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.

[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 !

[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.

[Starbuck_Jones]

lol Hardcore was UO. You lost it all when you died. Or EQ1. You lost it all AND lost XP when you died and you had to chat with NPC's based on hidden keywords to do quests. Had to quest uphill both ways in the snow!

[Multibocks]

What sword?
What burnished sword?
Why did they want the sword?
Where can I get the sword?
Who has the sword?

...



FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING SWORD!

[falsfire3401]

Before there was an AH in Darnassus...playing a night elf and having to boat from Auberdine to Menethil (where it used to dock), then run through Wetlands (L23 mobs raping your lowbie self, also pvp-flagged as it was contested territory on my initial server, PvP), then through Loch Modan, and Dun Morogh...just to get to Ironforge to use the only auction house.

When it came time to go quest in Desolace. No mounts available at all until level 40, so you had to hoof it. For a human that hadn't been to Loch Modan or Wetlands yet, having to run from IF->Dun Morogh->Loch Modan->Menethil, boat to Theramore, run to Barrens, run THROUGH Barrens (horde territory!), past the level 40 guards to Stonetalon, through Stonetalon, to Nigel's Point. Sheesh, that was about an hour long run on foot, through hostile territory to boot.

I remember when I was level 6 and just arrived in Goldshire. Saw a yellow ?? troll mage sitting on his mount in town square, all the guards and NPCs dead...and thinking WTF?!?

I remember when the first person on my realm dinged 60, how huge a celebrity they were. Now I don't remember their name...

I remember when my buddy was the realm-first player to get a legendary...The Hand of Rag. I couldn't whisper him anymore, he'd turned off whispers from his chat windows b/c so many people were trying to talk to him, duel him, come see it, etc. I had to actually call him on the phone to talk to him about it

I remember all the running around on foot to quest until level 40, with no idea where you're going...

I remember my first 40-man, when I was a total n00b rogue in greens, 2.3k hp, brought into the realm's #2 guild by the same Hand of Rag buddy who was owed a favour by the GM, having no clue what I was doing with all these people in PURPLE gear

Then I remember being told I had to get attuned to Onyxia...OMG what a pain in the butt to do that.

Next, I remember having to run out to the middle of nowhere in the far east of Azshara once a week to get Acqual Quintescence to extinguish the flames in MC...


Finally, I remember almost losing my marriage because my raid guild stole all my time...literally I'd come home from work, go straight to the computer without saying more than "hello" to the wife, if I was lucky she felt sorry for me that day and brought me dinner in my office (which I'd often fail to notice and say thanks for and sometimes fail to remember to even eat it until the end of the raid at 1am when it was long since cold), crawl into bed after she'd gone to bed...sheesh how did she put up with that for so long? Eventually the stress and burnout of all that hardcore raiding led to an EMO moment that caused a gkick from the new guild (server #1 guild) I'd hopped over to. *THAT* /gkick saved my marriage lol...wow fell instantly from a 60-80 hour a week "job" back to a 2-3 hr a day hobby and has remained such ever since.

Gotta say though, after that it was kinda nice being a nobody in a nothing guild but in tier3/tier2.5 gear...horde who couldn't recognize top-notch item graphics would try to gank me all the time and be in for a nasty surprise

And of course, realizing those hundreds of hours (90+ days /played at level 60 alone (that's right, not counting 1-59) thank you very much) were all for naught as I quickly replaced all those epics in outland clown greens

[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