I'm an old player, and sometimes I reminisce.
Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 3:59 am
So I’m trying to go to bed, and my mind just keeps slipping back to WoW. I’ve been playing a lot of WoW lately, so this isn’t much of a surprise.
But my thoughts just decided to take a turn to quite a few years in the past.
I started playing WoW back in 2007, just a couple of months before BC was released. That’s a weird thought, for me. I’ve been playing MMOs for a long, long time, and I’m still not any good at them.
But back in 2008 or so, right in the weird stall between expansions, I was leveling a toon. I’ve always been a slow leveler, and I’d just decided my human mage wasn’t really a character I wanted anymore (sidenote: now, years later, I have come back to her as a character and love her to death. I need to remake her). I didn’t like how easily I died, how quickly I ran out of mana, pretty much anything about her. So I made a new character, trying out one of the new races from BC.
At the time, you could only have characters of a single faction on each server. The people I played with all played Alliance side, so I abandoned the pretty blood elves and trolls and orcs and tauren that I really, really wanted to play, and picked up a draenei. Two of the other people I played with did the same.
I was the last to make my character, and we were trying to avoid doubles. One of them took a shaman, and the other took a paladin. I’d already had my fill of mages, warlocks seemed about the same to me, and warriors and rouges were both confusing because they didn’t use mana. I shrugged my shoulders and took a hunter.
I wonder if it dates me when I say I created my hunter at a time when they used mana and you couldn’t get a pet until level 10. At that point you were already so used to fighting without one that this new creature under your control was just clunky and hard to deal with, at least for a few levels. Maybe that was just me, though. I’m not very good at these games, after all.
But I leveled my little hunter (sidenote: she’s still my main, though she’s in desperate need of a name change) all the way up to level 10. I tamed a plain brown bear I named Shiota, which was a reference to a book series I loved, and still do love.
And then I decided I hated the draenei starting area with a burning passion. It was all so damn red, I kept getting attacked by ravagers that made awful clicking sounds, and the cool blood elves were on my island and taunting me over the fact that I’d had to play Alliance.
So I bailed. I traveled out from Bloodmyst Island, skipping through the night elf lands and sticking myself in Westfall.
Here’s where our story truly starts.
As I said before, this was in the lull between expansions. A lot of people were making alts that they hadn’t bothered with before, Magister’s Terrace was hot stuff, and Shattrath was constantly full. A lot of the serious players had already finished all their rep grins and raids, and even the more casual players were finishing up content.
So what did they do? Well, a good number of them would hang out in Westfall, offering free runs of the Deadmines to people.
That dungeon was a bitch at level, I remember that much. It was long, I could never actually find the dungeon entrance. I still have problems with that damn mine, actually. These were the days before the Dungeon Finder, before that lovely teleportation and queueing for your runs. We would all sit outside Deadmines, spamming general chat and hoping people would be online and good enough to make a run.
Those level 70 folk were angels to me. As I’ve said before, I’m no good at MMOs. I’m obviously not a serious player. So while it may be kinda shameful, my first ever run of Deadmines I got carried through by a level 70 draenei hunter. She had a wolf, though I didn’t know why at the time.
I’m not sure if you guys understand how much I wanted to be her. She took a ragtag group of low level toons and took them through their first dungeon, explaining to those of us who didn’t know what they were doing how everything worked. She gave us tips on running dungeons, on how to keep from pulling everything, even on our classes themselves. She took time out of her day to sit down and teach people how to play a game.
And the best part? She was specced BM. Yeah, I know. It’s still got a bad rep, even after all these years. But imagine yourself, being taught how to run your first every dungeon, and you suddenly see this black wolf grow huge and red, just because that level 70 was a little bored. Then you find out that that same spec allows you to tame things no one else can.
Before that dungeon, I hadn’t decided which tree I was actually going to go down. You weren’t locked into them, after all.
I still play a BM hunter.
She wasn’t the only person I met who did those runs. Lots and lots of people did. I looked up to each and every one of them. Many of them were doing the runs because they had two accounts and were leveling alts, sure. And not all of them taught people things like that one draenei hunter did. But each and every one of them took time to help other people in the game, people who wouldn’t always do these things on their own. I would watch them do run after run after run, their patience seemingly unending.
One of my goals in WoW was always to go back and do that for people. Just run groups of lowbies through dungeons for no real reason other than to help them and teach them like people helped and taught me. I never really got to. As I said, I level slowly. By the time I felt comfortable enough to do those sorts of runs, the Dungeon Finder already existed. People don’t sit outside dungeons spamming general chat anymore.
I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I’ve utilized that silly little finder plenty of times, and I’m incredibly grateful for it. Yeah, I’ve had awful PuGs because of it. But I’ve had really good ones, too.
I’m just a little sad I don’t see people taking low level characters through dungeons anymore. Some of my earliest and fondest memories of WoW are from that.
