Stories of Vanilla WoW - Share yours with us!

[Xykaru 1]

Oh I have to add in that I'd camp the castle in Redridge and wait for them to get on the boss. Then I'd kill them all, forcing them to clear the castle all over again after corpse running xD.

[Mithriltwo 0]

I pooped and then i died

[taladril 43]

My most epic thing in vanilla will be something I never forget. We are in BRD and are all around 55 working on our ony attunements. It's me as a rogue, my lock friend, a pally, a druid, and one other. We had gotten to the part where we escort windsor. Well this was back when guides were pretty rough and so we were mostly winging it. We started the escort and of course didn't know what his path was to make it easier. We had not cleared anything. We probably didn't even know that the next step was an escort.

 

Anyway windsor starts walking and we just try to keep up. We are just barely surviving pack after pack after pack, eating, drinking, chugging potions, anything we could to survive. I think during the entire time we all died individually at least once. The pally rezzed where he could and the druid had burned his combat rez a long time ago. I think someone even did a quick corpse run to get back. Fighting every mob the whole way while escorting was something like a half hour to forty five minutes. It was a nonstop adrenaline rush and we didn't think we'd survive until the very end, but we did. It was such a rush that at the end we were all screaming in chat and hoping a gm saw our accomplishment.

 

It makes me sad because something like this would never even organically happen in new wow nowadays. The guy who talked to windsor would have been kicked from the party and everyone would just reset and do it the "right" way.

[Xykaru 1]

My most epic thing in vanilla will be something I never forget. We are in BRD and are all around 55 working on our ony attunements. It's me as a rogue, my lock friend, a pally, a druid, and one other. We had gotten to the part where we escort windsor. Well this was back when guides were pretty rough and so we were mostly winging it. We started the escort and of course didn't know what his path was to make it easier. We had not cleared anything. We probably didn't even know that the next step was an escort.

 

Anyway windsor starts walking and we just try to keep up. We are just barely surviving pack after pack after pack, eating, drinking, chugging potions, anything we could to survive. I think during the entire time we all died individually at least once. The pally rezzed where he could and the druid had burned his combat rez a long time ago. I think someone even did a quick corpse run to get back. Fighting every mob the whole way while escorting was something like a half hour to forty five minutes. It was a nonstop adrenaline rush and we didn't think we'd survive until the very end, but we did. It was such a rush that at the end we were all screaming in chat and hoping a gm saw our accomplishment.

 

It makes me sad because something like this would never even organically happen in new wow nowadays. The guy who talked to windsor would have been kicked from the party and everyone would just reset and do it the "right" way.

 

And that rush of the unknown, the fear of death, the craving for the beyond, is the true glory of Vanilla WoW. Unfortunately we won't necessarily get that with the fresh start, because we all know Vanilla too well, but the pleasure of friendship and equality will make the fresh start another  notch on the great tree of Vanilla life.

 

  The idea of thousands of players along side you every moment you're playing, tides of battle in world pvp, knowing that there will be minimal level/gear differences, knowing that you could be the first to 60, GOOD GOD MAN!!!!!! I'm excited as a mofo.

[Faith 5]

I started playing vanilla in 2004. I rolled a hunter named Shirl. I leveled to 10 got my pet and ran off to Darkshore. After a while someone whispered rumors to me of another land. Full of humans and dwarves. I had to ask around but finally someone said you take a boat to an island and run through the wetlands. I took this advice and began my long trek into the unknown.

 

I really had no idea where I was going. Crocodiles attacked me and I barely survived. Spiders lept from seemingly no where to inflict me with poisons. I cursed them and ran on! My pet sacrificing his life to keep me alive.

 

Finally I entered the base of a mountain following a winding path upwards. I wasn't through the woods yet. Orcs came at me! Again my pet saved me. (giving up his life again!)

 

I stumbled out of the tunnels into a new area lush with life. Green grass met me and.. what.. what is that! I see a dwarf! I waved at him and he kept about his business. I wandered around and saw.. what is that.. a gnome? It was a gnome mage in a bright blue robe. She laughed at me and waved. I asked for directions.

 

"How can I find this.. this.. IronForge!"

