Some of you may recall that over five years ago, the magazine Computer Gaming World featured World of Warcraft in their November 2001 issue. http://www.theorderls.com/belt/wm/wow/wow-cgw/
For many, this article was their first look at the game that would go on to consume their souls for hours at a time while being genuinely enjoyable. This article shows a very different game, but many of the features and design principles seen in this very early (pre-War3) incarnation of WoW propel its success still today. The developers made their philosophies clear from the get-go, most simply and directly stated in the "no-no list" on page 78 of the article. Later sources can be found all over the WoW site, and especially the old World of Warcraft Town Hall.
With these things in mind, as a chapter of the ongoing development of an MMO comes to a close, I'd like to hear your thoughts.
When did you first hear of World of Warcraft and what were your expectations? How did the game that you eventually played differ? What were you looking forward to that was changed or canned? And now that 1.0 raiding is hours from obsolescence, what fond memories of the game will you recount to your grandchildren when they're playing World of Warcraft and wondering if they'll ever get to kill Arthas?
And now that 1.0 raiding is hours from obsolescence, what fond memories of the game will you recount to your grandchildren when they're playing World of Warcraft and wondering if they'll ever get to kill Arthas?
Really can't see further than Ragnaros emerging for the first time.
Please contact me via PM/Twitter regarding any issues with Wrathcalcs or Treecalcs rather than whispering me in-game.
And now that 1.0 raiding is hours from obsolescence, what fond memories of the game will you recount to your grandchildren when they're playing World of Warcraft and wondering if they'll ever get to kill Arthas?
Really can't see further than Ragnaros emerging for the first time.
Always a good'un. Then there's nailing Vael for the first time after a month of wipes. But actually I think the biggest blast (because it was completely unexpected) was the pyramid fight in ZF. We'd just gone in for fun, not knowing anything about the instance.
One day I should really get that Imperial Plate set...
Truthfully, I never did hear much about WoW. I saw some previews in magazines, but at the time, there was not much indicition when and if the game was going to be available in Europe, so I kind of forgot about the whole deal.
The final battle between tauren mill and south shore in open beta, there was an absolute river of bones between the two towns, you could not even see a speck of green for the bones. This was on server 4, with my level 28 rogue. Ahhh, fun times. :)
The fight on the pyramid in ZF was already mentioned, but should be again, it was incredible. One of my true first "Oh shit!" moments was seeing all the mobs appear below and start charging up, not to mention having your NPC friends turn on you towards the end.
Getting my Dal'rends set in UBRS, back before anyone had beaten MC, still some of the best swords around, imo.
Looting my first BoE purple, a Myrmidon's Signet, and selling it for 2000g to get my epic mount.
Dead Mines! My first instance, damn, that was an incredible experience the first time through. You just did not see dungeons like that in DAoC, there it was just "Look, a hole in the ground with nasty monsters."
QUESTS! It was just incredible to be able to do so many of them, and to read all the text before mods that let you skip text were common, The VC quest line, Stalven, Linkin, and who can forget Fordring?
Speaking of Fordring, on the hill that leads up to hearthglen I had the best pvp battle ever, one of those ones where neither side quits or runs away and where both sides stay even, at first it was three of us against four horde, then we had someone join us, etc... It went back and forth until there were around 10 per side, fighting all up and down the hill. And we actually communicated! I would sneak up near them and tell the others where they were, how many and what classes, we would thing of a strategy and follow it. It was just glorious because it was all spontaneous and it came together so well.
After playing Wc3 Battle.net for several years I expected WOW to be an ongoing epic struggle between the Horde and Alliance. Then I played WOW and found my [then] guild allying themselves with a Horde guild to kill Kazaak and Azuregos and trading off loot each time they spawned so that the other alliance guilds couldn't grief us effectively.
Then I found myself addicted to the game even though a great part of my "logical" self says that there are millions of things I don't like about the game: the luck factor, balance, and PVP in general. Still, I've had fond memories and built good friendships with the game, and now it seems to be so hard to give up. I really do hope that they improve the World PVP incentives, though, or remove factions (will never happen).
I'd have to agree that Ragnaros 1.0, 2.0, and even 3.0 kills were my fondest memories, especially since my guild had relatively early kills world wide, so it was a huge rush for us. I still hold my original recording of the fraps where by the end I put away my shield and hammer and take out my Seeping Willow and get the killing blow of Ragnaros with Judgement of Righteousness (for like 100 dmg).
