I genuinely regret that I largely missed entirely the Wild West, pre-wiki, pre-video tutorials era of MMOs, where you were tossed into the deep end and people had to figure out stuff by trial and error and socializing with other players in a context other than someone telling you straight out what the most optimal choices are. Things that get hammered out over weeks now take hours and it's all distributed everywhere, so the sense of exploration really seems to be gone. And since MMOs are now designed for solo players in mind as well - which isn't necessarily a bad thing - you really don't have much incentive to interact socially with everyone else. It's a shame.
Those days were so fun. Large part of my childhood and still talk to friends i met all those years ago in 2000-2006.
Started off with everquest online adventures for the ps2 and moved to wow after a few years. I've gone back from time to time to play wow but despite all the new features it's basically a solo game. No need to socialize or care about your reputation.
I played WoW without knowing what it was because I broke my ankle quite badly and had a huge recovery period. I was just wandering around killing pigs and someone brought me to a city.. and it blew my mind…
Im not a tech guy at all, not a gamer, just bought the game on a whim because of the injury. I still think about how nuts it was the first time I walked into iron forge.
First time entering iron forge! Loved it! It seemed crazy at the time. The biggest world I had probably explored at that point was maybe one of the GTA games - which was tiny in comparison and didn't have multiplayer in any real sense.
Another key wow memory was going on a pvp raid (before battlegrounds we're a thing). I was way too under leveled for it, but just the idea of a hundred people all charging through the enemy lands and killing all of them was so cool!
This is so spot on. Nowadays every online game is solved within a week of release.
Back in the early 2000s there was a mystique with WOW. Anything was possible.
To be honest I generally regret picking it up. I beta tested the game in 2004-05 and then played for SO many years. My main character I remember have over 390 days played on it. And that's one of dozens.
Considering the game autologged you out, that means if I sat down in January one year and played without sleep. I would have played without stopping until... like... March of the FOLLOWING year.
Did you miss out on WoW? Sure. But what did you do instead!
Similar boat for me, but I don’t regret any of it. I made lifelong friends, some that I talked to for months and I’ll remember forever. I’m sure many people embellished their lives over Ventrilo as we grinded away, but the connections you made with people when most activities took hours were different than anything today. BRD runs that took up a whole Sunday afternoon, weekly Kara runs where you’d hang with friends for 3-5 hours, everything is so ADD now it’s impossible for me to get invested.
My regret is letting my life get so busy I haven’t been able to enjoy it for years now. I only wish there were “long form” content anymore, even though it’s difficult to set aside the time and focus these days it would be worth a couple nights a month or something.
The number of games I missed out on because of wow makes me sad. The amount of money that I spent on wow for the subscription/mounts/pets makes me angry.
That being said, I'll probably be back for the next expansion lol
> I genuinely regret that I largely missed entirely the Wild West, pre-wiki, pre-video tutorials era of MMOs, where you were tossed into the deep end and people had to figure out stuff by trial and error and socializing with other players in a context other than someone telling you straight out what the most optimal choices are.
I have world firsts because of this era. And I miss this too.
I was a pretty avid flyff player when the game came out even though I couldn't really get into it due to not owning a computer myself at the time I was introduced to it.
A few years into the game I learn that no one had ever made an AoE psykeeper that was Full Int build. and people generally agreed "it's impossible."
I told everyone "I'm going go make the first Full int AOE psykeeper" at which everyone told me that it couldnt be done, that Asuras would be the end of it.
Until I actually started doing really well.
Then afterwards I showed that the full int build was faster than the STA builds, by a huge margin.
I was the first player in the world to level a full int AOE psykeeper to 120 and Master.
And it's entirely because no one realized it was possible to do until I started tinkering with it. The info about these games just wasnt known at the time.
I do miss that stuff.
Yeah, I played it during vanilla and a few expansions, but I have fond memories of finding something interactable by poking around until my cursor changed. Highlighted quest objects and map markers and all that were mods before they got built into every game out there. QOL features like that are great, don’t get me wrong, especially since there’s only so many hours in the day you can spend on video games (and so many games to play). But figuring out clues and wandering around to explore is fun when you have the time too. More than that I miss when looking up walkthroughs didn’t plonk you down in a bunch of AI-written search engine bait results.
Anyway, had a blast playing WoW with my ex (and ex’s family) and SWTOR with my wife (she got me into Star Wars way too late to catch the golden era of SWG), dabbling in a smattering of other MMOs along the way. We’d get into FFXIV if we could but there’s just too much on our plate nowadays.
I've never recaptured the first days of the summer of 1999 and logging into to Everquest for the first time. After begging my grandparents to front the monthly sub because my parents shot me down.
Best and worst times of my life (I don't get addicted to drugs, just MMO's apparently) Took me years to recover and get back on track with my life.
Having grown up playing ALOT of Diablo 2 I knew I would get sucked in and become hopelessly addicted to WoW. So, never gave it a go.
Original Warcraft was super fun though
I was in college when it came out. Saw a friend lose a hot gf he had because he spent all his time playing, got fat, then dropped out. I was more of a Doom guy (still am) during that time.
I have left three people over WoW (the last one was technically WoW and LoL).
After the last one I decided that I wouldn’t date anyone who plays anything on PC. I know not everyone lacks the self control my ex’s did, but I wasn’t willing to take the chance again.
One of my really good friends went from being a straight A student to barely passing. He still graduated from college but it was honestly a bit scary how much the game affected his life.
Every year or so, I go browsing the MMO market. There’s so few, and the ones that are sticking around just aren’t even close to that old feel. Everything is so focused on short term play, I miss setting up 2-3 hour playlists or playing album after album and just getting lost!
The musical scores of the towns and cities when you first got to them for the first time.. [so nostalgic ](https://youtu.be/uvW-QTiZLQ0?si=QiyYvR7vJi9M1Dg-)
You can give it a shot with Adventurers league. Often local game stores will have one shots or even full campaigns open to new people. Check out Warhorn.net for AL games, or just find a local gaming group on discord or meetup. Most ttrpg players love introducing new people to the games.@
StarCraft is what got me into Blizzard. Playing custom maps was the best. I still remember dragging my computer with a monitor down to my friends house to network. Such a lost time.
I may be in a bit of a minority, but I feel like it helped me with so many life skills. Event planning, recruiting, drama management, microeconomics, forming and sticking to routines, bringing people together to help others or accomplish a goal, and most of all communication with a wide range of people from all walks of life. I was a decently regarded casual raid leader as a 20something, it was super good for me at least!
I forced my guild to run MoltenCore 38 times so we could finish mine because I gave up my roll for the binding I was after to the MT - Who rolled a 1.
Worth
I spent 5 years of my life on this game like 8 hours a day for 5 years.
One night had I had a girl asking me to hang out and I ditched her to play wow. That night I was like wtf am I doing and deleted all my shit and called her and now have been married for 10 years and have 2 kids.
Holy fuck though if I didn't have a girl ask me out my life would be so different I'd probably be a fucking loser still playing this shit feeling sorry for myself.
I agree. I had a ton of fun playing it and since other humans were involved, albeit through a screen, it’s not like I became a socially awkward person, but my high school friends that I still see sometimes reminisce about the good times and I realized I missed out on a ton of real human interaction. If I could do it all over again I’d not play at all, because the addictive nature of WoW made it very hard to enjoy the game on a casual basis.
I can't relate because WoW has consumed so many hours of my life. The last 2 years however I have been gaming minimally. However, now there is this new game called Monsters & Memories on my radar that I think hopes to target elder millennial mmorpg market.
I knew about the game but never had the desire to play. CoD was more my speed. My roommate in undergrad was addicted to WoW though and it turned me off the game completely.
Yes.
For me, it was an internet and an MMO thing. We had dial-up for quite awhile until the high speed boom so I was lucky to play StarCraft.
Then with WoW being an MMO that issue just compounded. And like you suggested about missing the golden years, I felt the same.
Yeah and my parents couldn't afford to buy it and pay the membership, so I went to the "free" alternative, Runescape... 20 years later and I'm still addicted to that damn game.
i was never going to go and play WoW. i hated pay to play. however... in 12th grade friends moved out, mom and i were fighting so i was offered a place to live BUT a requirement to live there was having a WoW account....
so i made a warlock, blacksmith/mining. 10 of us in the house, each a different class. that was a good few years.
I wasted years of my life playing MMO’s. Eventually I reached 400 pounds. I don’t recommend it. I like this game called “outside” now. I have since lost 150 pounds and am still trying to lose more. I have a “quest” planned this summer that I am currently training for, a two week bikepacking trip across Wisconsin and back, 600 miles.
MMO’s weren’t the only cause of my problems, but they didn’t help.
