wow Happy 14th Anniversary WoW Europe

[Stan 5,022]

On this day, 14 years ago, Blizzard launched World of Warcraft in Europe.

Vanilla WoW went live in Europe on February 11, 2005. The game released with four races available for each faction and a total of nine classes. Paladins were exclusive to the Alliance and Shamans to the Horde.

Blizzard is recreating the Vanilla experience by launching WoW Classic later this summer. BlizzCon attendees and Virtual Ticket Holders were able to test out the Classic Demo back in November. The game itself was unveiled at BlizzCon 2017.

Are you looking forward to Classic? When did you start playing the game?

Blizzard (Source)

On this day, 14 years ago, World of Warcraft released in Europe! 

14 years is a heck of a long time, and I’m sure many of you have some fond memories of friendships made, raids not going according to plan, epic PvP victories (or defeats), and maybe even finding a rare mount or two!

When did you start playing?

What’s your favourite memory of WoW?

Do you remember this screen?

Most of all, THANK YOU for choosing to spend your time in this world (and some short stays on other worlds) over the years! 

[Avataris 10]

14 years. I'm 30 now so I'm playing it from my 16s. The only thing I'm feeling sorry is that I didn't quit earlier so I don't see such a great game becoming such a shitpile. BfA is sh't Ion. Is sh't thx to your poor management.

Beside that it was a great game. Great stories, some great boss fights. Insane PvP moments. Damn I miss so much Alterac Valley. So much..... Made so many online friends, some of them became irl. Thank you for those great moments and joy. Thank you for all the bugs and months of waiting to fix them. You showed me that a huge company gaining millions doesn't give a sh't about the customers. It was a good lesson. And sorry for that your asses were sold to Activision. Hope the good part of the team will get good recommendations. The rest......go farm AP.

 

Edited February 11, 2019 by Avataris

[Koxsos 38]

Well "yey vanilla"!
But then you remember...
TBC with "ratings" that somewhat normalized item values and eventually a somewhat fortunate move of adding at least a partial spellpower dmg to healer items, flying mounts. Topping raid meters with single button macro hunter.
WOTLK then united the ratings, introduced dual talent specialization and even more of the unique talent signature abilities that made them slightly more playstyle defining + heirlooms, barbers and lots of other stuff.
Cata brough transmogs, flying mounts in Azeroth....
I mean I did skip out for everything between cata and BfA, and don't have that many regrets.
BfA has some ups but I no longer appreciate the ilvl rat race I used to when I was in my teens. If I was 13 now as when the WoW started, I would eat it up like crazy, relentlessly farming for my tokens and running in such a circle. But EVE online taugh me not to do that anymore. And EVE online is a difficult game from general perspective, it does not make me want to play it more though.

Honestly as a casual peasant remembering back in the day how I farmed for the mount, how I was afraid to switch specs and try new things cause 1 gold with scaling was kinda a big deal and it made my life miserable after not being at the "optimal spec for the patch".
Putting a dungeon group together was a heroic undertaking of its own.
I mean it was great, it was fun, but once you have a comparison of a game without "that particular annoying mechanic you have to deal with" I feel reserved towards going back. But then I am overally reserved towards going at all. What does the game offer you at this point?
You already know everything, you no longer have the sense of wonder. You are just leveling up that stupid toon to max so you can access endgame content so you can be rendered irrelevant with another content release indefinitely.

So let's face it, we, or at least I, have grown up, the game is still great, some just can no longer appreciate the simplicity and would welcome the old game, but most of it is simply a tremendous hassle, which was majorly correctly chipped away to what we have today.
I do miss talent trees, especially the pre-cata unrestricted talent trees, but that's about it.
It's just playing BfA with extra steps and feeling somehow cool about it.

Edited February 11, 2019 by Koxsos

[Hoods 40]

Loved the days where you spend your hours in Ogrimmar or Stormwind/Ironforge trying to find a dungeon grp for UBRS, and eventually going there. All of it was a huuuge undertaking and it was super fun and rewarding to actually clear the dungeon. Now I speed through dungeons like its no challange, M+ included, and sometimes not getting rewared for that effort sucks, but in Vanilla the experience was almost as good as getting a piece of gear. You could say to your friends the next day you cleared UBRS and they would be impressed unlike today where 6/9 mythic Dazar during first weeks of Mythic is "weak"

[Arcling 877]

16 hours ago, Hoods said:

You could say to your friends the next day you cleared UBRS and they would be impressed unlike today where 6/9 mythic Dazar during first weeks of Mythic is "weak"

I kinda disagree (agreed mostly about sense of accomplishment though), relatively few people are doing mythic now. Boss mechanics were very simple back then, what was difficult was the logistical aspect of getting so many people online and the right composition. Basically, more like "don't bring a player, bring a class" (with needed buffs for specific fights). Burning Crusade was still mostly like that, I remember having to cancel several raids because that one last needed paladin suddenly stopped coming online. Classes have different mechanics now, people have better access to data and tactics etc. That's why Naxxramas in WotLK was so easy when it came out, because even back then vanilla mechanics were already too easy due to changes in classes.

Edited February 12, 2019 by Arcling

[VegaPl 88]

Probably not a comment you would expect, but to me the release and subsequent enormous success of WoW was rather bitter. For me it meant that as long as WoW is around, I won't be getting Warcraft 4 (an RTS). There is simply no room for both due to an overlap of lore and plot, at least I cannot see it done in a sensible way. There is also the financial factor - W4 wouldn't bring you monthly subscriptions for the next 14 years :P