1) Killing Patchwerk, simply because we put all that dumb R&D "Horde can't kill Patchwerk" nonsense to rest as quickly as possible, and it was a super annoying boss for us for a long time.
2) Ragnaros, Nefarion, and Kel'thuzad; Nefarion still felt the most epic to me (we "conquered" Blackrock Spire, finally). All of them were a lot of fun. C'thun was different, felt extremely inevitable due to the fact we were way more prepared.
3) 30v30 in Westfall for a Green Dragon back when it mattered, we agreed to a guild vs. guild battle and it was a blast.
4) Walking into EPL for the first time and riding around that zone, I was simply shocked by how cool it was. It felt like WC3, except I was a unit.
5) Finally, nothing really was ever as fun as good Warsong matches, which are almost nerve-wracking from time to time.
When did you first hear of World of Warcraft and what were your expectations? How did the game that you eventually played differ? What were you looking forward to that was changed or canned? And now that 1.0 raiding is hours from obsolescence, what fond memories of the game will you recount to your grandchildren when they're playing World of Warcraft and wondering if they'll ever get to kill Arthas?
Well i first heard of WOW when i was at a mates house, he flashed it up on his computer. I'd only ever played console games before that (Xbox, Gamecube, N64 etc) and he was showing me something completely new and amazing, everything was so big, complex, and immersing. I went out that very day to buy it. That day i musta gone to about 5 game stores all round my area, but they were sold out everywhere (this is was pretty close to the release date). Finally, i gave up, but on the way home on a whim, i went into Tesco's (supermarket) and for some ungodly reason they had a whole shelf of WoW!
I drove home (breaking several traffic laws) as fast as i could and fired up my *ahem* laptop... After playing games with nothing but a controller in my hands for years, i didn't have a F*ing clue what was going on, i literally spent the first 5 minutes staring at the ground while i figured out how to look around... (my friends and guildmates will testify to the fact my WoW skills have not improved since)
When i saw my friend playing it, the game seemed to easy and smooth to play, and here i was, unable to hit this bloody lvl1 scorpion. Being a fps man i was trying to jump and leap all over the place like an idiot trying to axe this damn thing, then i realised it didnt actually matter if you stood still or not, it had the same effect. This initially dissapointed me, how could there be any skill in a game that made you just stand there, like a lemon? But i kept at it for a while, breaking out of the training area and into Durotar, and my eyes eventually opened. After the first night i was hooked, after the first week i was addicted, and after the first year my life was in shambles, but by this point i didn't really care, in fact, i loved it.
I didn't really have any expectations about the game when i started, apart from the fact it looked 'cool'. I think thats why it had such a big impact on my life. My experience with console game had totally failed to prepared me for how amazingly awesome WoW was, it was just totally diferent to anything id seen before.
Now that v1.0 is about to be wiped clean as it were, i think i'll remember the first Nef kill the most. Strange i should pick that, because i wasn't actually there for it. I just remember listening to a recording of the Teamspeak the day after and someone saying "i wish Razza was here, i really do" as they killed him. That pretty much made my year. Even though i'm no longer in that guild, it's still the first forum i check when i wake up every morning, and i'll literally never forget the friends i made there.
As for TBC i say bring it on, i'm hoping it will bring back the same magic i felt when i first bought the game, and killed my first scorpion in the Orc training area. And i know exactly which shop i'm going to go to first, try to to find an unsold copy :)
WoW is my first MMORPG, however i've played for about 8 years (not constantly, with some on an off) in a MUD, one of the oldest Diku MUDs that is still around. I've even took part in its development. Then i got disappointed by direction it is taken by owner and his clique, so i quit it.
Then, early in 2004 we had a party of MUD players in honor of one of the most respected players visiting Moscow. And there i heard a lot about WoW from one of ex-MUD players. I've looked it up on inet and was impressed. Ordered a box, and while waiting for it to arrive ive stumbled upon CQ guides to MC. That's whats really hooked my up. By the time i was 60, i literally learned them by heart :)
The greatest moment was:
a) Ragnaros with my first guild. We are all was new to raiding, Ragnaros seemed incredibly hard and it took us a lot of time.
b) 4 Horseman with my current guild. No other fight in game like this. We learned them when most crucial moments were already publicly know, so our raid leader made an incredibly detailed strategy that was correct from the start. Pieces slowly sliding into places in the course of 3 nights. Then Mog dead, Thane dead next pull and we knew we are getting them tonight. As usually first kill was incredibly messy, half of raid dead, Zelliek enraged, etc. Last 1% of Zelliek was tanked by rogue, because healers was killed by somebody chaining wrath into their camp.
