Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsBreakfast Topic: Five years
by Michael Sacco 
Nov 23rd 2009 at 8:00AM
Thankfully, Blizzard has made WoW a living, breathing document, a world that constantly changes and evolves to match its players, which is what makes it so accessible. Throughout dozens of patches, tiers upon tiers of raid bosses, waves of dailies, faction grinds and honor grinds, legendaries and greens, WoW has managed to keep growing and growing along with its subscriber count. And of course, you've been there, too. Maybe not for the whole five years like some of us, but everyone's experienced the game in their own way.
So what about you? How long have you been with the game? What's your favorite memory of "growing up" in WoW? Will you keep playing for another five years?
Happy anniversary, everybody. Here's to five more!
Filed under: Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 6)
kunukia Nov 23rd 2009 10:35AM
My first HUGE thrill was dinging 40 at the same moment as a good friend in a guild Scarlet Monastery run, on the second kill of that boss...who gets revived by his wife, and then you have to kill them both...you know...
(I am not so good at remembering names.)
I have had many, many thrills since, so many good times. I love this game.
I make baby Dorf hunters over and over, because I actually enjoy the slog through Dun Morogh, and the thrill of getting my first pet, usually the Scarred Crag Boar. The lady Dwarf population on several servers is a point or so higher, because of me, I swear. Two accounts, (at least) one of every possible Dwarf class on each server I grace. Oh, Cataclysm! You beckon me; my main shammie will switch the day she is allowed, from Spacegoat to Dwarf, likewise my mage...
Ascudgamin Nov 23rd 2009 10:53AM
Back when i started playing a Night Elf druid about 4 years ago... I didn't know much about the world... hitting level 10 was easy and soon i was sitting in Darnassus.. I knew some of the game.. and i kept seeing people typing in trade chat... they kept talking bout the southwest.. or thats what i thought... at the time.. i thought that WoW was small, like it was entirely on the night elf island.. so I assumed that SW meant Southwest.... well then a quest wanted to sent me to Darkshore... and after about a week of thinking "NO I WILL NOT LEAVE THE ISLAND" I left... but with the intention of after turning in the quest i was high tailing it straight back into darnassus for my last 50 levels.... lol .. I dunno.. but i always look back on how i looked at the World )of Warcraft( and kinda laugh, may not be funny to you.. but its frickin hilarious to me
Emerath Nov 23rd 2009 10:57AM
I've only been playing for a little over a year now. In fact, my warrior, my first character (who still isn't lvl 80 >
Drhealgood Nov 23rd 2009 11:03AM
Its amazing how much the game has changed/evolved!
dawnseven Nov 23rd 2009 11:30AM
I agree. It's particularly fun to run out to wowwiki and find the patch notes from when you actually started playing.
Mel Nov 23rd 2009 11:14AM
I am playing for a little bit more than three years now. Started out with a Nightelf rogue. I remember being totally awed when I finally reached Darnassus. Then came the looooong trek through the wetlands (a friend guarded me, but I still died. A lot.). Then Ironforge, the tram *wheeeee*, Stormwind, Elwyn Forest.
A day later I went squish because I thought I could take on Hogger alone, decided that "those elves are too squishy!" and rerolled. A gnome.
Cyrus Nov 23rd 2009 11:20AM
I started playing in late April or early May 2005. My first MMO. My first toon was a rogue, who was deleted for a while, and is now undeleted although still sitting at 70 because I don't know what to do with him, I just regretted having thrown away a toon that had leveled through 60 before BC. (If I ever bother leveling him to 80, I'll probably switch him to horde side.) I have another rogue, same faction and server, who dinged 80 just two days ago.
My first impressions - well, they actually weren't that great, because for the first couple months I was playing on a computer that didn't have an adequate video card. Ironforge looked impressive from outside, but my computer would literally freeze up if I stepped inside. But obviously, I stuck with it, and there was always, always something else to do. There still is. I only have three 80s, none of the 80s are horde (yet), only three alts even at level 70 or higher, none of them is an alchemist or jewelcrafter. Hell, I haven't got around to winning an Isle of Conquest match yet. There's still plenty to do.