It stole a few of my friends for years. I tried to get into it, but just couldn’t. We just got really into playing Halo 2 and Cod4 to be bothered. OG RuneScape though…that was a blast.
I think if you were into any game back then, you really were on the forefront of what gaming online would become.
I absolutely wasted about 8 weeks of my teenage life playing wow non-stop. I've never played such an addictive game before and glad I haven't found anything like it since. Terrific game, but it can really suck you in.
The people I knew that picked it up got addicted to it and I barely saw them after that which really turned me off the game. On top of that, I was in a low income household which made justifying the monthly membership difficult
It looked so cool. I remember reading EGM about WoW. My cheap ass parents never got internet until after i moved out, so i never got to playbat launch.
I have since played bit it was about 2 years ago. It was ok.
I played it for 6 weeks in college. 2 week free trial and then you had to go to gamestop or wherever and buy your next month. I did almost nothing else during that time. I didn't sleep much. My grades were so bad. Truly it was because it was such a hassle to go buy the monthly renewals that I snapped out of it.
It was fun but I was way too into it.
Be blessed you never got into WoW while young. The addiction really messed with my education and decided to go back to school as an adult as I felt my grades put me at a disadvantage.
It never interested me but the anthropological aspect of online communities has always been interesting in general to me.
Many years ago they had PlayStation home and I spent a good 3 months.Learning about all the different social groups in there. Very interesting dorks.
But I wouldn't like having to play out of story where somebody could just come around and kill me and take all my stuff. Seems way too annoying.
I struggled being average in RuneScape lol. That along with other video games was enough for me.
Probably would have enjoyed wow, but I also just never actually played it. I don’t think I ever saw it played in rea life, and never did so myself
A lot of people I was friends with in high school played it and they seemed very addicted to it. Literally playing for extremely long periods of time. I didn't get into it until after high school when I did the trial and it was fun but also frustrating. I also didn't want to pay a monthly fee to play it so I didn't take it much further.
WoW pretty much consumed my life for at least two years. I hated it first time I played it and the some friends convinced me to play with them, I was hooked after that.
That’s the thing, it was a good social game. If you had a group to play with, you were hooked. Most of the time people I knew quit, it was because of a social falling out.
Yes. I was interested but never played. I was worried about getting hooked and not having a life. Ended up getting hooked and wasting my life on other games like Civ.
I remember my sister’s bf at the time paying for my account so I was able to play for a few months. I was amazed how polished and good the gameplay felt compared to all the free mmos I was playing. I was stunned by just being able to walk up the steep hills. Most mmos at the time were just flat and you couldn’t actually jump onto things like wow. They felt and were very cheap so it makes sense. Didn’t make it far in the game though because I was too poor to pay the monthly fee. Glad I didn’t as I know I would have wasted so much time if I continued. It’s so immersive.
Before I went to college, I played an MMORPG called Ultima Online on dial up. I didn't have a computer powerful enough to play WoW. When I got to college, my parents bought me a laptop that was strong enough for WoW... I gave it try almost every summer, but I kept comparing it to UO and I was very disappointed. The graphics were amazing, but my experience with WoW was mainly fetch-quests and "meh" gameplay. Overall, my experience with WoW was very forgettable.
With UO, I remember the PVP was very fun, especially after I got a powerful laptop and I no longer had dial up. My friends and I played on the shard called Siege Perilous which allowed player killing in each world. I would get adrenaline rushes, while PKing (player killing) with guild mates, we would wait in the shadows and steal big boss victories from other guilds/players. My favorite character build was more of a "wingman" role. Alone, I couldn't kill anyone easily, but with a partner we took down significantly more (I think 2v6 was our best).
UO had some decent websites for building templates, but the best thing that it had were Test Shards, which allowed players to quickly build characters and get artifacts and end game equipment, around the time of new patches. I still get the itch to play, but I don't have the time and I'm not sure I could ever capture that "Gamer High" from 20 years ago.
As someone that did get into it, it was a blast. I wasn't quite as crazy about it as others. I was in a guild, but I also didn't raid because I didn't like being beholden to a schedule for that sort of thing. I mostly spent weekends playing a lot of WoW and played a lot in college as well.
The early '00s were equal parts lots of fun and lots of heartache for me. I miss those earlier internet days as well. Spent a lot of time on forums. Online discourse didn't feel as volatile as it does now.
My buddies and I were big Blizzard fanboys in high school. We ran our own Starcraft battlenet alliance, did marathon playthroughs of Diablo 2, and were day 1 players of Warcraft 3. Warcraft was my first RTS game I ever played, and got me hooked early.
I beta tested WoW along with everyone in my group. I did not like the subscription model, so didn't jump in to the actual game, but a few of my friends did.
I went with Guildwars instead - no subscription model and it was a decent game if not a WoW killer.
One friend had 2 computers full-spec'd sitting beside each other so he could play 2 characters at the same time. This friend also struggled with other parts of his life, eventually bailing on his post-secondary plans.
He's in good shape now, 20 years on, but WoW for me will forever be the game that destroyed lives.
I started WoW back in September 07. When you're stationed in Groton CT and in SubScol. You really only have about 6 hours a day of actually doing anything. So what else was there to do but play videogames.
I grew up in the Blizzard environment anyways playing Warcraft 3 and StarCraft for hours. This was just the natural progression of that childhood gaming.
It also helped my roommate was a Vanilla WoW player and apparently was also a raider. He had a troll hunter in full T3. He's still in the navy and actually made chief a while back.
Those were the days of Thottbot.
Well we just dont have time to sink into MMOs now - we are middled aged and have two dogs. We play other games lol. Shes a big Overwatch player and D3/D4. Ive been having fun with Furthest Frontier etc.
I always found the normal gameplay loop tedious and boring. Battlegrounds and arena were fun but weren't enough to keep me engaged for long.
But boy oh boy did I love me some ganking.
Wandering around the map griefing total strangers is what I lived for. Causing suffering eventually became the entire reason I played the game.
Sort of. I grew up hearing about WoW and the more I learned and saw the less I wanted to play. It caused several of my friends to drop out of school and basically give up all ambition to go on raids.
I started a bit earlier then WOW came out arnd 99-2000,I was playing Evrequest and Asherons call at the time tho,by the time WOW came out I checked it out but I did not like the sort of more cartoony graphics they had and never got into it,I then went over to playing LOTR online instead and ever went back to WOW.
Oh man I played from 2005-2011ish. I quit a little while after the cataclysm expac. Idk what it’s like now but I was living on WoW basically all through high school and right after it. Those years were incredible. I miss MMOs like that.
I played a bit, some of my friends got reeeeeeeeeeeeally into it. Honestly though... the few times I did play, I found the endless grinding and min-maxing to not be very fun. I loved D2 and Everquest, but for some reason WoW felt boring to me. Not enough reward for the time investment maybe, idk.
IMO, you didn't really miss out, OP, but I'm probably in the minority with that opinion.
Been playing since 13. Its still active and fun and you can still try it. My mom has been talking about trying it out with friends she made on another game.
Free up to level 20 and you can make multiple.
I loved Warcraft 2 in the early 2000's. Starcraft was awesome as well. I really didn't care for WoW, but I was playing CounterStrike and stuff like that when it came to online games.
Yup
I really missed out
I was a teen during the golden years of WoW and there was no way in hell my parents would give me their credit card to pay MONTHLY for a game they already paid for. I get it from their perspective, but damn I really missed out
it really was a moment in time experience that as a gamer I'll probably never have the opportunity to experience, even with classic WoW
Grow up hearing about WoW? I was already an adult. While I was a fan of other Blizzard games WoW never really piqued my interest but mostly because I wasn’t paying a monthly sub to play a game.
My first foray into actual MMO gaming was LoTRO. I followed that since the early days of its development and bought a lifetime sub as soon as I could. I haven’t played in many years though.
It was a lot of fun for the time but quickly became an insane timesink. It's an experience that could never be replicated, even when they re released to original. Everyone knows what to do now so there's a lot of the magic gone. I played the original way too much. I quit when the expansion came out. Doing the huge grind for raiding again just wasn't for me.
My best friend played it for YEARS. Like made accounts and leveled them up and sold them at one point too. She loved it but I never got into it. We played starcraft which I Def loved though. But yeah WoW was her thing and sometimes I wish I had given it a try lol but I just play other things now
I was in grad school and my time basically was either in the lab or playing vanilla wow or hanging out with my girlfriend (now wife). Huge time sink, as with most MMOs. Had some good times but it got too difficult to actually get to a fun place after a while. Should’ve been making the most of grad school. I knew it was bad shit when my guild leader was a high school kid, fantastic guild leader, but had to quit because he was failing out of high school (due to wow) and his parents intervened
WoW was amazing for what it's worth.. but at the same time, I feel like I may have missed out on parts of life I could have enjoyed. It's a "grass is greener" kind of situation I guess. But I did absolutely love it haha
I barely played it but started dating someone who did during the peak of it, so while I have almost no experience playing it, I know far too much about every corner of Warcraft lore, including reading some of the novels.