 

She directed me up a hill where I entered another tunnel through the mountains which opened in a small flat clearing.. then back into a tunnel and I saw another gnome running past with his short legs and he yelled "CHOO CHOO CHUGGA CHUGGA CHOO CHOO!". I laughed and felt like I was almost there! I must be coming close to this fabled IronForge!

 

The tunnel open up and snow was falling on my head! Snow!? <gasp!> I must be close now.

 

Winding down the path curving this way and that with wolves and white leopards off the trail I found a group of Dwarves running up a path. I followed them. The path led upwards towards the mountain and before me rose a massive keep. A huge statue at its entrance. Finally I have arrived, I thought. I walked past the statue to the right and entered IronForge! Immediately I saw people everywhere. Dwarves, humans, gnomes and even elves!!! I was astounded. It seemed massive. 

 

I said to myself.. Shirl. You made it. (I got up out of my computer chair thrust my arms into the air in victory! Sipped my coca cola and sat back down)

 

/dance

 

My night elf danced .. my pet smiled. 

 

Time for the next journey to being.

 

 

~ Faith ~

Edited November 29, 2016 by Faith

[Faith 5]

I'm here to share funny/weird/memorable stories of our vanilla experiences! Anything goes as we're here to vent and preparing for the mood of getting into our old world again!

 

This story falls into the weird category with a drop of hilarious in it:

 

I met this Finnish girl (allegedly) and we role played a lot together in Goldshire (on Moonglade RP realm). It was fun and games until she offered to boost me through SM with her hunter. I was hyped for easy XP and items so we made our way there (remember the run through aaaaall the way across the world and through the Plaguelands to get there as an Alliance player?).

 

Little did I know that her spec was survival hunter with no ranged weapon or pet. Having made friends with her I found it hard to tell her that she could be more.. err... "efficient" with her build, so we mustered through (and died on every pack). In the end she somehow managed to pull us through a wing (forget which one) with a hell of a raptor strike spam. I guess that's an achievement in itself.

 

Having no courage to tell her how could she play more efficiently, she kept going through the game as a hunter main, with no pet and only using axe with AAs and raptor strike. That must take some serious patience to do but hey, who am I to tell how to play a game. I run through all the Dark Souls and Bloodborne games with sub-optimal builds just for challenge and shiet n' giggles.

 

Peace! 

 

Joona

I saw many a hunter with that type of spec

[saraghtera 0]

Way back in the halcyon days of 2006 I was struggling my way through World of Warcraft as only a solo leveling warrior could. I found myself in Ashenvale and was absolutely awestruck by the color and music. The ambiance of it had me wandering around, not even questing. Then I found it; a tunnel carved into a mountain. I forget what it was called but I believe it was "Talondeep Pass".

I love how vividly you depict the story and how close it is to what I experienced when first rolled NE druid. I went so far that when studying music I made sheets of one of my favorite tunes there, "Teldrassil". Also the finding of new areas and hidden caves in the well crafted world was amazing.

 

But my very first memory of playing was starting my night elf hunter, i had leveled to about 8 or 9 and remember going to the area where the lake is in Dolanaar and swimming for the first time, it seems silly but it was such a magical feeling watching the ripples turn into wakes and then disappearing will always be my favorite memory of wow.

 

 

but most of all the real friendships made through climbing to the top of IF and drinking 20x noggenfoggers to get slow fall and jumping off just to do it again!

I cannot wait to experience those adventures all over again!

Let's hope we can get immersed into the world like that again! I love that IF drinking story so much :3 Oh and yes! My swimming story ended in catastrophe -___-. I fell down from the NE tree, while swimming in one of the rivers there, into the ocean. Long story short: Lots of swimming around and confusion on how to get up again! It felt like hours at that time. I even considered making a new character. ><

 

I can't wait to play Vanilla again on Elysium. Hope you enjoyed my little Story.

I can't wait either and I did enjoy it! That's some serious dedication you've got going on there mister (referring to the same UD mage)!

 

Thank you so much for sharing! Yet again I had a fun evening coffee after school reading these.

 

Cheers!

