181 replies to this topic

[Thaya]

I wrote this for a nostalgia thread on my first realms forum. It'll feel incomplete to you guys because I'll only put the part that doesn't have anything to do with the realm, but yeah.

Ah, I still enjoy the delicate process of creating a fresh character. Spawning in the starting zone, with the default interface, and with sound enabled and music playing... The music! The music alone takes me away! You should try this someday - enable music and fly into your first starting area. My mind starts remembering those first moments by itself, it feels like time travel; it's not just flashbacks, I literally feel the same emotions that I have 7 years back. Flashbacks are merely a result of this... re-living, I guess I can call it that.

No, I insist. Try this:

Do you understand what I'm talking about?

Or maybe this is more like it?

The fascination. Being fascinated about the scale of everything: the roads, the fences, the bushes, the trees, the buildings - you could enter and explore almost every house! Nothing felt small, nothing felt like a toy. I remember looking up all the time because the trees looked amazing to me. It was almost weird at first - no online game before had these proportions. Damn, I can't even think of a single player game released before 2004 where the open world felt so real. It wasn't just oversized, naked, copy pasted and half empty, it was the opposite of all of that. And you felt like a part of it. You weren't oversized compared to the environment, you weren't bigger than the NPCs. You felt like you're playing a character that is an integral part of the game world, a huge, exciting world, and the scale made it believable.

Being surprised by new content. Every. Single. Time. Every time you dinged a couple of levels and moved on to the next zone, you would be blown away by the new textures, new environment, new objects, new sky, new enemies, new music. The moment you got bored of the old zone and sighed with relief that it's finally over and you're being sent somewhere else, you would discover a zone that looked completely new, and you couldn't help but feel excited about it like you would be about a new game. Do you remember entering the race capitals? Not the new expansion ones, the original four. I would lose hours in those cities just to look at the architecture. All of them felt so alive.

[amirdaheat]

Gambino6, on 04 February 2013 - 08:49 PM, said:

For cata you have warr, feral, dk and disc... considering after the first season all these classes were a tier 2 at best class... forget about rogues, mages warlocks, rshamans, hunters, rets???

if you think s11 rogues locks shams were equivalent to 4.0.3 wars, death knights and ferals then... i give up on humanity

[amirdaheat]

Thaya, on 05 February 2013 - 10:26 PM, said:

I wrote this for a nostalgia thread on my first realms forum. It'll feel incomplete to you guys because I'll only put the part that doesn't have anything to do with the realm, but yeah.

Ah, I still enjoy the delicate process of creating a fresh character. Spawning in the starting zone, with the default interface, and with sound enabled and music playing... The music! The music alone takes me away! You should try this someday - enable music and fly into your first starting area. My mind starts remembering those first moments by itself, it feels like time travel; it's not just flashbacks, I literally feel the same emotions that I have 7 years back. Flashbacks are merely a result of this... re-living, I guess I can call it that.

No, I insist. Try this:

Do you understand what I'm talking about?

Or maybe this is more like it?

The fascination. Being fascinated about the scale of everything: the roads, the fences, the bushes, the trees, the buildings - you could enter and explore almost every house! Nothing felt small, nothing felt like a toy. I remember looking up all the time because the trees looked amazing to me. It was almost weird at first - no online game before had these proportions. Damn, I can't even think of a single player game released before 2004 where the open world felt so real. It wasn't just oversized, naked, copy pasted and half empty, it was the opposite of all of that. And you felt like a part of it. You weren't oversized compared to the environment, you weren't bigger than the NPCs. You felt like you're playing a character that is an integral part of the game world, a huge, exciting world, and the scale made it believable.

Being surprised by new content. Every. Single. Time. Every time you dinged a couple of levels and moved on to the next zone, you would be blown away by the new textures, new environment, new objects, new sky, new enemies, new music. The moment you got bored of the old zone and sighed with relief that it's finally over and you're being sent somewhere else, you would discover a zone that looked completely new, and you couldn't help but feel excited about it like you would be about a new game. Do you remember entering the race capitals? Not the new expansion ones, the original four. I would lose hours in those cities just to look at the architecture. All of them felt so alive.

[Nadagast]

Thaya, on 05 February 2013 - 10:26 PM, said:

nostalgia

I'm kinda jealous man.  I got all this nostalgia for Everquest, which was much more punishing/real/alive than vanilla WoW, but not nearly as polished, and the graphics were obviously much worse.  But man I played it again recently, and the nostalgia is crazy.  I kinda wish I had that with WoW.