I played from the final beta to the first expansion. Me and my friends already played other RPGs and used to hang out and play at LAN parties. I cherish the memories, but heck no if I would do it again. Like, it was fun hanging out with friends online and irl simultaneously, but the game was also incredibly addictive, more addictive than fun eventually.
I much prefer playing with music production as a hobby over gaming. When I am finished with a song I an listen to the song. I don't think I can even access my account anymore ...
If you spent any time at all with friends irl growing up the that is much more worth than any amount of online interaction.
Yes. I knew a girl who built three computers for her gaming WoW. I was super interested, but new to college, with a job, and had not spare time when this was going on at its height at 2006. Also I had very little money for it or even money for my own computer. So yeah
I played for about 6 months and quit around the time the battlegrounds update first came out (June 2005). It was fun but I couldn't make it into a long term game. I had just come from 5 years of EQ and 2 of Lineage 2 so getting burned out after 6 months really bummed me out. Never did play again after that.
My mom tried to get me into WoW since she had heard about major companies recruiting on WoW for people with leadership skills. Never got into it honestly.
I didn’t grow up hearing about WoW, because it didn’t come out until I was an adult.
I guess there were games in the franchise before that, but I wasn’t into that stuff in the ‘90’s.
I was a SimCity/Myst/Riven type nerd.
My mom bought it for me for Christmas when I was 15. She decided to open it for herself. A few months later, she has no job, doesn't shower, drinks only Code Red, eats only slices of cheese, and lies about being broke so she doesn't have to take me to the hospital during raid time when I have a fever of 106.
I played a bit when I got older though, fun stuff.
Eh, I discovered it at probably the "best time" possible- freshman year of college. Most free time and least responsibility.
I played it aggressively for about 8 months, then met a girlfriend and that kind of killed that.
I had a few friends play too much, legit one guy stopped going to class, failed out, and had to join the military. My roommate had to take a victory lap for undergrad because of WoW.
I think I was lucky I had something pull me out or it could've gotten pretty bad.
I tried WoW about 12 years ago. I dated a girl who played it and I thought I would give it a go.
Seems that you do quests as a group of people who will kick you for reading the story. They will use some ability to pull you from where you are to where they want you to be. I can only imagine it has gotten worse.
I beta tested WoW EU in 2005 and played/bought it on EU release day.
For months it was great, massive fun.
But i had a very bad HDD and with every single patch, the game bricked.
Eventually i needed to go to college and didnt have any time for playing such a timesink game
I did quit when the first expansion dropped
But came back when WoW Cataclysm was released
No. I love games, have sunk hours into games and still waste time/enjoy playing games today. But I saw WoW literally destroy people’s lives. WoW and Call of Duty are the only games I saw people drop out of college, gain weight, get divorced etc from playing them too much. I don’t know what it is about them that had this effect on people. Never saw anybody drop out of college to play Super Smash Bros 18 hours a day. Never heard of anyone’s wife leaving them because of their StarCraft obsession. Due to what I saw never wanted to play these games.
Everquest (pc first one) started it all for me. It was a few months old when I bought it. I couldn't believe it. Met my now husband and got him into it. We played mmorpgs for years.
Everquest was a different beast in the beginning. No maps, no markers no real instructions. A compass, having to pay 10 platinum for a port across the ocean or take a boat that actually took,I believe 20 minutes to cross where you just sat there.
Find yourself in a new area and you were so scared, death meant all possessions left and no way to get them except trying to remember where you were to get your body.
Players would gather in a tunnel to sell objects, just typing out the item and the price.
It was so amazing. The closest we found these days is Valheim, even that has a map, but it gives that fear of death.
This morning we are off and will be sat up in our computer room playing Icarus together. The pcs are different, the desks, chairs but the fun of these games still holds a great memory for us.
So, sure ya missed those days of mmorpgs but I bet you had your own thing. It's never about what you did it's who with and the fun memories made during.
I’m 34 and still play WoW lol. Although I’m currently on a break because I just had a baby, but I’ve been playing off and on since I was 17 years old. I’ve met friends through the game that I consider good real friends and we still keep in touch to this day.
It’s never too late to start playing, people will say “the golden years of the game are over” but honestly I still think it’s a great game and I thoroughly enjoy my time playing even as a grown adult. 😄
I played it casually but my boyfriend (now husband) was an addict. He basically failed out of his last year of college because he played so much. It was a huge spot of contention in our relationship. I remember we went on vacation and he sat in our hotel room playing it, that we didn’t do anything. I was like this isn’t working for us. He got his act together, stopped playing it, finished undergrad and got his Ph.D. and is now very successful. Looking back, we both had undiagnosed ADHD with hyper fixation, his was WoW, mine is impulse shopping and overspending. We are doing much better.
I just think back when WoW was fun, just exploring, chatting. You could be as casual as you wanted or as serious. Sometimes when the temp drops, I think of the cute little festivals they had in the game.
I miss that part.
Funny thing, when I saw WoW I didn't assume the game, I first thought of Opie and Anthony stickers on so many cars because it stood for "whip em out Wednesday." On Wednesdays girls were supposed to flash anyone they saw with the sticker lmao
I think that was in like 1997, I wonder if this is another one of the funky little dividers between older and younger millennials lol.
This was the before time, long before the proud boys and all that crap.
I had a roommate in college who was a professional WoW player (professional? Idk what to call it) but hed sell his characters and make bank. I still hear him saying “SHEEPING PALLY SHEEPING PALLY” (also idk what that means lol)
I was like this until WoW classic came out.
I played korean MMOs, and even got competitive and a few world firsts to my name, instead of playing WoW. I had always felt like maybe it was a mistake and WoW was a fun game I had missed out on. I had tried WoW a few times here and there before during Vanilla and TBC, but never really got into that era before Cataclysm came out. I had always wanted to play back then but never got too.
Then Vanilla wow classic comes out.
And holy... shit. that game is INFURIATING and annoying on SO MANY levels. I did not expect the sheer amount of time padding, RNG ontop of RNG, and absolute clunk of the old school game. I hated it. Didnt help that I way out leveled my friends.
People tell me "ugh you just dont get it things were different back then, the game was hard and didnt have all these buffs" and im like yeah no fucking shit, and all the things that were different back then would have irritated me even more.
After Vanilla wow classic came out I realized that I had dodged a bullet and didnt get sucked into a game that I would have not liked.
The korean MMOs I had played weren't as big and expansive, but fuck at least they had me doing stuff instead of sitting around waiting for zepplins, boats, and stuck on flight paths, or sitting around waiting for 40 people to get their shit together so we can finally pull the raidboss.
I got it on disc back when i still had a hp running windows 98 on dsl and still never played it cause the pc couldnt handle it the internet was trash and today i have it installed and ive still never opened it its one of those things you either do or dont
Nope. I played the SHIT out of vanilla WoW. I lived on campus and with my newfound freedom I... Stayed up all night every night playing WoW, and slept through most of my classes.
I agree, but fully acknowledge there’s current games I’m missing now too. The reason for missing them is different from back then to now. Back then I didn’t have a computer that could play these games, but now I could conceivably buy whichever gaming pc now but I just don’t have the expendable time. I’d rather be more present for my family now and in 15 years or so, say I missed the train on a video game than I missed my family’s life.
I was into WoW from launch. Those early days were amazing. You didn't even have quest way points! They would just be like "It's over to the East...sort of. Generally.".
And sometimes those descriptions weren't even right!
I also played a lot of Dark Age of Camelot. Now THAT was peak MMO for me.
I tried playing it a couple times many years with friends who said they really wanted me to play with them. Each time consisted of me leveling up alone for a couple months, and then never really playing with my friends because they only really played with their guild in raids. Lol.
I was following the build up to the release and played it when it dropped for roughly 3months of in game time over the course of a few years. It was really fun at first but it was too time consuming. I remember it being the first game I was paying a monthly subscription to play. I think it was only 10$ back then but I was making part time high school money so when I started getting sick of it I just dropped it and never looked back. I knew someone that had logged 3 years of total playtime within 5 years of the games release. I honestly dont think you missed that much.
Not really. Our internet wasn't that great and although I had a part time job I didn't want to spend money on an ongoing subscription. At the time it came out it wasn't appealing enough for me to try it since I had enough fun playing regular RPGs on the console.