Edited November 30, 2016 by saraghtera

[Wirago 8]

One of my nicest memories I have from back then is my first flight from Stromwind to Ironforge. The whole time I was like "dafuq is this? dafuq is that? I want to go there! I need to see this!"
Sadly, this feeling won't come back, but it was awesome.

 

And of course: first time deadmines ... me and my group died a lot. We had no idea what to do and where to go

[saraghtera 0]

I saw many a hunter with that type of spec

Oh, you did? Was that really viable? Or was it just some niche build only some played as? =P Maybe I was wrong doubting her all along.

 

BTW you're a really good writer. I was vividly picturing the whole way through as the story progressed. And I totally knew every nook and cranny you described. I did a journey like that as a Troll Hunter and I stayed at the mountain pass lurking around for a long time and killing dwarf mountaineers while at it. (They attacked first!!!) =P

[Undertanker 88]

Was that really viable?

 

Nope.  "Huntard" didn't come from nothing.

[Faith 5]

Nope.  "Huntard" didn't come from nothing.

EXACTLY!!

[Faith 5]

Oh, you did? Was that really viable? Or was it just some niche build only some played as? =P Maybe I was wrong doubting her all along.

 

BTW you're a really good writer. I was vividly picturing the whole way through as the story progressed. And I totally knew every nook and cranny you described. I did a journey like that as a Troll Hunter and I stayed at the mountain pass lurking around for a long time and killing dwarf mountaineers while at it. (They attacked first!!!) =P

Naw.. there were people who just wanted to melee with a hunter.

 

I can't tell you how many times I was in groups and saw hunters melee'ing or shooting arrows but there was no pet.

 

I would say "Where is your pet?"

 

They would always have some excuse.. oh I dismissed him because I was going to grab a new one then got party invite blah blah..

 

Or..  "I forgot to buy arrows." <-- my personal favorite

 

[apz 0]

I was very lucky in vanilla. But in the start it was a bit unlucky. So we were 3 that was gonna start the game, I had pretty much decided that I wanted to play on a pvp server as UD warrior. But, and I cant remember why, that day I came home late so 1 had already started to play. Ofc as human warrior on pve server(aszuneEU). Well, I couldnt play same class as him so I ended up as mage. I had never played an mmo before, died countless of times before done in Elwynn.

 

In stv someone advertised for a guild called something like Dragonstrike or Dragon Force or something like that. talked to the other 2 and we joined. I cant remember why, but for some reason we switched to a guild called Drunken Dragons awhile later. Just awesome ppl, so much fun. At 51 or around that they dragged me into LBRS. My level was way too low we learned, since everything below us got pulled by me thru the floor. At 56 I was asked to join MC, but I hadnt done the attunement (and had no idea what attunements were) so didnt get into MC til next week after farming 56-60 since I couldnt find any quests. A whole new world opened up at that first MC raid. Had 2 raidgroups with like 60 ppl in each. Lots of fun memories from that. From hammered raidleaders falling asleep snoring into mic, to pretty much everything possible and having someone play "always look on the bright side of life" on ts every time we ran back to black mountain after wipes.

 

Anyway, good times. This time I am pretty sure I will roll a warrior, just not sure if it will be undead or tauren. Or if the guys I drag with me prefer alliance, its like 100% dwarf.

 

Oh and the AQ opening was just great. My shitty comp back then lagged so hard I could hardly do anything. Cant really think of a best memory, but celebrations were big after Raggy and Nef. And I never got the t2 robe. We were very unlucky with that 1, thin we had like 1 drop in total over like 40 weeks or something

[apz 0]

oh ye, that mage took 21 days /played to level. But wasnt really rushing, will be intresting to see what time it will take this time. Maybe level as prot? Had an alt warrior at 60 tho, prettys sure I leveled that as dw fury atleast to 40, but dont remember it being that bad that some say. Rogue was worse iirc

[fructi 0]

I rolled on EU-Xavius when it just released. Played a 60 Undead mage called Mordero there. Perhaps we have met there at some point?

Nice! in which guild were you?

 

My chars were:

Tyridun - Tauren Warrior

Fructi - Blood Elf Paladin (moved her to EU-Argent Dawn afterwards)

Rumoured - Tauren Shaman

Lifask - Tauren Deadknight

 

Cant remember the other char names, and dont have a retail wow active at the moment.

