Do YOU remember your first time in World of Warcraft?

First time I heard about WoW was on a commercial on TV. It was back at 2004. I remember it looked really epic and filled with fantasy elements. But back then I had no interest in playing online-games. Maybe because it was still quite new? Maybe because it was still a quite unexplored genre for me?

The newspapers was writing about the game called World of Warcraft and how it hooked children into a fantasy-world and how addicted the game was. Parents were devastated and worried. That game was something special. It had its own force of nature that no-one could stop. 

I remember my sisters old boyfriend once came to me with her, and he wanted to install a game to show for me. That game was of course World of Warcraft. 

After 12 hours of download (yes it took that long back then to download that freaking game,lol) he finally could login. And all I saw was a screen filled with so many icons that you barely could see anything else than that. I asked him how he could manage to play a game with all those icons without becoming totally insane. He said that you learn. At that moment I felt that this game wasn't anything for me....until later..

In the end of 2008 my brother came to me with a trial-code to WoW. He asked if I've heard about this game before and the only thing I could say was: Yes, that's the game who hook people into a fantasy world with no returning back to normal life.

After some coffee and talk with him, he went home and I sat there with the trial code in my hands. I was starring at it like it was poison, a gift from hell that would drag me into a virtual world with no chance to come back. Was I ready to take that step? Was I ready to explore an online-world for the first time? Maybe it was wrong of me to listen to the newspapers? Maybe it wasn't that bad after all?

My journey now started....

I decided to create an account on Blizzard's homepage. I entered the code and then started to download the trial-version  of the game. Around 12 hours later I was ready to take my first step into the magical world of Azeroth.

    

I created a human mage. I started in the idyllic Elwynn Forest. I was blown away by how beautiful everything looked.

The music, the lightning.....

I took my first quest and I clicked on the spells with my mouse. Yes, I was a mouse-clicker back then;)

I got some armor in my backpack and it was a red text above it. I tried to equip it, but I couldn't. I thought that maybe later on I could learn how to wear leather,mail and plate. Stupid me, lol.

Back then the lightning in the game was different, in the mornings you could see the sun rise and in the evenings you could see the sun go down. The Elwynn Forest was magical and it dragged me in with open arms. And I could sit for hours and hours and play... I got hooked, totally hooked.

I was amazed how big the world felt and how much you could do in the game. It was my first mmorpg and I felt in that moment that I always wanted to play WoW. 

When I started to play WoW, "Wrath of the Lich King" was just released, so every 5 minute you could hear the guards yelling and throwing apples on players in Stormwind. It was players who just had created their death knight. Guilds was spamming the chat that they don't need more death knights in their guilds. It was hilarious!

And one time someone had dragged a world-boss into the city of Stormwind and it was chaos everywhere! Nowdays you can't do such things....

A friend of mine had created a warlock and he needed to go all the way to the enemies area; Kalimdor, to do a quest to summon a voidwalker. Back then when you needed to do quests to summon your warlock companions. Oh, old Barrens, how we will miss you... Back then you couldn't see your quest-objectives on the map so I printed out maps from the homepage Thottbot. We were running ALL the way to Barrens, tried to avoid Horde guards as much as possible. 

My mage was running around with talent-points in all three trees at the same time. Some points in the arcane-tree, some points in the frost-tree and some points in the fire-tree. Until a friend inspected me and said; Oh dear, you need to choose a tree. Yes, back then I was the queen of noobness;)

I joined a guild for the first time and everyone was so friendly and helpful.

I ran with my the guild through Ulduar, with an angry guild-leader who screamed and directed us in all ways. It was very tough and challenging. Oh Ulduar...such an epic raid...

There was those small things back then that made the game epic; the old talent-trees, learning skills from trainers, crafting actually matter, flask of Mojo, quests for warlock mount and paladin mount, no flying in Azeroth, different lightning and graphic, better community, the old music in some areas, world pvp etc....Or maybe its just nostalgica? Maybe it wasn't better, just different?

My biggest disappointment came with the expansion Cataclysm. I just want to say one word: flying. Suddenly all players was up in the sky, the world felt smaller and less dangerous and of course more empty... 

People from my guild started to leave the game and suddenly the guild split up completely. There was a different era, a new chapter in World of Warcraft's history. 

The game kept on changing and I stopped playing in " Warlords of Draenor". And the reason for that was that the game had changed to much or maybe I just grew out from it? 

But my memories of the game and all fun I've had will always be there in my heart. I still get really nostalgic when hearing the old music from the game and how it felt the first time I took my steps into the magical world of Azeroth.

Please share your story how your first time in World of Warcraft was.

Have a nice day/evening wherever you are in the world!

Hugs from me to you!

Image source: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/media/wallpapers/regions?view=dark-portal