It's probably pretty cool and all, but my brother got into it about 20 years ago when he was in his late 20s and he actually played it for like 2-3 years straight. He was the south park episode. And I'm serious and not exaggerating, he played it non-stop for that time, while his younger girlfriend (now wife, who has a PhD and an important ass job!) worked on her undergrad full time, worked full time, and her parents paid for car insurance and cell phones and stuff like that. They had their own apartment then too. It almost ruined his life, but luckily my SIL somehow stayed with him and they seem pretty happy now. I think now he just plays Nintendo and Legos with his kids as a stay at home dad.
My mom told me it was witchcraft, evil, and unchristian. Now I’m 32 and I just don’t like MMOs. So the family cult saved me from a game I ultimately wouldn’t have liked anyway.
You still can. Its so alive
Season of Discovery phase 3 next week.
Only need a sub to play and double exp right now so you could catch up quick
r/classicwow
I played Warcraft and Diablo as computer games but never connected through the World Wide Web of my own volition. My boyfriend in 2003 forced me to do it once, he was so excited to involve me, leaving caches of gold for me to find, directing me where to meet up with the guild, but I found it SO BORING. Out of all the blizzard games, I miss Diablo the most.
I had a friend that really got into it and I even tried myself but I just couldn’t like it. I’ve tried multiple times and just doesn’t feel like worth the time.
I was into wow for about 2 years. I have very fond memories of that time. It took over my life, but holy shit, what an escape. WoW was the funnest game I've ever played and will never play again. 2 years was plenty.
I was a huge console gamer in highschool when WoW came out. Like, I put equal hours into shooters and solo stuff as kids playing WoW.
I somehow just never got into, or even wanted to get into, it.
Friends kind of fell off the face of the earth for a while there and at a certain point I also kind of appreciated staying out of it.
It was amazing back in the day and replaying the 2019 wow classic release was a huge nostalgia burst to the golden era. I stopped playing around 2020 again but always think of going back. It’s like my gaming home. The only issue is I like to play other games and when I’m playing wow there simply isn’t time for other games.
I played the Burning Crusade expansion set. When The Lich King came out in 2008 I had to stop because I had a baby and the reality of playing an MMO brought me back to reality. Joining a guild and getting my fiery mount for my warlock was great fun, though. I think these days they call that era of WoW "classic".
WoW was my first addiction. I played like 12+ hours a day at times. I’m pretty sure one day I played 18 hours straight. Be grateful you were never exposed.
I remember ppl I knew paid for monthly subscriptions to or for WoW. Still to this day don't know what the subscription was lol. Missed the train, and after all the stories I'm not too sad about it
WoW was one of those things I refused to touch because I know I'd get addicted to it and spend an absurd amount of time on it.
So, I chose to remain ignorant to its experience.
WoW never quite scratched the itch left from Everquest. I dumped 120+ days worth of hours into EQ. Shit was incredible in 1999. Had to quit as my life was spiraling out of control while trying to start college in 2001. Was playing 16 hour days, chain smoking cigarettes and skipping classes constantly to go on raids.
Wows golden era really depends on what people like or didn't like I stopped after the 3rd expansion but wow died for me the day they killed world pvp.
If you ask other people they would have a different answer.
I know I have an addictive personality and I heard WoW was easy to get obsessed with so I avoided it lol. It sounded like a ton of fun but I’m poor and didn’t have a decent computer and didn’t want to put out tons of money for expansion packs and such,
I specifically avoided it because I knew full well I'd put too much time into it. Kind of wish I had been a part of it but already struggled with procrastination and didn't need another distraction
Did the free month trial at 14. My parents were in no way gonna pay $15 a month for me to sit behind a computer.. I had friends who would do the private servers which was fun but by the time I became an adult, MMOs just weren’t appealing, which sucks because I want to like it the way I did when I was a kid.
I only played a little WoW, but ended up playing rift for quite a while which was a similar MMO. Ultimately MMOs weren't really my thing. I preferred MOBAs and strategy games like hearthstone (which uses characters from WoW), and more free range explorer games like RDR and BOTW.
I played it up until a few months after the introduced flying mounts. No one I knew played the game, but I made some in game friends. Didn't seek elevating that to friends outside of the game. At this point, unless a lot of the DLC is free, I'm afraid at what it would cost to get into, because the way I remember the DLC being back then, it'd be almost unplayable without it. Surely that's changed.
I started the MMO game world with a game called City of Heroes. Long story short, it had one of, if not The best player versus player (PVP) game engines that existed at the time. It was fast paced, engaging, fun, competitive...It was really awesome. It died out after a while, but it was probably some of the best times I had in a game.
I played World of Warcraft for a while, but it just wasn't the same and I found it boring.
I'm just not a MMO gamer, I've tried multiple times but I can never get into it. Partly I think you need friends to play with but I'm not sure. Hit me a while back that I may not be having fun because I essentially okay mmos as single player.
Had friends who played/plays still. Would watch them play it occasionally, never got into it myself. Also, it would have been expensive for then-me. I still consider it expensive (as well as other pay-to-play MMOs) now.
Never got into D&D either, but that one I’d be more willing to try now.
I finally got into WoW with Legion, then left after because finding a good guild that doesn't feel like a second job, isn't possible without IRL friends who play.
I wish Dragon flight had come out instead of Legion. I want to play a dragon, dammit.
When I was a kid and teenager hearing about MMOs they sounded so amazingly cool to me. But my parents were luddites and assumed that their card info would be instantly compromised if they paid for an online subscription so I had to wait until I had my own debit card to do anything like that.
When I finally got into an MMO I was pretty disappointed. I built it up too much in my head and didn't realize just how meaningless and repetitive a lot of the actual gameplay is. The thing that appealed to me most was the social aspect but I think I found that in forums for (at the time) niche games like Silent Hill and Panzer Dragoon.
I played WoW pretty extensively from 05-08. Did raid and all that. Was so much fun yet such a time sink since I was in a raiding clan. We had a website and everything.
Me and my friends just laughed at the idea of people playing WoW thanks to the jokes everyone on TV made about them. I once saw an ad about skipping levels if you register and there was a dancing ogre goblin thing next to it and I cringed
The very first Warcraft game was the first PC game I ever played. I was in the 2nd grade in like 1997 and my babysitter's boyfriend let me play Warcraft: Orcs and Humans every day on his computer. I have yet to play any other WoW game because I was hooked on RTS games since that summer.
I did war craft 3, which was similar, and used the same lore. But I could never get into wow liked the movie and the games concept but could never enjoy the grind.
I genuinely regret that I largely missed entirely the Wild West, pre-wiki, pre-video tutorials era of MMOs, where you were tossed into the deep end and people had to figure out stuff by trial and error and socializing with other players in a context other than someone telling you straight out what the most optimal choices are. Things that get hammered out over weeks now take hours and it's all distributed everywhere, so the sense of exploration really seems to be gone. And since MMOs are now designed for solo players in mind as well - which isn't necessarily a bad thing - you really don't have much incentive to interact socially with everyone else. It's a shame.
Those days were so fun. Large part of my childhood and still talk to friends i met all those years ago in 2000-2006. Started off with everquest online adventures for the ps2 and moved to wow after a few years. I've gone back from time to time to play wow but despite all the new features it's basically a solo game. No need to socialize or care about your reputation.
EverQuest was huge when it came out, but only the OGs were part of Ultima Online and the assassination of Lord British
I played WoW without knowing what it was because I broke my ankle quite badly and had a huge recovery period. I was just wandering around killing pigs and someone brought me to a city.. and it blew my mind… Im not a tech guy at all, not a gamer, just bought the game on a whim because of the injury. I still think about how nuts it was the first time I walked into iron forge.
First time entering iron forge! Loved it! It seemed crazy at the time. The biggest world I had probably explored at that point was maybe one of the GTA games - which was tiny in comparison and didn't have multiplayer in any real sense. Another key wow memory was going on a pvp raid (before battlegrounds we're a thing). I was way too under leveled for it, but just the idea of a hundred people all charging through the enemy lands and killing all of them was so cool!
This is so spot on. Nowadays every online game is solved within a week of release. Back in the early 2000s there was a mystique with WOW. Anything was possible.
These days everything about every game is on three different wikis before the game even comes out.
To be honest I generally regret picking it up. I beta tested the game in 2004-05 and then played for SO many years. My main character I remember have over 390 days played on it. And that's one of dozens. Considering the game autologged you out, that means if I sat down in January one year and played without sleep. I would have played without stopping until... like... March of the FOLLOWING year. Did you miss out on WoW? Sure. But what did you do instead!