The Long Man Nov 23rd 2009 11:31AM
I remember being supper excited about playing the open beta, even managed to get to level 30 on my hunter.
I did miss out on the whole Invasion at the beta's end.
For one reason or another, it took me about a year to actually buy the full game, and I've been on and off since.
Goolie Nov 23rd 2009 11:36AM
Started June 2005. I don't even remember what class I was playing. Running around Westfall still pretty clueless. I helped some random player with a quest they were working on ... And they gave me a gold ... 1 gold !!! for my trouble. I was rich! Bragged about it to my friends for days! I was ready to conquer the game with my 1 gold. Little did I know... Even in Vanilla, 1 gold was chump change but man was I stoked.
Sarong Nov 23rd 2009 11:38AM
My colleagues and I started playing in April 2005. We were astonished to discover that while riding a flying mount , those tiny characters we see on the ground looting, running and killing things were actually real players!
Kalvan Nov 23rd 2009 11:46AM
been playing for about 3 years hit 60 just as BC was coming out
baronsoosdon Nov 23rd 2009 11:47AM
Started in Feb 2005.
My first ever character (just for a few levels) was an UD warrior. I had no prior experience in MMO's before WoW.
I stopped playing the warrior and rolled an orc warlock when more of my RL friends joined the game. I chose warlock cause they "worshipped demons and were evil", a choice based on musical taste consisting of metal music.
When the world was still new and big, I was infamous for 'pulling the entire Barrens to the other side of the world' and wiping the group.
From the early days I got memories of legendary TeamSpeak conversations and cursing those alliance pussies to hell. Especially paladins. "Real men play Horde" is one of those sayings I remember from the early vanilla era.
In that same year, when the warlock had finally reached lv60 I tried alliance. Then I came to realize that the greatest alliance race are gnomes.
Tassedar Nov 23rd 2009 11:49AM
Started wow the 2nd week she rolled her fat blubbery ass to shore and began seeping into the air infecting my conciousness. That's how I rember joining this comunity of geeks nerds and qq'ers. I started my little elf priest cause she looked "hawt" and played that little lady to bc. Then came the alliance shammy it had 4 knees 2 horns and a tail. I have only 3 max level toons and I love my shammy. Now I'll have to roll that worgen warrior I've been itching to make. Thanks blizz you just sucked my life away in the form of pixles and conventions.
jonpugh Nov 23rd 2009 11:49AM
I started in April of 2004, early in beta test. I dinged 60 in Winterspring on the last night of beta and started over the next week at release. I still play my mage, despite the swarm of nerfs he's been subjected to. He used to run around invisibly, could unlock boxes with a spell, could sheep and drink during combat. For a while I had his spirit so high he could regen mana faster that use it. We explored the world's corners, like the dwarven airfield, the chasms between Elwynn & Burning Steppes and between Silithus & Feralas (slow fall in and teleport out) and bravely battled the GoBs (Guardians of Blizzard, large infernals who would strike you dead if you tried to visit unfinished areas before they were released).
Good times included our first guild party on the altar steps in Zul'Farak and our larger party on the Tanaris beach with our Price is Right game where we'd guess the vendor price of greens we'd saved up (hard to do these days with Auctioneer addons). The repeated crashing from so many people in Silithus when AQ finally opened up.
The expansions roll on.
Shadow Nov 23rd 2009 11:50AM
I started oh..fall of 06 best I can recall. I rolled a shaman on a server and lvld him up to 20 or so before I got tired of running my lazy butt back and forth across the barrens. Deleted the guy and turned my back on that. (I now wish I still had him.)
My first real character was a Warlock I created. I thought then, in my innocent daze, that every server was a RP server like the one I had started out on. So I RP'd the character to the nines, only to find out that I was on a PVE server. I did know by then that I didn't want to "kill" other players, but I thought then that once your character died in PVP, they stayed dead.