[Thaya]

Playing this game for the first time on your own, back in Vanilla when people cared less about end game and more about the experience as a whole, was a great time. I almost feel sorry for all the people who joined in later and got pushed through the content or used something lame like Recruit a Friend - that should've been something they introduced for alts, not new players. Levels were much slower (I'm talking like, 4-5 times slower) and you went through several "level plateaus" that each had a little meta game of their own, with the instance farming for specific items, PvP hot spots, and even active battlegrounds. Honestly, end game was less active than 49s for the first few months of a new server.

Not to mention how many new contacts you got just by leveling. No queueing, no cross realm, only the chat and interaction with other people on your server. No transfers, no name changes, nobody going in, nobody going out. The reputation you had was yours and you couldn't change it for 15 bucks. Elite/group quests that weren't soloable. Asking to group up with people waiting for a quest NPC to spawn, because they only spawn once every 20 minutes. People not being douchebags because they know their reputation has a weight and because they are more interested in exploring the game than being cunts, besides, they could be exploring an instance with you in a few levels.

You couldn't leave a guild and insult everybody in it, because the other guilds on the server would know about it the same day.



Do you remember walking first time into Stormwind?



god damn

Seeing how its all like a real city, tons of players running around busy doing stuff or just exploring like yourself. Tons of NPCs everywhere, and it's all in motion. Those towers looking like real, gigantic towers. A keep that looks like an actual keep. Libraries, shops, taverns, park, mage tower, canals...

Edited by Thaya, 06 February 2013 - 03:05 AM.

[Hyrmine]

i remember hearing this loads in tbc, did they change it? or maybe i just never have music on there.

[Thaya]

Oh, oh. I got one!

I remember when you could use /say to communicate with the enemy team if they were the same faction. I got so many warnings and suspensions for that, holy shit. I even got an email with this:

Quote

Details of incident: Using obscene alnguage to make vulgar intimations to oppnents in Battlegrounds or Arenas.

Was it so funny that even the GM laughed or what?

I also got an email that says this:

Quote

Type of violation: Sexual Orientation

I mean

I don't even know what to say

fuck

Edited by Thaya, 06 February 2013 - 09:15 AM.

[Saikx]

Thaya, on 05 February 2013 - 10:26 PM, said:

I wrote this for a nostalgia thread on my first realms forum. It'll feel incomplete to you guys because I'll only put the part that doesn't have anything to do with the realm, but yeah.

Ah, I still enjoy the delicate process of creating a fresh character. Spawning in the starting zone, with the default interface, and with sound enabled and music playing... The music! The music alone takes me away! You should try this someday - enable music and fly into your first starting area. My mind starts remembering those first moments by itself, it feels like time travel; it's not just flashbacks, I literally feel the same emotions that I have 7 years back. Flashbacks are merely a result of this... re-living, I guess I can call it that.

No, I insist. Try this:

Do you understand what I'm talking about?

Or maybe this is more like it?

The fascination. Being fascinated about the scale of everything: the roads, the fences, the bushes, the trees, the buildings - you could enter and explore almost every house! Nothing felt small, nothing felt like a toy. I remember looking up all the time because the trees looked amazing to me. It was almost weird at first - no online game before had these proportions. Damn, I can't even think of a single player game released before 2004 where the open world felt so real. It wasn't just oversized, naked, copy pasted and half empty, it was the opposite of all of that. And you felt like a part of it. You weren't oversized compared to the environment, you weren't bigger than the NPCs. You felt like you're playing a character that is an integral part of the game world, a huge, exciting world, and the scale made it believable.

Being surprised by new content. Every. Single. Time. Every time you dinged a couple of levels and moved on to the next zone, you would be blown away by the new textures, new environment, new objects, new sky, new enemies, new music. The moment you got bored of the old zone and sighed with relief that it's finally over and you're being sent somewhere else, you would discover a zone that looked completely new, and you couldn't help but feel excited about it like you would be about a new game. Do you remember entering the race capitals? Not the new expansion ones, the original four. I would lose hours in those cities just to look at the architecture. All of them felt so alive.

[Luwenz123]

Nadagast, on 06 February 2013 - 01:51 AM, said:

I'm kinda jealous man.  I got all this nostalgia for Everquest, which was much more punishing/real/alive than vanilla WoW, but not nearly as polished, and the graphics were obviously much worse.  But man I played it again recently, and the nostalgia is crazy.  I kinda wish I had that with WoW.

I played EQ as well from 02 until WoW beta came out...my god man, I miss that game so much. The nostalgia you get from MMO's is a great feeling, but that's the problem with playing them, they change so much over time that they never will be what they once were.