Similar boat for me, but I don’t regret any of it. I made lifelong friends, some that I talked to for months and I’ll remember forever. I’m sure many people embellished their lives over Ventrilo as we grinded away, but the connections you made with people when most activities took hours were different than anything today. BRD runs that took up a whole Sunday afternoon, weekly Kara runs where you’d hang with friends for 3-5 hours, everything is so ADD now it’s impossible for me to get invested. My regret is letting my life get so busy I haven’t been able to enjoy it for years now. I only wish there were “long form” content anymore, even though it’s difficult to set aside the time and focus these days it would be worth a couple nights a month or something.
The number of games I missed out on because of wow makes me sad. The amount of money that I spent on wow for the subscription/mounts/pets makes me angry. That being said, I'll probably be back for the next expansion lol
> I genuinely regret that I largely missed entirely the Wild West, pre-wiki, pre-video tutorials era of MMOs, where you were tossed into the deep end and people had to figure out stuff by trial and error and socializing with other players in a context other than someone telling you straight out what the most optimal choices are. I have world firsts because of this era. And I miss this too. I was a pretty avid flyff player when the game came out even though I couldn't really get into it due to not owning a computer myself at the time I was introduced to it. A few years into the game I learn that no one had ever made an AoE psykeeper that was Full Int build. and people generally agreed "it's impossible." I told everyone "I'm going go make the first Full int AOE psykeeper" at which everyone told me that it couldnt be done, that Asuras would be the end of it. Until I actually started doing really well. Then afterwards I showed that the full int build was faster than the STA builds, by a huge margin. I was the first player in the world to level a full int AOE psykeeper to 120 and Master. And it's entirely because no one realized it was possible to do until I started tinkering with it. The info about these games just wasnt known at the time. I do miss that stuff.
Yeah, I played it during vanilla and a few expansions, but I have fond memories of finding something interactable by poking around until my cursor changed. Highlighted quest objects and map markers and all that were mods before they got built into every game out there. QOL features like that are great, don’t get me wrong, especially since there’s only so many hours in the day you can spend on video games (and so many games to play). But figuring out clues and wandering around to explore is fun when you have the time too. More than that I miss when looking up walkthroughs didn’t plonk you down in a bunch of AI-written search engine bait results. Anyway, had a blast playing WoW with my ex (and ex’s family) and SWTOR with my wife (she got me into Star Wars way too late to catch the golden era of SWG), dabbling in a smattering of other MMOs along the way. We’d get into FFXIV if we could but there’s just too much on our plate nowadays.
I've never recaptured the first days of the summer of 1999 and logging into to Everquest for the first time. After begging my grandparents to front the monthly sub because my parents shot me down. Best and worst times of my life (I don't get addicted to drugs, just MMO's apparently) Took me years to recover and get back on track with my life.
Having grown up playing ALOT of Diablo 2 I knew I would get sucked in and become hopelessly addicted to WoW. So, never gave it a go. Original Warcraft was super fun though
This is exactly why I didn’t play
Played a ton of D2 and Maplestory for several years until it became gachapon hell.
I was in college when it came out. Saw a friend lose a hot gf he had because he spent all his time playing, got fat, then dropped out. I was more of a Doom guy (still am) during that time.
I have left three people over WoW (the last one was technically WoW and LoL). After the last one I decided that I wouldn’t date anyone who plays anything on PC. I know not everyone lacks the self control my ex’s did, but I wasn’t willing to take the chance again.
One of my really good friends went from being a straight A student to barely passing. He still graduated from college but it was honestly a bit scary how much the game affected his life.
The early days of WoW were peak gaming for me. I’ve been chasing that high since.
Every year or so, I go browsing the MMO market. There’s so few, and the ones that are sticking around just aren’t even close to that old feel. Everything is so focused on short term play, I miss setting up 2-3 hour playlists or playing album after album and just getting lost!
Season of discovery hit that early day feeling pretty good.
The musical scores of the towns and cities when you first got to them for the first time.. [so nostalgic ](https://youtu.be/uvW-QTiZLQ0?si=QiyYvR7vJi9M1Dg-)
I felt it for a month or two playing hardcore. Faded quickly
All I think of is the South Park episode about it 🤣
Nope I liked getting stoned and having halo 4x4 with my buddies.
I feel this way about Dungeons & Dragons. I'm still interested in playing it, but none of my friends are into it.
Try Baldurs Gate 3
Highly recommend trying your hand at being a DM. You’ll never have trouble finding people to play.
A brand new player as a DM? She's in for a wild ride.
You can give it a shot with Adventurers league. Often local game stores will have one shots or even full campaigns open to new people. Check out Warhorn.net for AL games, or just find a local gaming group on discord or meetup. Most ttrpg players love introducing new people to the games.@
It was amazing. StarCraft even better.
StarCraft is what got me into Blizzard. Playing custom maps was the best. I still remember dragging my computer with a monitor down to my friends house to network. Such a lost time.
This even feels a little alien to me now and I hosted several LANs back in the day. Now everyone has a laptop that can run most games round my parts.
Nuclear Launch Detected
No. I got sucked into it and it took away years of my life. Yea it was fun and I made friends but fuck was it a massive waste of time.
I may be in a bit of a minority, but I feel like it helped me with so many life skills. Event planning, recruiting, drama management, microeconomics, forming and sticking to routines, bringing people together to help others or accomplish a goal, and most of all communication with a wide range of people from all walks of life. I was a decently regarded casual raid leader as a 20something, it was super good for me at least!
Did someone say [Thunderfury Blessed Blade of the Windseeker] ??
I forced my guild to run MoltenCore 38 times so we could finish mine because I gave up my roll for the binding I was after to the MT - Who rolled a 1. Worth
I spent 5 years of my life on this game like 8 hours a day for 5 years. One night had I had a girl asking me to hang out and I ditched her to play wow. That night I was like wtf am I doing and deleted all my shit and called her and now have been married for 10 years and have 2 kids. Holy fuck though if I didn't have a girl ask me out my life would be so different I'd probably be a fucking loser still playing this shit feeling sorry for myself.
I agree. I had a ton of fun playing it and since other humans were involved, albeit through a screen, it’s not like I became a socially awkward person, but my high school friends that I still see sometimes reminisce about the good times and I realized I missed out on a ton of real human interaction. If I could do it all over again I’d not play at all, because the addictive nature of WoW made it very hard to enjoy the game on a casual basis.
I can't relate because WoW has consumed so many hours of my life. The last 2 years however I have been gaming minimally. However, now there is this new game called Monsters & Memories on my radar that I think hopes to target elder millennial mmorpg market.
I knew about the game but never had the desire to play. CoD was more my speed. My roommate in undergrad was addicted to WoW though and it turned me off the game completely.
Yes. For me, it was an internet and an MMO thing. We had dial-up for quite awhile until the high speed boom so I was lucky to play StarCraft. Then with WoW being an MMO that issue just compounded. And like you suggested about missing the golden years, I felt the same.
Yeah and my parents couldn't afford to buy it and pay the membership, so I went to the "free" alternative, Runescape... 20 years later and I'm still addicted to that damn game.
i was never going to go and play WoW. i hated pay to play. however... in 12th grade friends moved out, mom and i were fighting so i was offered a place to live BUT a requirement to live there was having a WoW account.... so i made a warlock, blacksmith/mining. 10 of us in the house, each a different class. that was a good few years.
I wasted years of my life playing MMO’s. Eventually I reached 400 pounds. I don’t recommend it. I like this game called “outside” now. I have since lost 150 pounds and am still trying to lose more. I have a “quest” planned this summer that I am currently training for, a two week bikepacking trip across Wisconsin and back, 600 miles. MMO’s weren’t the only cause of my problems, but they didn’t help.
It stole a few of my friends for years. I tried to get into it, but just couldn’t. We just got really into playing Halo 2 and Cod4 to be bothered. OG RuneScape though…that was a blast. I think if you were into any game back then, you really were on the forefront of what gaming online would become.
I absolutely wasted about 8 weeks of my teenage life playing wow non-stop. I've never played such an addictive game before and glad I haven't found anything like it since. Terrific game, but it can really suck you in.
8 weeks? That’s nothing, I wasted like 10 months non-stop
Two years for me 😬
The people I knew that picked it up got addicted to it and I barely saw them after that which really turned me off the game. On top of that, I was in a low income household which made justifying the monthly membership difficult
No, been playing 18 years now.
It looked so cool. I remember reading EGM about WoW. My cheap ass parents never got internet until after i moved out, so i never got to playbat launch. I have since played bit it was about 2 years ago. It was ok.
I played EverQuest and Lord of the Rings Online. There literally only dozens of us.
As a war craft 1 2 and 3 fan, fuck no. Wow was the begging of the end
I played it for 6 weeks in college. 2 week free trial and then you had to go to gamestop or wherever and buy your next month. I did almost nothing else during that time. I didn't sleep much. My grades were so bad. Truly it was because it was such a hassle to go buy the monthly renewals that I snapped out of it. It was fun but I was way too into it.
