It just occurred to me that this weekend marks three years since I first started playing World of Warcraft. I can’t recall the exact date I entered Azeroth, but I know that it was approximately a day or two before Valentine’s Day. I remember my wife was away on a business trip, so I decided to install “that game she bought me for Christmas”.
I was heavily into the Diablo series, but aside from that I wasn’t much of a gamer. I put WoW on my Christmas list only because I read it was tops graphics-wise and I wanted to see what my super-duper PC was capable of. I had a screaming machine at the time with dual WD 74GB hard drives in a raid 0 setup, 2GB of super low latency ram and an nVIDIA 7900GT graphics card.
I was torn between making a Hunter or a Shaman. I ultimately went with a Hunter after watching the mind-blowing cinematic after installing the game. I wanted to be the class that had a pet for a sidekick, but I didn’t want to be an ugly Dwarf at the time so I rolled a Night Elf. Dwarf lovers need not be offended however. Since then I’ve made 2 Dwarf toons and I love the race. In fact, back before x-realm PvP I made a second Hunter who’s a Dwarf because I felt the race was better geared towards PvP (Stoneform and Gun Specialization FTW), plus I wanted to roll a Hunter with Engineering for the battlegrounds.
After logging in for the first time, I was completely blown away. I couldn’t believe how realistic and fluid the gameplay was. At one time I had felt Diablo II was the absolute best a game could be. I remember thinking how spectacular the graphics were at the Altar of the Heavens at the top of Mount Arreat. I had thought, “These graphics are incredible! No way games can get better than this.”
I think the gameplay element in World of Warcraft that knocked my socks off the most was the swimming animation, along with the realistic sound effects. Needless to say, right away I was pretty amazed and overwhelmed by the content. My initial take was, “this is gonna take me awhile to get the hang of things, but so far I like it… a lot”. I am proud to say I was never a keyboard turner or a clicker from the get-go. I remember reading the instructions concerning character movement and wondering why anyone would use their keyboard to turn or move, but that’s just me.
So here we are three years later… I still think World of Warcraft is an incredible game. I’ve had the opportunity to enjoy it with many great personalities I’ve met from across the world, I have a great group of people that I play with in Clan Destined (my guild for the past 2 1/2+ years), and I look forward to many more adventures in the months and years to come.
Alright, enough of the sentimentalities… time to go play!