Originally Posted by zeidrich
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I didn't care for WoW when it was announced. I preferred a world in the style of the MUDs I used to play (Medievia - Still havn't played WoW for as many hours as that game, and others) and couldn't care less.
Then of course I played the Open Beta. And still didn't care, I prefered Guild Wars at that time. Then I bought the game at release, leveled up to 60 quickly hoping for the good stuff, and found a game with 1 raid (and I never cared for raids), some 5 man instances, and no PvP at all to speak of. I hung around for a little and then quit the game in boredom and frustration in late Jan, around the time they made the 5 mans/UBRS raidable and the whole thing became a farce.
Started playing again August this year with the announcements about TBC, looking forward to some slightly fun PvP and less of an emphasis on large raids. Still waiting to see how it all turns out, but my expectations are much lower this time and I am looking forward to it.
Best moment? Running from Arathi to Badlands for the first time, getting up in the mountains in the Wetlands and having some of the best PvP fights I've played in the game. The best moments have all been PvP, mostly good world PvP fights. Pity they are so rare.
I think now that MMO's are mainstream perhaps there may be a day when saying 'yeah, I was a part of a server first Azuregos or Ragnaros kill' may be something we share. In the same vien as how MMO hobbiests recount their EQ adventures, or how most in mainstream gaming recount their 8-bit adventures.
Best moments for me would be:
1.) First Rags kill. The room felt like you were at the center of the world with some evil god fighting his way out from the molten core of the planet. Magma splashing, players fearfully mortal and aware of the likleyhood of being gibbed, it actually felt like you were a 40 man fellowship with a snowball's chance in hell. Sons of flame were also a nifty gimmick, since it was the first real 'second phase' event where all players needed to change strategy and work as a team.
2.) Tauren Mill. A very brief snapshot at what a real world of warcraft pvp should have been, had technology and blizzard supported it. 2 sides, established server leaders directing squads. Both sides kicking the crap out of each other for territory and resource rights.
3.) KT in Naxx. It's a tragedy very few players will ever see how astounding and cool that fight was. To be surrounded from all sides as waves of undead slowly close in was a very applaudable move by blizzard. It gave notion to your accomplishment, and an epic feel that you have fought through an army of undead to their master. All that was missing was an Army of Darkness 1 liner, or ghostbusters homage and I would have considered the zone a MMO benchmark. I still say being forced to craft a raid 'ghost trap' as a method to avoid intensive consumable fights would have been a legendary gimmick. And made use of the egon's blaster in the best of ways.
Best experience was KT kill I think. Last night of tries before christmas (and probably the last ever) and we had another guild breathing down our necks (they were attempting KT aswell) and we finally got the kill. As I understood a pala got MC'd at 3-4% and BoPed KT. He runs wild and starts raping people and I manage to kill him with a critted 1 cp evisc for 340ish dmg.
4hm was also very nice. As Drauk said above everything slid into place slowly. On the kill wipe was called at 40ish % on Zel, but we kept on. There were 2 ranged in the end who slowly wore him down. At 3% melee ran in and adrenaline rushed etc and we got him down.
I had heared of wow before release as a friend of mine was buying it. I wasn't particulary intrested at the time but then open beta came and he persuaded me to try it and I was hooked immideatly. And on that road it is. From lvl1 to killing KT it's been an enjoyable ride.
best moment will always be my guilds first nef kill.
back then we always had all the mages standing back at the cave, so in case of a mage call they would all blink into it and start polymorphing themselves only (after having had some nasty wipes with the MT being turned into a giraffe and the raid getting shadowflamed, and all that jazz). problem was we were always rather light on druids, most of the times having 2 or 3 in the raid, and on that particular day for some reason the other druids left early and i was the only left, in charge of decursing the MT. overall fight goes rather fine, healing is ok, dps is ok, after the zerg things kind of start to fall apart, couple of people are dead already, at around 10% or so i get feared into a shadowflame and die, theres yelling in raid chat for the mages to start decursing, other people yelling to clam down, etc, nefs HP slowly crawling towards 0% till he finally collapses and vent just explodes.
dropped stormrage chest as well which i didnt mind of course.
runner up will surely be first twin emps kill, back when they could easily two shot your tank if you werent really really attentive. considering we always ran rather light on healers, that kill felt more rewarding than even c'thun. when it finally clicked, dps was going into the rhythm of running back and forth, hunters doing an awesome of pulling scarabs off of healers before they got there, mages and locks working together to kill the scarabs off, etc, all the while us healers eyeing our mana bars the whole time, popping nightdragons and pots just to keep up the tank for 15 minutes.