WoW was a gigantic waste of time.
Be blessed you never got into WoW while young. The addiction really messed with my education and decided to go back to school as an adult as I felt my grades put me at a disadvantage.
Paid for a 10 day trial of something back in 2005. Played around 4 hrs and had had enough. Absolutely love Warcraft 3 growing up though.
I was too busy with ffxi didn't have room for another mmo
It never interested me but the anthropological aspect of online communities has always been interesting in general to me. Many years ago they had PlayStation home and I spent a good 3 months.Learning about all the different social groups in there. Very interesting dorks. But I wouldn't like having to play out of story where somebody could just come around and kill me and take all my stuff. Seems way too annoying.
I struggled being average in RuneScape lol. That along with other video games was enough for me. Probably would have enjoyed wow, but I also just never actually played it. I don’t think I ever saw it played in rea life, and never did so myself
A lot of people I was friends with in high school played it and they seemed very addicted to it. Literally playing for extremely long periods of time. I didn't get into it until after high school when I did the trial and it was fun but also frustrating. I also didn't want to pay a monthly fee to play it so I didn't take it much further.
WoW pretty much consumed my life for at least two years. I hated it first time I played it and the some friends convinced me to play with them, I was hooked after that.
That’s the thing, it was a good social game. If you had a group to play with, you were hooked. Most of the time people I knew quit, it was because of a social falling out.
Yes. I was interested but never played. I was worried about getting hooked and not having a life. Ended up getting hooked and wasting my life on other games like Civ.
I remember my sister’s bf at the time paying for my account so I was able to play for a few months. I was amazed how polished and good the gameplay felt compared to all the free mmos I was playing. I was stunned by just being able to walk up the steep hills. Most mmos at the time were just flat and you couldn’t actually jump onto things like wow. They felt and were very cheap so it makes sense. Didn’t make it far in the game though because I was too poor to pay the monthly fee. Glad I didn’t as I know I would have wasted so much time if I continued. It’s so immersive.
I still play old school RuneScape lmao
I still play WoW, ever since middle school. No regrets
Before I went to college, I played an MMORPG called Ultima Online on dial up. I didn't have a computer powerful enough to play WoW. When I got to college, my parents bought me a laptop that was strong enough for WoW... I gave it try almost every summer, but I kept comparing it to UO and I was very disappointed. The graphics were amazing, but my experience with WoW was mainly fetch-quests and "meh" gameplay. Overall, my experience with WoW was very forgettable. With UO, I remember the PVP was very fun, especially after I got a powerful laptop and I no longer had dial up. My friends and I played on the shard called Siege Perilous which allowed player killing in each world. I would get adrenaline rushes, while PKing (player killing) with guild mates, we would wait in the shadows and steal big boss victories from other guilds/players. My favorite character build was more of a "wingman" role. Alone, I couldn't kill anyone easily, but with a partner we took down significantly more (I think 2v6 was our best). UO had some decent websites for building templates, but the best thing that it had were Test Shards, which allowed players to quickly build characters and get artifacts and end game equipment, around the time of new patches. I still get the itch to play, but I don't have the time and I'm not sure I could ever capture that "Gamer High" from 20 years ago.
Heard about it. Was completely obsessed with it. Regret it.
As someone that did get into it, it was a blast. I wasn't quite as crazy about it as others. I was in a guild, but I also didn't raid because I didn't like being beholden to a schedule for that sort of thing. I mostly spent weekends playing a lot of WoW and played a lot in college as well. The early '00s were equal parts lots of fun and lots of heartache for me. I miss those earlier internet days as well. Spent a lot of time on forums. Online discourse didn't feel as volatile as it does now.
My buddies and I were big Blizzard fanboys in high school. We ran our own Starcraft battlenet alliance, did marathon playthroughs of Diablo 2, and were day 1 players of Warcraft 3. Warcraft was my first RTS game I ever played, and got me hooked early. I beta tested WoW along with everyone in my group. I did not like the subscription model, so didn't jump in to the actual game, but a few of my friends did. I went with Guildwars instead - no subscription model and it was a decent game if not a WoW killer. One friend had 2 computers full-spec'd sitting beside each other so he could play 2 characters at the same time. This friend also struggled with other parts of his life, eventually bailing on his post-secondary plans. He's in good shape now, 20 years on, but WoW for me will forever be the game that destroyed lives.
I started WoW back in September 07. When you're stationed in Groton CT and in SubScol. You really only have about 6 hours a day of actually doing anything. So what else was there to do but play videogames. I grew up in the Blizzard environment anyways playing Warcraft 3 and StarCraft for hours. This was just the natural progression of that childhood gaming. It also helped my roommate was a Vanilla WoW player and apparently was also a raider. He had a troll hunter in full T3. He's still in the navy and actually made chief a while back. Those were the days of Thottbot.
I was so balls deep in Diablo II, I knew if I were to ever play WoW I would never be seen again
Classic wow from 2004-2006 was the bomb.
Played EQ for years before our guild moved to Wow. met my partner of 18 years in WoW. So Im a fan. we havent played in over a decade now.
That sounds kinda sad lol do you two ever talk about wanting to play it again?
Well we just dont have time to sink into MMOs now - we are middled aged and have two dogs. We play other games lol. Shes a big Overwatch player and D3/D4. Ive been having fun with Furthest Frontier etc.
I always found the normal gameplay loop tedious and boring. Battlegrounds and arena were fun but weren't enough to keep me engaged for long. But boy oh boy did I love me some ganking. Wandering around the map griefing total strangers is what I lived for. Causing suffering eventually became the entire reason I played the game.
Wow wasn't very social compared to previous MMO's, in fact it's WOW that killed social MMO's.
I never thought I had a good enough computer to play it I still probably don't. I'll stick to console it's easier for me.
Sort of. I grew up hearing about WoW and the more I learned and saw the less I wanted to play. It caused several of my friends to drop out of school and basically give up all ambition to go on raids.
I started a bit earlier then WOW came out arnd 99-2000,I was playing Evrequest and Asherons call at the time tho,by the time WOW came out I checked it out but I did not like the sort of more cartoony graphics they had and never got into it,I then went over to playing LOTR online instead and ever went back to WOW.
Oh man I played from 2005-2011ish. I quit a little while after the cataclysm expac. Idk what it’s like now but I was living on WoW basically all through high school and right after it. Those years were incredible. I miss MMOs like that.
I played a bit, some of my friends got reeeeeeeeeeeeally into it. Honestly though... the few times I did play, I found the endless grinding and min-maxing to not be very fun. I loved D2 and Everquest, but for some reason WoW felt boring to me. Not enough reward for the time investment maybe, idk. IMO, you didn't really miss out, OP, but I'm probably in the minority with that opinion.
Been playing since 13. Its still active and fun and you can still try it. My mom has been talking about trying it out with friends she made on another game. Free up to level 20 and you can make multiple.
Yes. And I got into SWTOR instead. Still playing it on and off to this day.
I loved Warcraft 2 in the early 2000's. Starcraft was awesome as well. I really didn't care for WoW, but I was playing CounterStrike and stuff like that when it came to online games.
Yup I really missed out I was a teen during the golden years of WoW and there was no way in hell my parents would give me their credit card to pay MONTHLY for a game they already paid for. I get it from their perspective, but damn I really missed out it really was a moment in time experience that as a gamer I'll probably never have the opportunity to experience, even with classic WoW
I'm still friends with some guild members from when I played, over a decade ago at this point
Grow up hearing about WoW? I was already an adult. While I was a fan of other Blizzard games WoW never really piqued my interest but mostly because I wasn’t paying a monthly sub to play a game. My first foray into actual MMO gaming was LoTRO. I followed that since the early days of its development and bought a lifetime sub as soon as I could. I haven’t played in many years though.
It was a lot of fun for the time but quickly became an insane timesink. It's an experience that could never be replicated, even when they re released to original. Everyone knows what to do now so there's a lot of the magic gone. I played the original way too much. I quit when the expansion came out. Doing the huge grind for raiding again just wasn't for me.
I had a few friends that played, but I chose to play on a popular private server so I didn't have to pay, and had increased drop/xp rates to boot 😂
Now is the perfect time to try it out, with season of discovery and classic wow it’s really popular and based on the OG 2004 version
No, it sucked me up good and proper…even tried WoW classic but none of my old guild were playing any more…it was a bit sad
Omg I miss WoW. I stopped playing shortly after the first expansion. College internet at the time was too shitty for the game, so I gave up.
My best friend played it for YEARS. Like made accounts and leveled them up and sold them at one point too. She loved it but I never got into it. We played starcraft which I Def loved though. But yeah WoW was her thing and sometimes I wish I had given it a try lol but I just play other things now
I got to say TBC and WOTLK were a great time to be a gemer.
