As mentioned about a month ago, I'd like to celebrate WoW's upcoming 20th anniversary by looking back at my own early experiences with the game 18 years ago, as documented on a personal blog that I was keeping just for myself and some friends back then. Since there was never an intent to have these posts be read by a wider audience, a lot of things will be lacking context (which would have been obvious to me and my friends at the time) so I'll be adding footnotes to make things clearer, and to judge my past self's choices.
The following was originally posted on October 20th, 2006 under the title "[My RL name] Goes WoW":
I saw the German version of Pets in a store here today.1 For sixty Euros (a little more than seventy-five dollars). Hrglnglrgl. And people ask me why I prefer to buy my computer games abroad...2 to be fair though, I then saw it in the store across the street for only half of that. Which in turn made me wonder what possessed the people in charge of the first store to think that sixty Euros would be a good price. Crazy.
I also got a completely different computer game in the post today3: World of Warcraft. I know I said I wouldn't4, but those were just the last fragments of denial from someone who was just too curious to resist the temptation any longer. Especially after I talked to Mechanichamster5, who's been playing for a while and assured me that it was all good fun.
Unfortunately he wasn't around today to give me any guidance, so I just started by creating a Human Paladin on a German server and ventured out on my own.
Being a newbie was fun, starting from the moment that I entered the realm and was hopelessly confused because I couldn't see myself, having merged with a bunch of other characters that stood in exactly the same spot as me. A lot of exploring, general stupidity and annoying death followed. And I almost laughed myself silly when I found the corpse of "Dumbledore" in the forest.8 I can kind of see why people find this addictive, because the world is huge, and as you enter it for the first time it seems as if the possibilities must be endless.
Still, I think that all on your own it's bound to become a bit boring after a while, especially with all the running around you end up doing as you level up. I haven't really interacted with any other players yet beyond helping each other out at defeating the occasional monster, and I'm a bit worried about making a fool out of myself due to my noobishness. I haven't even figured out how to make my character wield anything but that giant hammer thing yet, and I'd really like her to have a different weapon. Not that there's anything wrong with it in terms of functionality, but there's just something very ungraceful about clubbing wolves to death with a giant mallet.9
If any of you've been secretly playing WoW already, feel free to let me know - or if you've been thinking about giving the game a try but haven't yet, now would be just the perfect time to keep me company! *looks at Nemi...*10
1 This is in reference to the Sims 2 expansion of that name. Before WoW, Sims 2 was my gaming addiction for a couple of years. While a single-player game, it had a very active community around things like custom content, storytelling and community challenges, which meant that I was always sharing how things were going for my Sims and talking to other people about it.
2 Funny to see me complaining about video game prices back in 2006. To be fair, sixty Euros was a lot more back then that it is now.
3 It feels kind of weird that even the mere notion of receiving a new PC game in the post seems incredibly quaint and outdated already.
4 This linked to a post I had made about two weeks earlier, in which I expressed interest in the subject of MMOs after seeing a lot of friends and acquaintances talk about WoW, though I noted at the time that "I wouldn't trust myself with something as addictive as an MMORPG" - girl, you had no idea.
5 Mechanichamster, also referred to as Mecha or Matje later, was the first friend I ever made online, about four or five years prior to writing the original version of this post. We met on a message board about the Transformers cartoon from the 80s and actually ended up meeting in real life in the Netherlands (where he lived) too.
6 I actually posted this screenshot on this blog before, in this post from 2014, in which I answered some questions about my early/formative years in the game.
7 In hindsight, I'm not sure why I was so surprised that my character got to wear "decent" armour. I think my image of fantasy worlds at the time was still strongly influenced by the kind of materials I had found in my older brother's room while investigating the subject... which tended to feature very skimpily dressed barbarian ladies.
8 I was easily amused back then. I still am now, but that example seems like a low bar even by my standards. Then again, Harry Potter was actually super relevant back then, as we were still all anticipating the release of Deathly Hallows.
9 Fun fact: I tend to prefer swords to maces to this day.
10 My friend Nemi responded to the post with: "I'll install it tomorrow."
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Hmmm... Do you ever play the Sims from time to time, even after all these years? I occasionally go back and play some games from the 90s, just to remember what it was like, and I've been surprised at how well some of them hold up. I've never played The Sims, however, so I wouldn't know what to think there.
ReplyDeleteI chuckled at the "revealing useful armor" line, considering that while WoW does have it's doozy pieces, it looks positively benign compared to games such as TERA or ArcheAge (both now defunct).
I'm also biased toward swords over hammers/maces, but that's due to me having grown up watching far too many old 1930s - 1950s swashbuckler and medieval movies as a kid on television.
Nah, Sims 2 isn't a game I could easily go back to, since that was still installed via CDs and I no longer have a CD-ROM drive. Plus you also needed to install half a dozen expansion packs to get back to where you wanted to be. Not to mention that for me that game was always about building things up over time, and those old saves are probably all lost by now. There wouldn't be much appeal in going through all the potential hassle of getting the game running again just to mess around a bit.
DeleteAdd another voice to preferring swords over maces. :)
ReplyDeleteI think the last game I received via the post was likely an old game I was collecting. Probably an Infocom or Origin game via eBay.
As far as revealing armor goes, it is funny how Swtor has far more 'risque' armor than Wow does. This is one case where Wow didn't follow the trend of providing fan-service armor to the players. Now, female NPCs got the short end of that stick, but not so much the players.
As far as the retail outlets go, here in the US gamers learned to visit multiple stores to see who had the best prices. Often the big chain toy stores or electronics/appliances stores would have a nice discount, where as the dedicated game software stores would be likely full price. Often the latter would survive by selling to family members who would stop in to get that gift for 'little Johnny/Suzy' instead in shopping around.
Adding another voice to swords over maces! Forever aggrieved shamans can't wield or even transmog swords for whatever reason.
ReplyDeleteNice to have a read-through these memories. It's always quite surreal, although very interesting, to compare how our views evolve over the years when it comes to games, even for 'little' things. While I obviously don't have anything major for WoW as by the time I started playing it most of my MMO tendencies were already set in stone, I always remember in my first year of SWTOR opining in guild chat that tanking and healing in group content seemed far more interesting than DPSing as "you'd actually have something to do".
About that... :P