an hour, we stood triumphant over the corpses of dozens of elite dwarves.

  In FFXI, you fought enemies one at a time in a very controlled, monotonous way during the leveling process.  There wasn't room in the combat system to have insane battles like this one.  Classes didn't have nearly as many skills at their disposal.  From FFXI, I was used to auto attacking 10 times and then using 1 weapon skill.  Rinse and repeat.  Possibly mix it up by using 1 of my 2 abilities that were on 6 minute cooldowns.  In WoW, I constantly had spells at my disposal.  And in this fight, I had to react quickly and make strategic use of them all in order to succeed.  The result was very rewarding.  It was also a great bonding experience with those two players. 

   
• QuicklyScott Member Posts: 433

  February 2013

  I was thinking about this the other day.  One of the funniest moments of my life.  Our guild was killing Onyxia for the first time, when she was on about 10% hp, someone on teamspeak started play Outkast - Heya, the music fit perfectly.  Half the members broke down laughing on teamspeak, while our guild leader was screaming "turn that shit off" in his Scottish accent.  I literally fell off my chair laughing, fun times.

   

  Raiding with my old guild was the funnest times I've ever had gaming.  I've never met a community as good as vanilla WoW.  It was compirsed of what seemed to be regular people, not MMO addicts, if you know what i mean.

  
• prognar Member Posts: 12

  February 2013

  Vanilla wow, and BC pre- the nerf patch before wrath.

   

  Vanilla wow because when they first released it, they were competing in a relativly new market, so they actually put some effort into the game, you could do quests in two zones and only get a level, you had to farm mobs or do instances, gear was very specific so it was less of a numbers game, it took 3 months to hit level cap, (regular play not hardcore play, hard core was more like a month of just playing with help) pvp which was released post final broke the game, (whiners, balance issues, no real rewards pointlessly tacked on... nothings changed in that regard).

   

  You actually felt some form of achievement by getting to end game then progressing through it, bc was much the same it was rough, on initial release, when you hit end game you farmed blue tier and you needed resistances otherwise you were toast but, whiners etc got the game nerfed to oblivion.(naxx was fun in vanilla wow but it was released just before BC). Epic mount cost 2k back then that was pretty darn hard to get. weeks of farming.  Now everythings just kind of handed to you, theres, no real reason to do much in the game, log on raid log off for a week do other stuff log on again. Everyones so "elite" these days, game just seems top heavy, most content is no longer utilised,  things are more of a job/chore, over fun. Then after a year or two after each expansion all your current gear ends up getting replaced with green items.

   

  Meh the game was fun when blizzard actually cared about the game more then the money it gets the company.

   

  Edit: the most fun part of the game was playing vanilla wow in a guild called "oh snap" on moonrunner, which had a hunter as the GM (was nearly the only way huntards could get into raids back then).  But it was always funny, because he spent 80% oh each raid having a massive cry about everything and threatning to play on his horde character. you had to be on teamspeak to fully apretiate the humour but it always made all 39 of the rest of us crack up every raid.