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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast Topic: Why did you start playing WoW?
by Amelia Ramstead 
Jul 2nd 2011 at 8:00AM
When I met my husband, he was a bit of a WoW junkie. I admit, I turned up my nose at it. I accepted it as one of his "quirks" and just shook my head and curled up with a book during his late-night game sessions. One night, we went over to visit my brother, and I watched as he and his guild were attempting, once again, the 40-man raid of Onyxia's Lair (yes, this was quite some time ago). I watched, listened to the conversation over his speakers, and marveled at the teamwork involved. Dare I admit ... this looked like fun?
Arriving home, I insisted that I wanted to try. Amused, my husband dug up a trial copy and loaded it on the dilapidated laptop. I rolled up a night elf druid and was hooked.
The night elf druid is long gone (draenei mage, thank you very much), and I play on a different server now, but I'm still hooked. The storylines still enthrall me, the graphics still invite me, and I still enjoy the camaraderie and teamwork.
What brought you into the game? Did you just happen to see a copy in the electronics section and think it looked nifty, or was there one moment that will always stand out as your That game looks friggin' AWESOME!! moment?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 6 of 6)
Kaarson Jul 3rd 2011 2:15AM
I found a free trial disc in a Maxim magazine and loaded it up on thanksgiving weekend 05. I had never played an mmo or even an rpg before but became instantly hooked. Ive been playing on and off ever since.
Dan Jul 3rd 2011 2:13AM
I started playing for the Massively part in the MMO name, problem is besidess AV and some city leader attacks, I haven't experienced it ... and Blizzard is moving away from the Massively Multiplier more and more.
Sparcky Jul 5th 2011 12:06AM
My roommate played during beta. He would keep his volume up so loud I could not hear the TV. One night I actually paid attention and was fascinated. Sparckyt (gnome mage) was created the next day during WoW's first Hallow's End.
Kairiana Jul 3rd 2011 3:28AM
A friend of mine got me interested in EverQuest - and then my uncle got my dad interested in EQ as well. So my parents got two EQ accounts and I played on those for quite a few years. Just as my whole family was really starting to lose interest in EQ, EQ2 and WoW were getting ready to come out. Since no one really wanted to continue with EQ in any form, we decided to check out WoW once it released - and we've been hooked ever since!
harvey.bates Jul 3rd 2011 4:52AM
South Park.
'nuff said.
Gurky Jul 3rd 2011 6:13AM
The fact that one of my favourite fantasy races was a playable race was what made me check it out initially. Even though Gnomeregan still isn't conquered, I look forward to the day my gnomes can move back in. =)
Pauly Jul 3rd 2011 7:29AM
I started playing when some of my old high school buddies got in touch with me and instead of just calling each other once in a while we all play WOW once a week to keep in touch. To help keep us all on the same page we use the zygor guides to make playing easier. You can get them at:
http://superiorwowguide.com
or more specifically at:
http://superiorwowguide.com/the-zygor-guide-review/
Muskogean Jul 3rd 2011 8:27AM
My guild knows my story but haven't aired it in public often. My wife died in April 2001. I went into a steep spiral, going 5 days at a time without eating. After much prodding from my best friend I joined Asheron's Call in February 2002. It was the people in that clan (I prefer clan to guild as it implies an extended family) that pulled me out of my lethargy. When WoW was released I held out in AC for a while but as more people drifted over I finally took the plunge in February 2005 and have been in WoW ever since. I still play with many of the friends I made in Asheron's Call to this day. Basically, AC, WoW, and the friends I've made in these two MMOs quite literally saved my life.
nekoali Jul 3rd 2011 9:12AM
At the risk of sounding like the typical gamer girlfriend, my boyfriend at the time roped me into the game. I've always been a big gamer, but I kept my gaming offline. I'd heard the horror stories of rampant griefing and the like the went on in online games. Where a new character would get jumped, killed and camped shortly outside of the starting area. It didn't sound like fun to me, so I just skipped them entirely.