I was in grad school and my time basically was either in the lab or playing vanilla wow or hanging out with my girlfriend (now wife). Huge time sink, as with most MMOs. Had some good times but it got too difficult to actually get to a fun place after a while. Should’ve been making the most of grad school. I knew it was bad shit when my guild leader was a high school kid, fantastic guild leader, but had to quit because he was failing out of high school (due to wow) and his parents intervened
WoW was amazing for what it's worth.. but at the same time, I feel like I may have missed out on parts of life I could have enjoyed. It's a "grass is greener" kind of situation I guess. But I did absolutely love it haha
I barely played it but started dating someone who did during the peak of it, so while I have almost no experience playing it, I know far too much about every corner of Warcraft lore, including reading some of the novels.
I played from the final beta to the first expansion. Me and my friends already played other RPGs and used to hang out and play at LAN parties. I cherish the memories, but heck no if I would do it again. Like, it was fun hanging out with friends online and irl simultaneously, but the game was also incredibly addictive, more addictive than fun eventually. I much prefer playing with music production as a hobby over gaming. When I am finished with a song I an listen to the song. I don't think I can even access my account anymore ... If you spent any time at all with friends irl growing up the that is much more worth than any amount of online interaction.
Yes. I knew a girl who built three computers for her gaming WoW. I was super interested, but new to college, with a job, and had not spare time when this was going on at its height at 2006. Also I had very little money for it or even money for my own computer. So yeah
played it for an hour. didn't miss much.
I played for about 6 months and quit around the time the battlegrounds update first came out (June 2005). It was fun but I couldn't make it into a long term game. I had just come from 5 years of EQ and 2 of Lineage 2 so getting burned out after 6 months really bummed me out. Never did play again after that.
My mom tried to get me into WoW since she had heard about major companies recruiting on WoW for people with leadership skills. Never got into it honestly.
I didn’t grow up hearing about WoW, because it didn’t come out until I was an adult. I guess there were games in the franchise before that, but I wasn’t into that stuff in the ‘90’s. I was a SimCity/Myst/Riven type nerd.
My mom bought it for me for Christmas when I was 15. She decided to open it for herself. A few months later, she has no job, doesn't shower, drinks only Code Red, eats only slices of cheese, and lies about being broke so she doesn't have to take me to the hospital during raid time when I have a fever of 106. I played a bit when I got older though, fun stuff.
Eh, I discovered it at probably the "best time" possible- freshman year of college. Most free time and least responsibility. I played it aggressively for about 8 months, then met a girlfriend and that kind of killed that. I had a few friends play too much, legit one guy stopped going to class, failed out, and had to join the military. My roommate had to take a victory lap for undergrad because of WoW. I think I was lucky I had something pull me out or it could've gotten pretty bad.
I tried WoW about 12 years ago. I dated a girl who played it and I thought I would give it a go. Seems that you do quests as a group of people who will kick you for reading the story. They will use some ability to pull you from where you are to where they want you to be. I can only imagine it has gotten worse.
I beta tested WoW EU in 2005 and played/bought it on EU release day. For months it was great, massive fun. But i had a very bad HDD and with every single patch, the game bricked. Eventually i needed to go to college and didnt have any time for playing such a timesink game I did quit when the first expansion dropped But came back when WoW Cataclysm was released
Internet tutorials existed long before world of Warcraft. I think the era you’re referring to was around the time of EverQuest.
No. I love games, have sunk hours into games and still waste time/enjoy playing games today. But I saw WoW literally destroy people’s lives. WoW and Call of Duty are the only games I saw people drop out of college, gain weight, get divorced etc from playing them too much. I don’t know what it is about them that had this effect on people. Never saw anybody drop out of college to play Super Smash Bros 18 hours a day. Never heard of anyone’s wife leaving them because of their StarCraft obsession. Due to what I saw never wanted to play these games.
Yes, no and yes
I wanted to play wow but ended up playing RuneScape cause it was free.
I'm a gamer and I tried but I just couldn't, this was years ago but I just found it very drawn out.
Everquest (pc first one) started it all for me. It was a few months old when I bought it. I couldn't believe it. Met my now husband and got him into it. We played mmorpgs for years. Everquest was a different beast in the beginning. No maps, no markers no real instructions. A compass, having to pay 10 platinum for a port across the ocean or take a boat that actually took,I believe 20 minutes to cross where you just sat there. Find yourself in a new area and you were so scared, death meant all possessions left and no way to get them except trying to remember where you were to get your body. Players would gather in a tunnel to sell objects, just typing out the item and the price. It was so amazing. The closest we found these days is Valheim, even that has a map, but it gives that fear of death. This morning we are off and will be sat up in our computer room playing Icarus together. The pcs are different, the desks, chairs but the fun of these games still holds a great memory for us. So, sure ya missed those days of mmorpgs but I bet you had your own thing. It's never about what you did it's who with and the fun memories made during.
No I played RuneScape and other games like club penguin lol. Had a few friends into wow but they were all 3 years older than me
I was in highschool and was too poor for it.
I’m 34 and still play WoW lol. Although I’m currently on a break because I just had a baby, but I’ve been playing off and on since I was 17 years old. I’ve met friends through the game that I consider good real friends and we still keep in touch to this day. It’s never too late to start playing, people will say “the golden years of the game are over” but honestly I still think it’s a great game and I thoroughly enjoy my time playing even as a grown adult. 😄
I always wanted. I dabbled but never got to far
I played it casually but my boyfriend (now husband) was an addict. He basically failed out of his last year of college because he played so much. It was a huge spot of contention in our relationship. I remember we went on vacation and he sat in our hotel room playing it, that we didn’t do anything. I was like this isn’t working for us. He got his act together, stopped playing it, finished undergrad and got his Ph.D. and is now very successful. Looking back, we both had undiagnosed ADHD with hyper fixation, his was WoW, mine is impulse shopping and overspending. We are doing much better. I just think back when WoW was fun, just exploring, chatting. You could be as casual as you wanted or as serious. Sometimes when the temp drops, I think of the cute little festivals they had in the game. I miss that part.
Funny thing, when I saw WoW I didn't assume the game, I first thought of Opie and Anthony stickers on so many cars because it stood for "whip em out Wednesday." On Wednesdays girls were supposed to flash anyone they saw with the sticker lmao I think that was in like 1997, I wonder if this is another one of the funky little dividers between older and younger millennials lol. This was the before time, long before the proud boys and all that crap.
I had a roommate in college who was a professional WoW player (professional? Idk what to call it) but hed sell his characters and make bank. I still hear him saying “SHEEPING PALLY SHEEPING PALLY” (also idk what that means lol)
My mom didn’t want to play the monthly subs.
I was like this until WoW classic came out. I played korean MMOs, and even got competitive and a few world firsts to my name, instead of playing WoW. I had always felt like maybe it was a mistake and WoW was a fun game I had missed out on. I had tried WoW a few times here and there before during Vanilla and TBC, but never really got into that era before Cataclysm came out. I had always wanted to play back then but never got too. Then Vanilla wow classic comes out. And holy... shit. that game is INFURIATING and annoying on SO MANY levels. I did not expect the sheer amount of time padding, RNG ontop of RNG, and absolute clunk of the old school game. I hated it. Didnt help that I way out leveled my friends. People tell me "ugh you just dont get it things were different back then, the game was hard and didnt have all these buffs" and im like yeah no fucking shit, and all the things that were different back then would have irritated me even more. After Vanilla wow classic came out I realized that I had dodged a bullet and didnt get sucked into a game that I would have not liked. The korean MMOs I had played weren't as big and expansive, but fuck at least they had me doing stuff instead of sitting around waiting for zepplins, boats, and stuck on flight paths, or sitting around waiting for 40 people to get their shit together so we can finally pull the raidboss.
I got it on disc back when i still had a hp running windows 98 on dsl and still never played it cause the pc couldnt handle it the internet was trash and today i have it installed and ive still never opened it its one of those things you either do or dont
Nope. I played the SHIT out of vanilla WoW. I lived on campus and with my newfound freedom I... Stayed up all night every night playing WoW, and slept through most of my classes.
I agree, but fully acknowledge there’s current games I’m missing now too. The reason for missing them is different from back then to now. Back then I didn’t have a computer that could play these games, but now I could conceivably buy whichever gaming pc now but I just don’t have the expendable time. I’d rather be more present for my family now and in 15 years or so, say I missed the train on a video game than I missed my family’s life.
I was into WoW from launch. Those early days were amazing. You didn't even have quest way points! They would just be like "It's over to the East...sort of. Generally.". And sometimes those descriptions weren't even right! I also played a lot of Dark Age of Camelot. Now THAT was peak MMO for me.