[Draegon 1]

Nice! in which guild were you?

 

My chars were:

Tyridun - Tauren Warrior

Fructi - Blood Elf Paladin (moved her to EU-Argent Dawn afterwards)

Rumoured - Tauren Shaman

Lifask - Tauren Deadknight

 

Cant remember the other char names, and dont have a retail wow active at the moment.

 

Was in my own PvP guild called Visara back then. But i don't recognize any of those names. sadly.

[fructi 0]

Was in my own PvP guild called Visara back then. But i don't recognize any of those names. sadly.

Doesnt ring a bell, but the only pvp I played was AV :-)

[Konuvis 0]

It's late so imma keep it short with 2 quickies from beta.

 

In US open beta I remember going into the Deadmines at the culmination of the awesome Defias chain with a group we had organically formed while leveling (remember when you made friends leveling? I made 10 friends in a week on Nost and have not added 1 person in years on live).

We did the dungeon and when we entered the boat room we all stopped and exclaimed: "wow!" "so cool!" "goonies!!"

 

And a little solo one from EU beta. I was in Duskwood exploring the southern edges of the map and got to the Deadwind Pass entrance, figure I would check it out. I was so entranced by the exploration and the immersion I dared push and I aggroed a vulture or spider from miles away, freaked out and ran back to Darkshire

[saraghtera 0]

a group we had organically formed while leveling (remember when you made friends leveling?

 

The best part of playing a _good_ MMO game. The content after vanilla got gradually easier and easier which made it possible to go through everything solo. Even forming dungeon groups were made automatic and that took even bigger chunk of communication away from the game. Even if I wanted to talk to people, the ones I found through LFG were mostly just there to push buttons. =P

 

In vanilla people are sharing buffs and pleasantries when randomly walking by each other and while at it I've found many good people! ^^ 

 

I love how while leveling in STV on Nostalrius and questing together with a hunter took me through tens of quests while joking around and straight after we found ourselves in SM with a group of five. 

 

I'm looking forward to meet all of you again and quest together!

Edited December 2, 2016 by saraghtera

[Justified 0]

Oh i remember when i started with wow back in like 06´. I created a dwarf hunter, had no clue about anything and just started killing stuff slowly. After i managed to finish the hunter quest at lvl 10 (took me one entire day) i asked in my guild back then, which pet would be a good idea. And some smart guy was 100% serious about me should be getting a durotar tiger cause it knew something that taunts enemies. So i walked without any knowledge into Durotar and on the echo isles, found me a tiger there tamed it and used my portstone to get home. The journey took me around 18 hours in total. I died a thousand times, but all the fresh stuff and pictures just where so great and kept me goin.

 

I was so proud of my pet, went to the battle bravely just to realise i get all aggro instantly. It wasnt growl the tigers was able to use, it was cover (reducing the aggro of the pet) We had some great laughs in teamspeak

 

After that i tamed hundreds of pets during my journey to 60, learned all about every pet pretty much. My knowledge back then was almost as great as petopia cause of my addiction back then. The entire journey with that hunter was just awesome. I took ages to reach endlevel but i never felt bored or anything like that. Reached rank 14 on him aswell. Have to stop now, shedding a tear, the time was just awesome back then.

 

Hope i can get the nostalgia going here, when Elysium is goin to be released. Will be a paladin this time tho.

[saraghtera 0]

It's funny how people describing memories of WoW use first person (happened to me/I went there/I did this) as in opposite to when talking about games in general we usually go "... and then this happened in the game". That's bigger than it looks at first glance in my opinion. We've experienced the game and not just observed in third person.

 

That must be on of the factors leading to people being so fond of the game because we believe it's so integral to our lives and memories.

 

There's a term in game study used to differentiate phenomenons that break immersion and those which create it: ludographic dissonance (I read about it while trying to get into University studying games). One of the factors of creating the world in vanilla Wow was the fact that they rarely broke the immersion. We actually had to walk hours upon hours during questing to reach objectives. We conversed with other people creating groups, guilds, friendships, etc...

