I wonder how you guys did it in the past ...

[zenga]

... the levelling up.

I started with the game in october this year, and about to ding 80 this weekend. Now in my grind I had a bunch of things available:

- RAF, 3x speed
- Ingame guides that told me where to go, what to click, what to do
- Tons of sites with useful info about the quests, gear, ... to avoid mistakes (thott, wowhead, wiki, allak, ..)
- Tons of forums with useful discussions
- Tons of add ons that make my life easier
- Tons of instance/boss vids

I was thinking how a pure grind would be/look like i.e. without any quest guides, forums, addons. How it would be if i just made a toon, and had to find out everything by myself. My initial motivation disappeared as fast as it showed up :P

But then i realized that the very early players actually played this way. Bottomline, I'd love to hear/read stuff from the early days. How it was back then, what problems you were facing, etc ... and maybe hear if the evolution to all the things that are available now have taken away some part of the fun.

[Starbuck_Jones]

My first group was a priest and 4 mages. This was back when you had to talent spec Arcane Explosion to be instant cast. It took forever to get to level 20 and was a good 6 levels later before I was able to clear Deadmines. But once I got the major learning curves down and the right talents, it went very well after that. I recall running SFK and SM about 70 times to get all the drops to keep them geared identical.

I did very little questing. Once I was able to take down bosses, I just farmed them over and over to get all 5 guys the drops they needed before moving to the next. Once BC came out, they became unreal with the gear upgrades a few quests in. Alas they only got to level 67 or so, Thats when it became clear that it was not a viable PvE group w/o a dedicated tank.

[Tasty]

My first group was a priest and 4 mages. This was back when you had to talent spec Arcane Explosion to be instant cast. It took forever to get to level 20 and was a good 6 levels later before I was able to clear Deadmines. But once I got the major learning curves down and the right talents, it went very well after that. I recall running SFK and SM about 70 times to get all the drops to keep them geared identical.

I did very little questing. Once I was able to take down bosses, I just farmed them over and over to get all 5 guys the drops they needed before moving to the next. Once BC came out, they became unreal with the gear upgrades a few quests in. Alas they only got to level 67 or so, Thats when it became clear that it was not a viable PvE group w/o a dedicated tank.

I started with a priest and four mage's too. /represent I remember when I finally got Arcane Explosion and talented it to instant too, was awesome

[Acidburning]

Even at the start of wow, thotbot (dunno if it is still around) was pretty heavily used. 5 years, whoooooosh.

[HPAVC]

Thott was in beta, so wow has always had that. It was a bit goofy and spell changes have always been hard to deal with and of course every mob drops clam meat.

Healing was easy, target the highest guy in the ct emergency monitor list and heal could be bound to a single key.

No diminishing returns on stuns / fears / cc's, lol.

Defense skill was 66% stronger and didn't have a diminishing return or rating.

No 5sr, so my priest was a walking stack of spirit and could regen at the same rate she could casta gheal.

Soon dire maul is going to come out and its going to be insane!!!

[Fef]

Playing WoW when it was released was great ! Probably better than multi-boxing heroics now. I had very little experience of MMOs, I had tried EverQuest and EverQuest2, but I never go sucked into it. WoW was a revelation. An MMO that's not trying to look realistic but "moves" well, with a great world and amazing lore. I took a 6 months subscription after less than a week.

What WoW had then that it will never have anymore, is complete novelty. I am part of these people who actually find it a pleasure to read quests, have to understand and think about where to go, look for things, etc ... It was great to be surprised every couple minutes.

Some snapshots of moments I remember :

- Bumping into a Gnome for the first time (I was playing a Night Elfe) : OMG, it's tiny.
- Realizing at level 8 or something, that gear can be repared, no need to replace it.
- Seeing for the first time a character on a mount : Sweeeeeeeet, want one ...
- Bumping into a horde player and wondering why I could not talk to him (I was PVE until RP-PVP server were introduced).
- Looking up on the net that a mount is 100g : OMG, I will NEVER have enough gold, EVER ...
- Applying to Azerothian Trade Union, and being accepted to what is still the nicest online gaming community I know.
- Getting my first blue drop !

Getting to level 60 was hard and long, demanded efforts. People would give a "party" in Ironforge to celebrate their level 60, bying beers to other characters, shoting fireworks, etc ...

It was just good. WoW is still a great game, but honestly, not quite as good as it was back then.

Of course, I never saw the end-game because it was just not possible without being in an active raiding guild, in that sense I enjoy myself much more now.

Bha, I like levelling anyway. I cannot wait for Cataclysm and 5 more long unseen levels !

[Verriit]

[QUOTE=Fef;251349]



Some snapshots of moments I remember :


- Realizing at level 8 or something, that gear can be repared, no need to replace it.


Lol... I didn't realize until level 20 something that if an item was green that meant it was better then what the vendors sold. I was so excited to buy a full set of level 15 leather from a vendor in Auberdine... Man I looked cool in that set.

Some other highlights :

- Taking 13 months to level my rogue to 60 - I got very sidetracked in the beginning and didn't find Allakazam/thottbot (sp?) until I was level 47
- Leveling a rogue with daggers -- Gouge -> run behind them to backstab -> Kidney Shot -> run behind them to backstab
- My first pvp encounter -- A guilde and I saw a skull (turns out he was level 41) horde mage. We just ran BRD and thought, eh two level 24 rogues can kill ANYTHING. 5 corpse runs later we realized we should not attack things that had a skull by their picture.
- Level 1 enchant alt with bags full of illusion dust/GEE/and shards

[Seldum]

What about questing... did you have to run around looking for stuff?

I have a friend, playing aion, and he likes the fact that its more "hardcore" than wow.

I can't imagine having to search hours to find something like a body or whatever. Today, you look at questhelper and ride to the area...

Or the simple fact that Instant Quest text must have been a royal pain hehe... but again, it probably got its charme to it aswell.

[Nitro]

What about questing... did you have to run around looking for stuff?

I have a friend, playing aion, and he likes the fact that its more "hardcore" than wow.

I can't imagine having to search hours to find something like a body or whatever. Today, you look at questhelper and ride to the area...

Or the simple fact that Instant Quest text must have been a royal pain hehe... but again, it probably got its charme to it aswell.

I just quit aion last week, was the first player to max level (50) on my server and I can assure you that Aion is no more hardcore than vanilla wow was. People went to aion in hopes of finding a good pvp game, the funny thing is that you have to pve for your pvp gear and once your 50 most people cant find good pvp anywhere.

The only hardcore thing about aion is trying to keep yourself entertained for more than a month after you hit 50

[Seldum]

The only hardcore thing about aion is trying to keep yourself entertained for more than a month after you hit 50

Epic comment.

Thanks for all the stories. Its really interesting to hear about the "old" wow.

I still find the current wow a grind, and i know its nothing like it used to be. But for a more casual player like myself it's nice not having to spend hours and hours doing some lame stuff to get some gear. Theres still alot of this around (rep grinding), but I guess its the never ending problem of wow, they have to try and satisfy players playing for 15+ hours a week to people like me who plays 5-7 hours a week.

A friend told me, that in the beginning (Beta maybe?) you had so swim between Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms.... lol... that would suck.