Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsBreakfast Topic: What's your most memorable moment of amazement?
by Josh Rose 
Oct 21st 2010 at 8:00AM
Many of us get jaded playing WoW. We get burned out running the same raid for months on end as we wait for new content. We feel there is no reason to do instances anymore because there is nothing more to be gained -- or with the new expansion on the horizon, we think, "Why bother? I'll replace the gear with quest blues and greens leveling to 85." We spend a lot of time QQing about how there is nothing we need to do or want to do, or how we are bored with the current aspect of the game.
However, we have all had our Oh wow, that was awesome! moments -- those moments that bring us back to why we play this game and why we pay 15 bucks a month to keep doing so. I have had my fair share, usually a couple in each of the iterations of the evolving world that is WoW. The first one had to be Ragnaros. At level 60, getting to Ragnaros and watching him just erupt out of the lava pool all gigantic and epic-looking ... He is still one of the most impressive-looking bosses with one of the best deaths in the game; it is kind of a shame you can kill him with just one or two people now.
The Burning Crusade's high point to me was Mount Hyjal. I loved the Caverns of Time. I felt it was a great gaming invention to allow you to experience content from the old RTS Warcraft games in a WoW manner; being a part of it was a great idea. Also, Archimonde was a seriously great fight. Wrath has had a couple of memorable moments for me. Ulduar was a huge high point. Yogg+1 or +0 was such a truly difficult and exciting fight. And finally getting to fight Arthas -- that was a very well-designed fight, even in normal mode without the buff when it was actually difficult.
What moments in World of Warcraft have left you amazed? All the bugs, server downtimes and trolls be damned -- this made up for all of it. What instant made WoW all worth it for you?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 9)
Aaron Oct 21st 2010 3:11PM
I use my felsteed a bit more now that everything scaled to 100% and I get whispers all the time now "where did you get that mount?" Kids these days. haha
Aruhgulah Oct 21st 2010 8:42AM
Running with my husband along the Westfall shore, a couple weeks after we'd started playing...and stopping, suddenly struck by the water, and the sun over it, and how the water gleamed in the sunlight, and realizing "wow...awesome graphics".
Trilynne Oct 21st 2010 8:45AM
Downing Prince for the very first time as a paladin tank in BC in a crafted/dungeon drop set to get me to that old block cap. :P I had just about 14k health fully buffed, and after a couple wipes, the others in my new guild were pulling out flasks and things to try and get that number higher. xP And then we did it! I was so happy, I was yelling in vent, and everyone else was like, this is the first time you've killed Prince, isn't it? and I was like YES ISN'T GREAT?! Looking back, I think they were laughing a bit at me, but I didn't care, I was hooked. ^^ I can't wait to get back into raiding in Cata, the feeling of working with friends to kill evilbads is one of the best, I think. :D
LouCypher Oct 21st 2010 8:47AM
The first time I rode into Silithius and noticed the "legs" sticking out of the ground were moving.
Debesun Oct 21st 2010 8:48AM
It was probably due to the fact that I've never really experienced anything 'epic' in computer games before, but I can't compare the feeling of just going "Wow...." When you first enter Molten Core (as a noobling) in a guild run when all the instances before all built up to that moment. Just the sheer scale and detail of that raid just blew my mind back then when I was used to playing typical racing or Age of Empires games (and I share the same feeling with Josh when Ragnaros was summoned for the first time for me) :(
The other most recent feeling since then that gave me that emotion would have to be Ulduar. I just loved that place.
Cyrus Oct 21st 2010 8:48AM
In Gnomeregan (I like the instance, but I realize not many people do) back during vanilla when my highest level toon was in the 20s or 30s, after we got to the floor of a big round room - maybe the one where the Viscous Fallout is, or maybe later, the room under the Electrocutioner 6000's pedestal - I happened to look up. And up, and up, past the huge gears and pillars to the walkway way overhead, and marveled that we had come down all that way. The people I was in a group with at the time just laughed and said they could tell my toon was an engineer.
That's probably the single most memorable one, but a few others come to mind. Next, when I successfully cleared Uldaman for the first time. Archaedas is probably the biggest NPC in the game at that point, his fight involves different types of adds coming at you from all sides like nothing I'd seen yet, and I was low enough level at the time that his level was just ?? to me.