[Imitation]

i remember when arena ms paint rage thread was the best thread ever

[Dakkrothy]

the epic feeling when u were 13 y/o & logged in for the first time.... memories..

[Daawarlock]

Thaya, on 05 February 2013 - 10:26 PM, said:

Do you remember entering the race capitals? Not the new expansion ones, the original four. I would lose hours in those cities just to look at the architecture. All of them felt so alive.

I remember losing hours in Undercity... As I could never find my way out, so eventually I would never go in there when my Hearthstone was on cooldown, which back then had a 1 hour CD.

[dionim]

Daawarlock, on 06 February 2013 - 02:56 PM, said:

I remember losing hours in Undercity... As I could never find my way out, so eventually I would never go in there when my Hearthstone was on cooldown, which back then had a 1 hour CD.

haha this.

dude this city is easy to get inside, and so fucking hard to get out hahaha

[Insanus]

gettin ganked 24/7 on strangletorn vale ,
mounts on 40
doing quests do get pally mount ,
shamans only horde
pallies only ally

damm :T

[Yarmyxx]

i remember fan of knifes being able to interrupt

[Eowynnz]

Spending hours in thousand needles finishing six quests at once, fucking turtle meat. Took me an hour of farming to get the last one.

Going to redridge mountains at level 11 on my gnome rogue, dying a countless amount of times and having my friends come rescue me :b

Getting boosted in BRD by two level 60 friends, spending all day and never actually finishing it.

First time doing Deadmines and being amazed by the huge room the ship was in.

Spending hours watching all kinds of wallwalking, blink bugs and other exploration videos on youtube.

Ninja looting videos! oboy!

Waiting in line with my friends for midnight release of TBC.

Playing all day and night after school to get to level 70 quickly.

Having my friends teleport me to Shadow Ledge in SMV to finish http://www.wowhead.c...of-second-sight so I could get the helm at level 68.

The first few people who had flying mounts flying by me as I was levelling through Hellfire Peninsula.

Spending forever running back and forth in Felwood on my slowass mechanostrider.

Mounts requiring specific factions to use, and not available to all races (suck it taurens).

Getting 2k in 2v2 with a warlock friend of mine in S5.

Streaming with my good friend Khemen back in s7/s8. Blowing heroism as gates open vs warlocks, screaming uncontrollably and winning everything.

Shadow priests surviving longer than disc priests vs my SM, double Death's Verdict, full heroic icc pve gear DK friend (boy do I miss him).

Going from 2550 to 2200 in one night, a week before season end due to inactivity (good olde HoN), and winning everything back the day after ♥

[cellblock]

-when you ran into Blackrock Mountain, got fps drop, and swam in the lava five seconds later.
-group-farming honor at Western Plaguelands, because WSG queue was 1 hour.
-wallwalking from Ashenvale WSG entrance onto roof of Barrens WSG entrance, and then rape their whole base and get shitloads of dishonorable kills, and then regret it hard.
-when you had to wait a half day to run through UBRS, because only ONE guy on the server had it, and he was shithead ninja called Doom.
-popping healthpots in duels.
-when having enemy castbars was pro hax and unknown
-when you could lie to a GM and get a free namechange.
- PatPvP.avi

The community is what made the game so fun. You had a reputation and you had to defend it every time you logged on. Even duels mattered.

Ktpearie, on 05 February 2013 - 01:33 PM, said:

I remember when serennia stole my ipod and pooped in a shirt.

Lmfao. Gameriot blogs.. good times. What is Serennia doing a day like this?

Edited by cellblock, 06 February 2013 - 05:27 PM.

[Djandawg]

Nadagast, on 06 February 2013 - 01:51 AM, said:

I'm kinda jealous man.  I got all this nostalgia for Everquest, which was much more punishing/real/alive than vanilla WoW, but not nearly as polished, and the graphics were obviously much worse.  But man I played it again recently, and the nostalgia is crazy.  I kinda wish I had that with WoW.

I had this feeling for Ultima Online, without UO most mmos would not even exist. I played from 1998 to 2003 (some on dial up). I still believe to this day that, it had the most balanced pvp system. I played it again again a few months ago,it was crazy.

15 years ago , UO was so much ahead of its time,

Edited by Djandawg, 06 February 2013 - 05:29 PM.

[Regent]

cellblock, on 06 February 2013 - 05:20 PM, said:

What is Serennia doing a day like this?

25 to life, most likely.

[Nez]

Regent, on 06 February 2013 - 05:41 PM, said:

25 to life, most likely.

Can somebody fill me in on what happened?