Darn Whippersnappers!

I started playing World of Warcraft at launch. Day one. Keste and I rolled night elves (him a hunter, me a druid) on a PvP server. We played it for a while with breaks here and there to try out other games but we always came back to WoW.

Our biggest break was right before Burning Crusade came out. See, that is also about the time I was brought into the Lord of the Rings Online beta. It would take more than mere words to describe to you what a LotR nerd I am. I had no choice but to play this game. But after about a year we decided it wasn't meeting our needs despite how happy I was to be a little hobbit named Goldenstar. We returned to WoW in December of 2007 thus missing almost a year of Burning Crusade goodness.

So many little things had changed or been added it was quite the learning curve to be caught back up to speed. Luckily we joined with some real life friends who were starting over on horde side. We were able to spew out our noobish questions without end and got all the help we needed.

Now I feel happily up to speed with the game and I certainly won’t be leaving before WotLK comes out so we won’t repeat that mistake. But I was thinking that it must be harder for people who came after Burning Crusade. All the things they missed!

All of it made me a little nostalgic for my past experiences in WoW. Some of these items are personal me only memories; some are significant changes those darn young whippersnappers will never see.

I remember when:

• Southshore was a war zone and where you went for PvP because there were no battlegrounds.
• I used my cheetah form well past level 40 because I didn’t have the gold for a mount.
• Stromguard, Tyr’s Hand, and other strongholds were full of elites.
• I accidentally sold my starter leather pants to a vendor and made it to level 7 pantless before a leatherworker took pity and made me some new pants.
• Raiding Hammerfall, Crossroad or Ogrimmar with your guild wearing nothing but their tabard and drunk in RL wasn't just fun, it was a perfectly legitimate way to spend a Friday night in game.
• Grouping up with 39 other noobs to try to kill bosses in MC & meeting Ragnaros.
• A druid had to be restoration to raid. Priests had to be dwarfs for fear ward. No substitutions.
• My Cenarion set made me look like I was wearing bark. There were no tree druids.
• Killing Onyxia for the first time and refusing to wear the moose antler helm.
• My druid never ever got her epic mount. She couldn't afford it. There were no dailies.
• Stratholme was really tough.
• You could make a raid group for any dungeon until they put limits on how many could enter.
• Running Blackrock Depths 10920901280 times because everyone in the guild was on different steps for Onyxia attunement.
• You had to enter MC to get the core to become attuned. No summoning into the instance so they would have to be run through before the raid.
• Having to run UBRS repeatedly because every skinner wanted the special skinning knife to skin the core hounds. “Loot the stupid core hounds!”
• My brother and I rolling an undead character for the first time and were actually scared to enter the Undercity because we thought it was a dungeon. My brother entered the elevator and the door snapped shut on me so couldn't go in. I sat there and watched as his health dropped to zero. I didn't know what monster he found in the dungeon but I wasn't going in there. (He had somehow fell through a crack and dropped to his death)

I could go on but I think that is quite enough for now.