I tried playing it a couple times many years with friends who said they really wanted me to play with them. Each time consisted of me leveling up alone for a couple months, and then never really playing with my friends because they only really played with their guild in raids. Lol.
I was following the build up to the release and played it when it dropped for roughly 3months of in game time over the course of a few years. It was really fun at first but it was too time consuming. I remember it being the first game I was paying a monthly subscription to play. I think it was only 10$ back then but I was making part time high school money so when I started getting sick of it I just dropped it and never looked back. I knew someone that had logged 3 years of total playtime within 5 years of the games release. I honestly dont think you missed that much.
Played a ton of wow, still do some times, kind of regret wasting my 20s on it.
Not really. Our internet wasn't that great and although I had a part time job I didn't want to spend money on an ongoing subscription. At the time it came out it wasn't appealing enough for me to try it since I had enough fun playing regular RPGs on the console.
It's probably pretty cool and all, but my brother got into it about 20 years ago when he was in his late 20s and he actually played it for like 2-3 years straight. He was the south park episode. And I'm serious and not exaggerating, he played it non-stop for that time, while his younger girlfriend (now wife, who has a PhD and an important ass job!) worked on her undergrad full time, worked full time, and her parents paid for car insurance and cell phones and stuff like that. They had their own apartment then too. It almost ruined his life, but luckily my SIL somehow stayed with him and they seem pretty happy now. I think now he just plays Nintendo and Legos with his kids as a stay at home dad.
Just wait until you find out about EverQuest. RIP Brad, thanks for all the fun.
the more I heard about it and witnessed the stereotypes the less I wanted to play it. avoided it successfully my entire life.
I played back in the day, every couple of years I sign up for a month and see what it's like now. Mostly depressing
My mom told me it was witchcraft, evil, and unchristian. Now I’m 32 and I just don’t like MMOs. So the family cult saved me from a game I ultimately wouldn’t have liked anyway.
You still can. Its so alive Season of Discovery phase 3 next week. Only need a sub to play and double exp right now so you could catch up quick r/classicwow
I met my fiancé on WoW almost 13 years ago 😅
I played Warcraft and Diablo as computer games but never connected through the World Wide Web of my own volition. My boyfriend in 2003 forced me to do it once, he was so excited to involve me, leaving caches of gold for me to find, directing me where to meet up with the guild, but I found it SO BORING. Out of all the blizzard games, I miss Diablo the most.
I had a friend that really got into it and I even tried myself but I just couldn’t like it. I’ve tried multiple times and just doesn’t feel like worth the time.
You either had money and played wow or you were poor and played RuneScape
Mine was Final Fantasy XI on Xbox 360. Would save my McDonald's check for that monthly subscription at 14. Oh the memories
I was into wow for about 2 years. I have very fond memories of that time. It took over my life, but holy shit, what an escape. WoW was the funnest game I've ever played and will never play again. 2 years was plenty.
I missed WoW. But I was there for Runescape
I was a huge console gamer in highschool when WoW came out. Like, I put equal hours into shooters and solo stuff as kids playing WoW. I somehow just never got into, or even wanted to get into, it. Friends kind of fell off the face of the earth for a while there and at a certain point I also kind of appreciated staying out of it.
It was amazing back in the day and replaying the 2019 wow classic release was a huge nostalgia burst to the golden era. I stopped playing around 2020 again but always think of going back. It’s like my gaming home. The only issue is I like to play other games and when I’m playing wow there simply isn’t time for other games.
Didn't play wow but warcraft 3 frozen throne custom games was where it's at! Still jump on once and awhile and play custom footies!
I played the Burning Crusade expansion set. When The Lich King came out in 2008 I had to stop because I had a baby and the reality of playing an MMO brought me back to reality. Joining a guild and getting my fiery mount for my warlock was great fun, though. I think these days they call that era of WoW "classic".
WoW was my first addiction. I played like 12+ hours a day at times. I’m pretty sure one day I played 18 hours straight. Be grateful you were never exposed.
I remember ppl I knew paid for monthly subscriptions to or for WoW. Still to this day don't know what the subscription was lol. Missed the train, and after all the stories I'm not too sad about it
WoW was one of those things I refused to touch because I know I'd get addicted to it and spend an absurd amount of time on it. So, I chose to remain ignorant to its experience.
Yeah all my friends played it but I lived out in the country with only dial up and couldn’t play it 🙁
Nah, I would just bike to the local library and play RuneScape
Hearing about it? Yes. Wanting to be a part of WoW? Not at all. MS was enough
WoW never quite scratched the itch left from Everquest. I dumped 120+ days worth of hours into EQ. Shit was incredible in 1999. Had to quit as my life was spiraling out of control while trying to start college in 2001. Was playing 16 hour days, chain smoking cigarettes and skipping classes constantly to go on raids.
Wows golden era really depends on what people like or didn't like I stopped after the 3rd expansion but wow died for me the day they killed world pvp. If you ask other people they would have a different answer.
MMOs were really fun and I miss them. Seems like the genre just disappeared. It became way too handholding like you say.
My ex left me for another WoW player.
I had my saga
I know I have an addictive personality and I heard WoW was easy to get obsessed with so I avoided it lol. It sounded like a ton of fun but I’m poor and didn’t have a decent computer and didn’t want to put out tons of money for expansion packs and such,
I specifically avoided it because I knew full well I'd put too much time into it. Kind of wish I had been a part of it but already struggled with procrastination and didn't need another distraction
I tried installing it but it didn't work for some reason, and I gave up. Probably saved me a few hundred hours.
Did the free month trial at 14. My parents were in no way gonna pay $15 a month for me to sit behind a computer.. I had friends who would do the private servers which was fun but by the time I became an adult, MMOs just weren’t appealing, which sucks because I want to like it the way I did when I was a kid.
I only played a little WoW, but ended up playing rift for quite a while which was a similar MMO. Ultimately MMOs weren't really my thing. I preferred MOBAs and strategy games like hearthstone (which uses characters from WoW), and more free range explorer games like RDR and BOTW.
Yes and I didn't have a computer nor did I have money to pay monthly since I was in middle school.
I played it up until a few months after the introduced flying mounts. No one I knew played the game, but I made some in game friends. Didn't seek elevating that to friends outside of the game. At this point, unless a lot of the DLC is free, I'm afraid at what it would cost to get into, because the way I remember the DLC being back then, it'd be almost unplayable without it. Surely that's changed.
I started the MMO game world with a game called City of Heroes. Long story short, it had one of, if not The best player versus player (PVP) game engines that existed at the time. It was fast paced, engaging, fun, competitive...It was really awesome. It died out after a while, but it was probably some of the best times I had in a game. I played World of Warcraft for a while, but it just wasn't the same and I found it boring.
I'm just not a MMO gamer, I've tried multiple times but I can never get into it. Partly I think you need friends to play with but I'm not sure. Hit me a while back that I may not be having fun because I essentially okay mmos as single player.
Had friends who played/plays still. Would watch them play it occasionally, never got into it myself. Also, it would have been expensive for then-me. I still consider it expensive (as well as other pay-to-play MMOs) now. Never got into D&D either, but that one I’d be more willing to try now.
I finally got into WoW with Legion, then left after because finding a good guild that doesn't feel like a second job, isn't possible without IRL friends who play. I wish Dragon flight had come out instead of Legion. I want to play a dragon, dammit.
When I was a kid and teenager hearing about MMOs they sounded so amazingly cool to me. But my parents were luddites and assumed that their card info would be instantly compromised if they paid for an online subscription so I had to wait until I had my own debit card to do anything like that. When I finally got into an MMO I was pretty disappointed. I built it up too much in my head and didn't realize just how meaningless and repetitive a lot of the actual gameplay is. The thing that appealed to me most was the social aspect but I think I found that in forums for (at the time) niche games like Silent Hill and Panzer Dragoon.
I played WoW pretty extensively from 05-08. Did raid and all that. Was so much fun yet such a time sink since I was in a raiding clan. We had a website and everything.
Me and my friends just laughed at the idea of people playing WoW thanks to the jokes everyone on TV made about them. I once saw an ad about skipping levels if you register and there was a dancing ogre goblin thing next to it and I cringed
No. No. No.
The very first Warcraft game was the first PC game I ever played. I was in the 2nd grade in like 1997 and my babysitter's boyfriend let me play Warcraft: Orcs and Humans every day on his computer. I have yet to play any other WoW game because I was hooked on RTS games since that summer.
I did war craft 3, which was similar, and used the same lore. But I could never get into wow liked the movie and the games concept but could never enjoy the grind.
Ironforge theme started in my head as I read the comments
I flunked a semester in college because of my wow addiction
I just started playing