 

Immersion breaking factors are, in my opinion, those things that break the scale of the world. Such as instant teleportation to intances/cities/garrison. Even though they are without a doubt better features in what comes to game play, they do break immersion and destroy the feeling of being in a world with a semi-normal physical world around us (I know there's magic and all but it's described as part of the world. Even in fiction we immerse ourselves in the world if the phenomenons "fit" the world).

 

An off-product of teleportation and automated group forming is the diminished amount of communication. Characters without a 'character' or personality walk around us and feel exactly like bots. Have a conversation and a shared experience with them and it's a whole other story.

 

Game designers always have to balance between game play and immersion, the other always eats away the other. Let's hope Vanilla WoW isn't the last Mohican on the field of gaming creating immersive world around us.

Edited December 4, 2016 by saraghtera

[FrankieWuzHere 0]

I have a few stories that mostly involved my with my best friend Zack.

 

1 - The first time I made my own character on my own account I created a human rogue. My first death was to one of those giant demons that Warlocks can summon with help in goldshire... I remember getting so scared and since since that day I thought warlocks could kill other players at will.

 

 

2 - We had made a troll rogue and were running around the barrens when we saw an undead warlock. We quickly went into stealth worrying that he may have seen us. We spent a good few minutes hiding near the bristleback or whatever they're called enemies until he left... (We were like 10 and 12 years old or something. We did not understand that he was on our side.) 

  

 

3 - Zack's dad gave him his level 52 paladin and I was playing my level 32 paladin. We ran DM/WC/SFK/Naga dungeon until I was fully geared in the best in slot stuff I could get for healing. We would try to run SM later on and fail but farm the trash with him tanking as ret and me healing him... So we decided to head to WC to try to hunt for the elusive expensive Savory Deviate Delight recipe when suddenly a 58 undead priest started to attack Zack. He ran and thankfully the priest didn't see me. But what did see me was a level 44 tauren warrior who started to attack me. (I know his level because later on Zack saw him and killed him for chasing me around) What followed was a priest trying to kill Zack and the warrior trying to kill me for a good 3 minutes. Eventually the Tauren (About 3 minutes) gave up attacking me and walked away, and Zack getting away by running into WC. The chaos was fun.

 

[deathmeter 0]

My favorite moments of vanilla was mainly just learning the game. WoW was my first MMORPG. My first character, I remember it well, was a Orc Warrior. I leveled through the first zone and went to the barrens where I first saw world pvp. A whole raid group of alliance just annihilating the crossroads. Everyone in general was going crazy and I wanted to be part of the fun. So I joined the raid group to raid the alliance in Loch Modan. A level 15 orc warrior going to go do world pvp.

 

LOL.

 

I laugh about it all the time. After dying in Loch Modan, I was frustrated with how stupid I was, logged out, deleted the character, and started over again.

[Homer 0]

Like so many of us, I could also tell multiple stories. But there's one that really stuck with me:

 

When I started playing WoW in 2005, I was already over 20 years old and played with two IRL friends. We also made some IG friends along the way with whom we talked on TS.

One day, me, my IRL and IG people were doing BRD. It took us some time and we were talking in TS, having fun. At one point, my IRL friend talked about me, referring to me as "she".

One of the IG people was shocked and asked: "What, you're a girl?" (Again, we had been talking on TS before!)

Me: "Ahhh, yes?"

Him: "Oh, I thought you were a 13 year old boy."

...

From this day on and to this day I very rarely talk on TS.

(I could even tell you where we stood in BRD at that point :-))

[prosqk 0]

The best memory I have about Vanilla is winning a duel against another Mage of my rbg team.

 

We was pushing rank (the other mage wanted to push r14 when I was only pushing for r11, sorry didn't remember his name). 

We created a team in warsong with few mage, to oneshot the flag. When we waiting for the proc, we were all in front of IrongForge, dueling everyone. 

 

Then the other mage sayed on TS than we was the best Mage of the server (or something like that). I remember said something like 'you can't beat me in duel'.

 

So the duel comes and I crush him in front of all my team. Of course he had a better stuff than me, and I was so proud of me.

We did more duel in the future, he never win one.

 

PS : sorry for bad english