My boyfriend convinced me to give WoW a try though, so we could have something to play together. I rolled a Forsaken Warlock and was hooked from the start. i didn't know what I was doing most of the time in the beginning, but I loved it. He doesn't play anymore, and we don't date... But he drug me from one game to another, introducing me to plenty of other cool games that I've made wonderful friends in. But Warcraft, and the server I first started on and the Horde faction, are still gaming Home to me...
Arisonius Jul 3rd 2011 10:59AM
World of Warcraft had a very long struggle to get me to play it. I was a hardcore Everquest player, and had played Everquest prior to the release of Ruins of Kunark. So, I was actually playing Everquest when I heard of the World of Warcraft Beta Testing, and a friend of mine signed up and had started playing it. He thought the game was pretty good, and gave it high marks, but I clung to my Evercrack like a true addict! Evercrack was my drug, er um, I mean, game, and I was going to have none of another. Eventually EQ2 came out, and I lost my internet capabilies for a while. When I got them back, I immediately jumped back into Everquest with the new expansion Prophecies of E'Ci. But slowly I began to realize the community that was left on Everquest was not the community I had come to know and love previously. It was not the same game, I was not the same person, and I no longer fit in the world of Everquest. To this day I still blame EQ2 for the downfall of EQ. At any rate, I dropped out of playing EverQuest and got very bored. My mom called me one day and told me I should give WoW a go. So, I downloaded WoW, played for a bit, and enjoyed myself. But I will fully admit, what got me addicted to WoW, I mean fully addicted: Blood Elf Paladins. Thank you, Burning Crusade Expansion! Who's with me?
Terra Jul 3rd 2011 8:11PM
I started wow as an upgrade from runescape. best gaming decision i ever made
Garaan Jul 3rd 2011 2:11PM
I got into WoW largely because my tabletop RPG group at the time would always spend 2-3 hours before game babbling at each other in code about their MCs and their BWLs and PVPs and what have you. I got tired of not being able to understand what the hell they were blathering about, (and they managed to thwart my usual 'I don't want to play an mmo' excuse by pointing out that Bliz actually did support my OS)... so I went out and bought good ol' Vanilla WoW. (This is back when there wasn't anything else.)
I figured, if I hated it, I'd only be out fifteen bucks.
.... Five years later... I think they've all quit, and yet here I still am. Four 85s and working on a fifth.
zaababy Jul 3rd 2011 3:57PM
My son and I were playing City of Heroes and enjoying it a lot. We took in some friends of my eldest son for a few months, and one of them kept going on and on about something called World of Warcraft and how wonderful it was. She finally convinced us to download it on our computer and we could make characters on her account, try it out. So we did, and had to run out and get a new video card that very day. I only had 256 megs of ram I do believe!!! And we were hooked. Boy I remember doubling our ram to 512 WOW what a difference that made! So glad that we started playing in vanilla. First I played mainly alliance because horde were 'ugly', but my friend kept saying 'Make horde on Whisperwind I'll give you gold, bags etc.' So finally did, made a troll mage who was my first 60, first with epic mount, flier, epic flier, mountain of mounts achievement, she has pretty much everything, and is gaining a thick layer of dust at the moment while I raid on my hunter. I have 2 full servers of characters that I maintain, and a few sprinkling here and there. I can't believe I have played as long as I have! At our peak we had 5 accounts, my husband 2 sons and a daughter all played at one point. Now it's just me and another son that I have managed to rope in. Everyone else has moved on to other things. It's fun teaching him how to pvp and do instances. More fun that we can do it together.
I'm sure someday I'll stop playing but I find it hard to believe that will actually happen.
Worldworstretadin Jul 3rd 2011 5:59PM
When my fiancé and I bought an iMac, WoW was one of the few games natively compatible and so we gave it a shot. I remember misreading the "One month free" on the Battle Chest and then having to treck all the way back to the EB Games (Gamespot to you American types) to buy a time card. My fiancé would watch as I dragged a big, blue Paladin kicking and screaming through 70 levels over a space of two years. I didn't understand the mechanics of the class and somehow managed to slowly and painstakingly solo Deadmines, BFD and Stockades because there were quest items in there. I had no support, thought guilds were "dodgy" and survived on about 3g until the missus - who had rolled a Warlock on the same account - talked me into joining the guild she had joined. It was amazing! On joining, I was issued with four Netherweave Bags and the princely sum of 10g.