I got the lock to 13, back when the outer portion of the Deadmines was full of elites and it was a 3 man run just to get to the instance portal. After a while I gave up, going for a paladin who just recently reached 77. I still RP some, but more and more I find myself drawn back to my roots. I still have the lock, and I keep debating finally leveling her some...
Delshay Dethecus US Nov 23rd 2009 11:58AM
It has been 4.5 years since I started palying, it went like this:
Lost my job, was at home playing FPS games with some buds after going out to apply to jobs.
Friend 1. "Ah Dude you need to try this World of Warcraft!"
Me. No thanks man.
Friend 1. No really, you can fish, and swim and mine, and kill wolfs!!
Me. No dude I hate MMO / RPG games
Friend 1. Come on!
Friend 2. Yeah dude come on its cool!!1
Me What $50 and $15 a month? No thanks I don't have a job!
Friend 2. First month is free..
Me. NO
Two days of this was enough I went to buy it, got it home and installed it for 2 hours.. Ok what do I do? "Go to Thunderlord".... WHAT? "Server Dude" oh ok now what, make a toon.
Blonde Hair Human Warrior.... I hated this toon and played to level 11.. Was fishing in Goldshire, saw a hunter and wanted a pet, since I learned you could make more then one toon I started my Altoholic days. Dudes my name is taken?
I learned that you can have names different, you don't need to exit to change toons, you don't keyboard turn.
Since then I have switched to horde and have found my home, I will play as long as the game is around, I started a great kick butt raiding guild last month with some buddies and we are killing bosses and having fun again!
Happy Birthday Azeroth / Blizzard
**** Haters don't read past this point!!****
Thank you Blizzard for all the work you do for us, through the up's and down's.
Del
Draelan Nov 23rd 2009 12:22PM
I've been playing since January 2007. So this January will be my 3-year anniversary. =)
vorhaan Nov 23rd 2009 12:38PM
on my first character four years ago after a dead mines group i return to westfall to receive my staff. i immediately sold Emberstone staff and equiped the staff of westfall. wasnt until later i was told that higher dps on a staff didnt actually mean the damage it gave you.
RetPallyJil Nov 23rd 2009 12:47PM
I was vaguely aware of the earlier Warcraft games, thanks to my friends. The main thing I remembered from their excited jabbering was that some prince winds up killing his father.
So fast forward a bit, and those same friends are excitedly jabbering about an upcoming online game called World of Warcraft. I, with my steel-trap memory, finally managed to say, "That's the one with the guy killing his dad, right?"
[Are you starting to see why Wrath has been my fave part of the game so far?]
But even my obliviousness was soon overrun, and I bought my copy a few months later, in January 2005.
I thought it was pretty sweet [although in retrospect, I can't help but wonder HOW those Defias in Milly's vineyard killed me so many times. Did I suck that badly?] But what really left me goggle-eyed and won over for life was my first grif ride.
The idea that I was flying over the world in real-time, watching the games of hundreds of strangers unfold beneath me, was astonishing to this old-school-yes-I-still-have-my-Pong-videogamer.
Chirri Nov 23rd 2009 12:51PM
I hadn't realized it in the time since, but apparently it's my 5th anniversary with WoW as well. I got my copy a bit later in the day, but got cracking on the installation and registration right away, it seems!
My fondest memory remains my first encounter with Mr. Smite in Deadmines, and every single boss encounter in WoW since then has been a disappointment.
The fights may be more challenging, demand more of me as a player, but they all pale in comparison to the absolute awe I felt when I discovered that encounter. The ambushes involved, the voice acting, the stun while he takes his time to get a new weapon - all of it making me feel like I was experiencing something new and unique - has yet to be replicated for me. Part of it is due to all the spoilers posted about the big raid encounters, but it's easy enough to get around that by using the cool encounters in 5 mans instead. But none of the 5 man fights since that time have managed to make me feel like I was as synched up with my character as that experience did.