I heard about WoW right before I went to Afghanistan from a lot of my friends I was plying SWG with. I came back to the states right before release and dove right in.
Fondest memories:
Before anyone was even in MC heading to Stormwind ( as Horde on Archimonde ) and riding to the gryphon master and camping the platform for a couple of hours. Was so much fun, so many Alliance ended up coming, lagged the server out something fierce and eventually got pushed out but was still one of my fondest memories.
Raiding Ironforge during primetime. We snuck 2 rogues into Ironforge ( there is an empty house close to where all the Battle master's are now ) and had one of our Locks corspe drag in the night before. Summoned a full raid into this house and poured out into the middle of Ironforge duing prime time. Crashed the server, but the posts on the boards of "WTF! How did a full Horde raid get in without being seen!" were great. We ended up killing all the city bosses except the High Tinker and Magni because there was just too many Alliance and we wouldn't come in the wee hours of the morning. Was always a good time though.
For PvE I would have to say Nefarion and C'thun. As a guild we formed very late compared to almost all of the other raiding guilds on the server ( most were killing Nef when we were still in ZG ) and getting the second C'thun kill on the server was very satisfying, well, that and finally killing him after wiping for a month.
I actually got into WoW somewhat by accident. I didn't pay any attention to the game at release, but that winter break, I took a 10-day trial from a friend. I was still undecided about buying the game, but happened to pick it up one day because I wanted something to play on my new computer.
The most fond memory is killing the Four Horsemen. That was for us what K'T was for EJ. A week before 2.0, I finally had to tell the guild, "look, we're not going anywhere besides DN wing this week." 6 days later, it's Monday night at 11:15 (our third full Horsemen night), and we've been showing tons of promise, but have never gotten Korth'azz down. I'd gone crazy that week preparing the guild in every way possible (mostly strategically), and I knew that we had maybe 2 pulls left, and that if we didn't get them, we probably never would. 19 minutes later, we had about 18 people still alive trying to scrap out a kill against a lone Lady Blaumeux as the number of Marks ticked up over 90. We got her just as Mark 99 ticked, about 4 seconds before the enrage.
For us, it was not only the crowning achievement of one and a half years of raiding, but our first and only LB-Alliance-first boss kill (which made it incredibly sweet), and absolutely unforgettable due to how exciting the fight itself was.
Got a spot in the F&F Beta for WoW from a friend that worked QA at Blizzard. My first MMO, but I enjoyed it a lot, sucked me right in.
Key memories (raiding due to the question):
1) Domo. Mainly because it was a semi-PUG MC on our server back when only 1-2 guilds were actually running it, and we put a LOT of time into trying to take him down (having a different dozen people each time made it rough). I remember eventually one of the officers (the pug mostly turned into a guild eventually) looking at my gear and saying "3 Prophecy now? Jeez, from Maraudon blues to T1 epics, that's awesome, man."
2) Rag Rag Rag Rag. First time ever seeing him SOAR from the lava, swirling around his gut, looking PISSED OFF, like I woke him up from a hot dream about lava nymphs. We got summarily destroyed, it was amazing. Finally taking him down with heavy consumables, we were so proud. Intense.
3) Nefarian. Had been putting in a few serious attempts on him, nobody on the server had taken him down yet. Got to phase 2 a couple times just to learn what triggered it, then finally put in a serious attempt. It was insane. Apparently we had people calling out the % he was at progressively in MC, Ironforge, etc. Had a lot of folks giving us some awesome encouragement. I (as the only dwarf priest), missed a fear ward (our tanks were great at stance dancing, but assuming I had a FW available didn't do it that time), half the raid goes down. An amazing series of battle rezzes and pally rezzes (when you could rez in combat) got most of us back up, and we took it down all the way to 14% before succumbing to the mana drain of the prolonged fight. I was seriously depressed, especially after being ridiculously tense for 20-odd minutes. Next day though, we came back and took his ass down. Very proud moment.