Three hours into level 70, I was invited into a Kara run - still packing level 60 blues and greens. I learned a LOT during that run: the guys were patient and answered questions and instead of screaming, "Ninja!", when I rolled on something out of class, explained why the particular item wasn't suited to a Retribution Paladin - and gave me a free roll on Despair. I still have that weapon in my bank.
Years later, we now have separate accounts, separate iMacs and play in separate rooms (I'm noisy over Vent).
I'm still as clueless about my character's class mechanics, though. The EJ bookmark on my Safari is just for show.
Skarlette Jul 4th 2011 12:59AM
My "how I started playing WoW" story goes like this:
WoW was only about eight months old at the time. I was on vacation in another state, visiting a friend who had been my BFF all through high school and college, but had gotten married and moved away shortly after graduation. She said her husband was spending all this time lately playing WoW and doing something called "farming gold." I tried to imagine what that could be... (Mining? Prospecting? Growing magical gold seeds?)
My friend played a little, too, but all her characters were low level (under 20). Her main character was a human, who looked normal, and her dwarf alt looked normal, too (for a dwarf), but then she showed me something called a Night Elf, and I thought it was creepy! Those glowy eyes with no pupils, and those weird ears...yuck.
By the end of my visit I had watched my friend and her husband play a few times and they encouraged me to try the game. I resisted. They had previously invited me to play EQ with them but I refused, knowing I'd get addicted to a game like that. I already spent way too much time playing Sims, Age of Empires, Zoo Tycoon and other single player games.
Somehow they talked me into taking home a 10-day free trial CD, with instructions to roll Alliance on Stormrage so I could play with my friend.
A few weeks later I was bored enough, and my friend pestered me enough, that I finally installed it and decided to give it a try. I made a human, of course, since I didn't want to be short and the only other option at the time for Alliance was one of those creepy elves with the blank eyes. I knew enough about these kinds of games that I knew I wanted to be a caster type, and my friend had warned me not to start with a priest because they were harder for a newbie. That left warlock and mage. I didn't want to be evil, and I liked the look of the purple robe, so mage it was.
Fast forward five and a half years, and I'm still setting things on fire in Azeroth. Neither my friend nor her husband still play WoW. He was a hardcore raider and an active PVPer at one time, but she never got into any kind of group play. I, on the other hand, ended up dinging 60 while in a guild raid of the brand-new Zul'Gurub, went on to become a class leader and guild officer, Loremaster, raider, and certified WoW nut. Things have scaled back a bit now as I haven't raided much in the last eight months or so, and my original guild sadly went belly-up partway through WotLK, but I still play and love WoW.
Oh, and although my main is still that human mage I made the first day, Night Elves are no longer creepy-looking to me; they are in fact my favorite race in the game, lorewise, and I have one of every class at level 30 or higher.
Berna Jul 4th 2011 2:27PM
I kept reading about this game, and then when I saw a trial disc in the shop I decided to try it out. I was addicted within the hour, and so was my husband when I got him to try it.
Ryan Stoneman Jul 5th 2011 11:41AM
One Day I Faked I Was Ill So I Didn't have to go to school. Saw the game with my dad. Bought it! Sadly I don't play anymore.
TypicalJeff Jul 5th 2011 10:10AM
I've payed tribute at the altar of Blizzard for most of my gaming life. They hooked me in with Diablo, further enthralled me with Warcraft and totally destroyed my social skills in junior/high school with Starcraft. I had seen the issue of Game Informer talking about the game and I immediately started consuming any and all info I could find. I got lucky and got into the Beta and I've been around ever since. I initially rolled a paladin in beta, the warriors with bubbles that they were, and eventually fell in love with the Hunter class. Still my main today.
MichaelBerean Jul 5th 2011 11:51AM
I had loved MMO's for a few years before WoW came out. I had a feeling there would be enough people playing it to make it a viable one for at least a year or two so I grabbed it and gave it a try in December 2004. The quest-based leveling got me hooked quickly; that was a remarkable and fantastic innovation at the time. I just wish I had started with a class that could dps, heal or tank back then rather than going for the class I liked the lore and idea of.