From raiding? Wipe recovery, oddly enough. My guild had been killed by Onyxia and we were at the graveyard running back and I thought the sight of all of us level 60 ghosts running across the water near Theramore looked like an impressive army much more than the same people in an instance did.
In BC, it was tanking Gruul. At the time I was my guild's third or fourth tank, but as a druid, my armor was better than all the warriors and paladins, so I was the one designated to soak up Gruul's Hurtful Strikes. But on one particular run the MT died with Gruul at 40 percent health or more so I just tanked him the rest of the way myself. Yeah, that's more memorable than admiring the Gnomeregan scenery.
Chetti Oct 21st 2010 9:42AM
My personal dislike for Gnomeregan has nothing (ok maybe a little) to do with it being a bad instance.. it has to do with it being lost in there so many times. :) I like the gnome/dwarf questlines, and the quests that send you there aren't all that bad (and totally doable in one run *if* you've got a group who knows where to go.. with dungeon finder, that works out better than it used to. But I'm talking as an 80 doing those quests for rep grinds because I trashed them when I was at-level for the place pre-finder. I got lost. A lot. Took me over an hour to get all the way through, clearing the entire thing. Its HUGE!
Now, flipping viewpoints, to an alt that uses dungeon finder to complete the quests in there.. the view you saw from the bottom was awesome because you worked your way down and saw how far you'd come. Now, more often than not, groups jump off the side when they get to a point that the group (mostly) won't die from the jump. I can remember the first time I was running the place as a tauren druid, I was the healer, so naturally I was in the back of the group. We finished with one mob, everyone had full green bars and us mana users were drinking up for the next round. All of a sudden the tank was dead. Nothing attacking, no one else was dying, but the tank was dead. I tried to rez him, but it kept saying out of range. I asked what happened, one of the others said he jumped, must have landed in a mob. Tank said, uhm yeah.. I think I jumped off to soon. A little further down the ledge, another group member kinda walked off and survived.. so me and my shaman friend followed.. and survived. I rezzed the tank and healed myself quickly, the shaman helped me out by healing some of the others so we could move quick because of the oozes. But, almost every other time we got randomed into there, the group went off the side.
Its a shame that more people won't get to have that 'woah' feeling from the bottom that you had because (if the instance remains at all close to what it is now), it'll become common practice to jump off the side.
Bethaney47 Oct 21st 2010 8:48AM
There have been plenty of epic moments in my WoW lifetime. The first time I saw Eversong Woods. The train ride down to the Spark of Imagination in Ulduar. The moment Kil' Jaeden popped out of the Sunwell.
The one I hold most dear to my heart however was when I got my Xorothian dreadsteed with my warlock. Up until that point, the game became kind of pedestrian and predictable. But the moment I hit level 60, that all changed. Not only did I truly learn the value of gold, but how to survive a long and arduous quest grind. All the hassle of gathering those mats, combined with going damn near broke, paid off big time when I got to the final summoning ritual in Dire Maul. It was chaotic, insane, but a thrill a minute. The 4 lucky souls I had roped into helping me squealed with glee as wave upon wave of imp and demon alike came pouring out to attempt to stop my mission for my epic mount. Finally, after the hellfire and dust settled, my would be mount appeared before me, and was not going to let me ride him without a fight. Though suffering one casuality adn with me clinging on to little health, the beast was tamed and was all mine. I had never been so satisfied with the game then I was at that moment.
Sadly, quest chains like that one have been removed from the game. Thanks in large part to QQ'ing 12 year olds who whine that game is too hard. It's a damn shame, because an epic mount should be earned. I will play happily from now on knowing that dreadsteed she is riding now did not come cheap, much like all the others.
Varda Oct 21st 2010 9:06AM
I agree. I have gotten both a Paladin charger and Warlock Dreadsteed the "old fashioned" way...At level 60 and then having to complete the quest, enlisting aid from my guildies, saving up the gold, etc...and then been rewarded with my mount and proudly riding it knowing that it was EARNED. Unlike today, where it's just another spell the trainer dishes out. I think that Blizzard did a HORRIBLE thing by getting rid of those questlines. If the questlines were outdated why didn't they just update them instead of getting rid of them?
Now I am leveling a Druid and feel cheated that I can't do the epic flying quest (I hear the quest is gone completely in the next expansion, please correct me if I'm wrong).