JUICE! Aww I'm sorry. Did... did anyone want some juice?
For me, it was all about the rivalry. A guild split (top raiding group left, leaving the bottom raiding group to fed for themselves) lead to a 'friendly' rivalry between guilds in who could best who in PvE progression. I was in the lower half and we were, not surprisingly, always behind the top group. They got the first nef kill while we were still struggling to relearn MC and then BWL. Both guilds headed into aq40 about the same time, but the upper group steam rolled through saurtura, fankriss and huhu where it took us a few weeks longer. Then came twin emps. The top group went with the warlock tanking strategy and we went with the Battle Shout strategy. The lower group finally over came their competitors and downed twin emps for the first time just shy of 24 hours before the top group did.
It was awesome.
Also, as a healer, learning Twin emps was by far the most fun. 15 minutes of the best mana conservation, yet heavy healing you can muster. Really separated the men from the boys.
1) First time I rode a Griffin. I'd been playing Neverwinter Nights prior to WoW where they didn't even have rideable horses, let alone flying mounts. When I learned how to teleport to Moonglade and then got to ride a Griffin back - wow. Just wow.
2) Ragnaros. What more can be said? Funny thing is, Nefarian and C'Thun kills never did recapture the sheer joy of downing that swirling mass of lava that was Ragnaros. They were nice but just seemed to lack something. Probably because prior to Ragnaros I was still a final raid boss kill virgin and you never forget the first time.
coming from a background of a job-like game (SWG), WoW was a welcomed change, in that you could log on for as long or as short as you wanted, and feel like you've accomplished something.
of course, that was back in the 1-60, where I really didn't do any grinding, and simply had fun with friends. first great memory was killing Van Cleef with 4 friends, after quite a few wipes, and not knowing what to do. Not on the same scale as raid bosses, but interestingly, i think i enjoyed it as much as every new Naxx boss we killed.
2 years later, i must say that the game has lost a lot of the "casual" feel to it. It's ironic that i'm posting that on the EJ forum, seeing there's probably very few people on here that would consider themselves casual. I do think that's one of the things that made WoW fun (more so than other MMO).
my hope is that the arena PvP system will allow me to be a lot more "casual" with my gameplay.
I had heard of WoW through different gaming mags and the like. I didn't think anything of it even after it released. But for the longest time I was looking for a game where I could immerse myself like I did playing Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and NWN. I walked into a CompUSA one day and stood in front of a display case with World of Warcraft and EverQuest 2 boxes. It was a completely random choice so I shrugged as I grabbed a WoW box.
I had never played any other MMO before WoW, and the immersion factor is such like I've never experienced before. My fondest and most memorable moments in the game were starting out in Teldrassil - the music and the imagery totally blew me away; and, of course, Ragnaros emerging before me and thirty-nine other trembling guildies.
1) The first time Azuregos spawned we had an epic 8 hour + battle. Both factions got him below 20% before getting zerged by the other and having him reset. There was a lot of hate built up b/w the TM/SS battles...none of this pansy trading kills either. When we were finally able to kill him (by GY zerging admittedly) it was just such an amazing feeling.
2) Patchwerk: we really had no business killing him -- undergeared, we were extremely consumable heavy. We tried several strats, never really got below 80%. Then the healing just clicked once, and we killed him. How can you describe euphoria? One of our pallies puked in relief after finally killing him.
3) Twin Emps: for a healer I think this was far more challenging than any other fight at the time. Not only was it healing intensive, mana conservation was critical. Add that healers actually had to be situational aware for once (gasp!) and it really was the fight to separate the men from the boys.
4) Nef: maybe the ultimate moment, we went from being stuck on Broodlord (anyone remember 9k MS?) to beating Nef in 3 weeks. When we zoned back to Org, it was just pure server pandemonium. After the head went up, our GL (who had just picked up a server first ashkandi) went outside Org and we set up a dueling ring for the next few hours.
5) First kills of raid bosses are great, but nothing beats a well played WSG. Having just rerolled horde (again), some of the best moments in WoW thus far occurred last WSG weekend. Our ten man team still had lvl 40ish greens, ice barbed spears, etc., yet we had such balance and overall experience that we took T3 teams to the wire, and beat several. I think those intense hour+ WSG matches produce the most tension by far in this MMO.
01/15/07, 2:15 AM