It’s what got me hooked on this silly little game.
But my thoughts just decided to take a turn to quite a few years in the past.
I started playing WoW back in 2007, just a couple of months before BC was released. That’s a weird thought, for me. I’ve been playing MMOs for a long, long time, and I’m still not any good at them.
But back in 2008 or so, right in the weird stall between expansions, I was leveling a toon. I’ve always been a slow leveler, and I’d just decided my human mage wasn’t really a character I wanted anymore (sidenote: now, years later, I have come back to her as a character and love her to death. I need to remake her). I didn’t like how easily I died, how quickly I ran out of mana, pretty much anything about her. So I made a new character, trying out one of the new races from BC.
At the time, you could only have characters of a single faction on each server. The people I played with all played Alliance side, so I abandoned the pretty blood elves and trolls and orcs and tauren that I really, really wanted to play, and picked up a draenei. Two of the other people I played with did the same.
I was the last to make my character, and we were trying to avoid doubles. One of them took a shaman, and the other took a paladin. I’d already had my fill of mages, warlocks seemed about the same to me, and warriors and rouges were both confusing because they didn’t use mana. I shrugged my shoulders and took a hunter.
I wonder if it dates me when I say I created my hunter at a time when they used mana and you couldn’t get a pet until level 10. At that point you were already so used to fighting without one that this new creature under your control was just clunky and hard to deal with, at least for a few levels. Maybe that was just me, though. I’m not very good at these games, after all.
But I leveled my little hunter (sidenote: she’s still my main, though she’s in desperate need of a name change) all the way up to level 10. I tamed a plain brown bear I named Shiota, which was a reference to a book series I loved, and still do love.
And then I decided I hated the draenei starting area with a burning passion. It was all so damn red, I kept getting attacked by ravagers that made awful clicking sounds, and the cool blood elves were on my island and taunting me over the fact that I’d had to play Alliance.
So I bailed. I traveled out from Bloodmyst Island, skipping through the night elf lands and sticking myself in Westfall.
Here’s where our story truly starts.
As I said before, this was in the lull between expansions. A lot of people were making alts that they hadn’t bothered with before, Magister’s Terrace was hot stuff, and Shattrath was constantly full. A lot of the serious players had already finished all their rep grins and raids, and even the more casual players were finishing up content.
So what did they do? Well, a good number of them would hang out in Westfall, offering free runs of the Deadmines to people.
That dungeon was a bitch at level, I remember that much. It was long, I could never actually find the dungeon entrance. I still have problems with that damn mine, actually. These were the days before the Dungeon Finder, before that lovely teleportation and queueing for your runs. We would all sit outside Deadmines, spamming general chat and hoping people would be online and good enough to make a run.
Those level 70 folk were angels to me. As I’ve said before, I’m no good at MMOs. I’m obviously not a serious player. So while it may be kinda shameful, my first ever run of Deadmines I got carried through by a level 70 draenei hunter. She had a wolf, though I didn’t know why at the time.
I’m not sure if you guys understand how much I wanted to be her. She took a ragtag group of low level toons and took them through their first dungeon, explaining to those of us who didn’t know what they were doing how everything worked. She gave us tips on running dungeons, on how to keep from pulling everything, even on our classes themselves. She took time out of her day to sit down and teach people how to play a game.
And the best part? She was specced BM. Yeah, I know. It’s still got a bad rep, even after all these years. But imagine yourself, being taught how to run your first every dungeon, and you suddenly see this black wolf grow huge and red, just because that level 70 was a little bored. Then you find out that that same spec allows you to tame things no one else can.
Before that dungeon, I hadn’t decided which tree I was actually going to go down. You weren’t locked into them, after all.
I still play a BM hunter.
She wasn’t the only person I met who did those runs. Lots and lots of people did. I looked up to each and every one of them. Many of them were doing the runs because they had two accounts and were leveling alts, sure. And not all of them taught people things like that one draenei hunter did. But each and every one of them took time to help other people in the game, people who wouldn’t always do these things on their own. I would watch them do run after run after run, their patience seemingly unending.
One of my goals in WoW was always to go back and do that for people. Just run groups of lowbies through dungeons for no real reason other than to help them and teach them like people helped and taught me. I never really got to. As I said, I level slowly. By the time I felt comfortable enough to do those sorts of runs, the Dungeon Finder already existed. People don’t sit outside dungeons spamming general chat anymore.
I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I’ve utilized that silly little finder plenty of times, and I’m incredibly grateful for it. Yeah, I’ve had awful PuGs because of it. But I’ve had really good ones, too.
I’m just a little sad I don’t see people taking low level characters through dungeons anymore. Some of my earliest and fondest memories of WoW are from that.
It’s what got me hooked on this silly little game.
Make him HAPPY. 
That's a real test of how long a player you have been if their first responce to that first sentance is "Why did you not use duel spec?"