In their effort to make everything accessible to everyone Blizzard has really watered down the game. Now it seems EVERY race can be EVERY class and you don't have to anything that's too difficult or expensive to achieve something. Bad, bad, bad.
Jack Draven Oct 21st 2010 8:49AM
Pamela Redpath
GuyverIV Oct 21st 2010 3:02PM
Absolutely Pamela.
When I first came across the questline, and saw this scared confused little girl's ghost, all I could think was "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." I really wanted to make it right for her.
And I did. It felt so good, which sounds silly, it's all in a game, but it's a hell of a bit of story telling.
Hell, it's art, in it's own way.
Bikhai Oct 21st 2010 5:54PM
Having just finished my seeker title, I have to say, I agree with you. Pamela's quest chain, the Tirion chain in EPL, and the Oronok Torn-heart chain (Cipher of Damnation quests) in Shadowmoon are three of the most powerful quest chains in the game, I think. But Pamela's chain is head and shoulders above the rest. Really an exceptional example of what the developers are capable of. Seems like they got away from that in WOTLK -- the story telling is better now, but the emotion just isn't there.
Nimyane Oct 21st 2010 6:39PM
Agreed. I still have her final quest reward in my bank because I can't bring myself to consume or vendor it.
http://www.wowhead.com/item=15723
El Pollo Grande Oct 21st 2010 8:52AM
I was a beta player, Dwarf, and after taking the tram to SW (awesome) I flew back to IF. That trip over the Steppes and Gorge, seeing the 'skull' level worgs, spiders AND DRAGONS was a massive 'wow' moment. I get lesser versions of this each expansion when I venture to a new zone where I dont' know the geography, and the mobs are high enough level to be a risk to me life.
Xtofer Oct 21st 2010 2:57PM
Man, I totally know what you mean. I also remember flying over those high level mobs and thinking "Man, it must take a long time to get there!". I wouldn't ever have thought 5 years ago that I'd be facing fresh endgame content with each patch.
underground_slacker Oct 21st 2010 8:58AM
Hands down taking the ship from menethil harbour to northrend. Past the icebergs, through a massive crack in two huge vertical cliffs topped by strange northern architecrture and a burning alliance ship helld up by chains, the ship slowly winds through revealing utgard keep, the vrykuls attack on valliance hold and a big "welcome to the holwing fjrod" moment.
The sheer verticality of the design and bueatiful architecture just showed a zone like no other, a zone i loved, this feeling stuck with me into grizzly hills, lessened in zuldrak, disperesed in the mechanic training zone of storm peaks and when i reached icecrown i was just bored or "dailys, dailys erry'whare".
Some moments where great, but entering howling fjord on that boat felt like i was starting this grand adventure in this harsh new frontier.
Its a shame its going to be at least the years till the next expansion, maybe longer before i might feel that unfamiliar awe again.
Byron Oct 21st 2010 5:32PM
You might still feel it in Vashj'ir, Hyjal, Uldum, or Twighlight Highlands again. They're all new, and Vashj'ir and Uldum are particularly different.
Hasselhoff Oct 21st 2010 8:59AM
Two moments really stand out for me.
1) The old Onyxia attunement quest where you march through the city with Marshal Windsor. I started playing in BC and had seen this happen once at a low level. When I got to the appropriate level, I went through the quest chain with my friends (it was so annoying and very long to do back then), who had no idea why I was so hell-bent on completing this chain as they hadn't done this either. By the time we were meeting Windsor at the gates of Stormwind, they were excited. Needless to say, the end event in Stormwind Keep was nothing short of amazing for all of us.
2) I wasn't at the point in my WoW career where I was reading MMO-Champion and WoW Insider every day, so I had no idea about the Wrathgate. When the screen went black I thought my game had crashed. The ensuing cinematic was both exhilarating and saddening as I had become so fond of Bolvar after the events of the previous paragraph. This was the point for me where WoW went from being a fun game to an absolutely amazing way to tell a story.
Varda Oct 21st 2010 9:22AM
Yes! Wrathgate! I was so clueless too! I'm like "WTF?" and then there's that cut scene..it's incredible! Then you get to play it out yourself. I did first on Alliance and then Horde and was delighted that they were both so different.
It was so unexpected and different...
zhombie Oct 21st 2010 6:22PM
Arthas & Bolvar @ the throne made me jizz