Posts with tag memories

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Ah, Karazhan ... Remember when it first appeared in game, and it was new and shiny and you actually had to try? I do. I hit 70 shortly after The Burning Crusade was released, and my guild could not wait to get into Karazhan. Our first several attempts were rather uneventful. We got eaten alive by The Curator on more than one occasion. We were so proud of ourselves the first time we finished the opera event. It was a weekly thing. We would log on. My fellow alchemists and I would get all the potions and elixirs and flasks ready. Everyone would get a few last-minute dailies done so they would have enough gold for the inevitable repair bills that would follow another wipe on some boss we hadn't quite gotten our strategy figured out on.

Over time, we got the hang of it. There was more cheering over Vent than there was yelling in frustration. I will never forget one night our raid team was in there, though. We had just completed the chess event, when suddenly our shaman healer ran straight into a wall and aggroed the next several mobs. We got the mobs off of him and killed them with little effort. The shaman healer spent the entire time running in circles. We finally managed to get him back on Vent, where we found out he had dropped his keyboard and mouse and now was stuck running in circles because of stuck keys. We thought it spelled certain doom, especially for the Shade of Aran fight. It ended up being the most fun we had in a raid. There is nothing funnier than watching a shaman run in circles and still managing to keep everyone alive. He deserves a medal for that run!

What is your most cherished dungeon or raid memory? Is it a funny moment you remember most, or is your favorite memory a more serious recollection?

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This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Nostalgia is a funny thing; it often lets us remember only the good and forget the bad. We look back with rose-colored glasses on the past, thinking how awesome it was. In real life, people hang on to odd souvenirs as memory triggers, and sometimes it is the same in game. There are old drops that took us a long time to get or signified a first kill of a boss in a previous expansion, things we just cannot seem to vendor or throw away because it feels like cheating on the memory. So we hold on to these items, allowing them to clog up bank slots so that whenever we go digging through them for an obscure item we currently need, we get that pleasant flashback.

For the longest time, I was a borderline hoarder of nostalgic items. I had my full Stormrage set in the bank from vanilla, my tier 6 and my SSC trash staff from BC, and a few other random pieces, even including a Wildheart helm. I used them to not only remember the old raids and guilds, but friends who left WoW or switched factions or servers. However, it would be a quick, wistful moment -- then I would grab whatever I needed and close my bank back up.

The trouble was, the amount of items and the randomness in which they were fit into my bank created chaos, and as I was collecting tabards for my 25 tabard achievement and gear sets for achievements, I simply ran out of room. So I purged my bank, selling any and everything with a cash value. It was a little tough, but I moved on.

Do you have items in your bank purely for nostalgic reasons? If so, what items did you keep and why? Have you ever had to purge your bank when it began to fill up?

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Today is November 23rd, and that means it's the fifth anniversary of the release of World of Warcraft. That's a long time! Especially in the high-risk world of MMOs, where a bad launch can mean your whole game is doomed, or a sudden change in gameplay can make your whole audience rear up on its hind legs at you.

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!

Dead Memories - Ulduar was created by Endac to display Ulduar to those who have not seen it, or maybe to show off his guild's skills in dominating the raid instance. He created his video with a twist, however. Dead Memories - Ulduar is shot through the perspective of a single visitor, who's plagued by nightmares and dreams about the place.

Endac says he doesn't think his video is "super fancy," but I actually think that's fine. His movie is straddling a line between machinima techniques and raid video techniques. I like the sense of wonder and (sometimes) horror his main character emotes to the audience, even while navigating through the terrific battles inside Ulduar.

The music choices make sense to me, even if they aren't necessarily my favorite bands ever. Your mileage will vary, of course, but I think Ulduar deserves a metal soundtrack. If you're particularly opposed to metal, you might find the soundtrack distracting.

Ultimately, I think Endac's video is pretty neat. I'd encourage him to take his storytelling to the next level, though, as he and his guild explore new content.

Edit: The initial link was broken -- it has now been fixed.

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Yes, as you know from the little Blizzard Bear in your mailbox, yesterday was the fourth anniversary of our favorite game, World of Warcraft. It's been a huge four years -- we've seen Blizzard develop and change massively multiplayer games as we know them, and gaming as a whole in some ways. We've grown our own characters up all the way from level one to 30 and 60 and 70 and beyond, and we've gone through two expansions, eight endgames, countless patches and class changes, endless guild achievements and breakups and many, many "dings" and "grats."

We at WoW Insider would like to congratulate Blizzard on four years of World of Warcraft -- it's been an amazing ride so far, and it's not over yet. After the break, some of our writers have posted their own thoughts and memories on the game's anniversary, and please add your own in the comments below.

It could seem silly to celebrate the anniversary of a videogame, especially one that, if you've been playing since day one, you've spent over $800 and countless hours on. But then again, look at what this game has given back: groups and guilds full of friends (and some spouses), weeknights full of gear upgrades and XP gains, Saturday afternoons spent slaying dragons and Sunday evenings spent picking herbs in the Swamp of Sorrows or admiring the sunsets in Hinterlands. We've played this game for four years, and for most of us, it's been worth every quest. Here's to many, many more.

For people who don't play the World of Warcraft or similar games, or do not spend much time on the internet at all, it's difficult to grasp the idea of bonds and friendships formed over the web. How can you be friends with someone you've never seen before? I can understand the inability to grasp such a thing, it's rarely easy to comprehend what you haven't seen or experienced yourself. To those who haven't had powerful friendships over the internet, it makes no sense how you can grow so close to someone you can't see, you can't touch.

Even through the supposed anonymity of the internet, the greatest of friendships can be formed. Bonds so powerful that you never want to let them go, and may change your life forever, for the better. Despite the distance, despite the inability to touch and feel, you can grow as close as family to these supposed anonymous people. These individuals are more than just "internet people." They're people. In the World of Warcraft, a video game, I have found people that have truly changed me. I would not be the person I am today without them.

I've been playing WoW since launch day, and the community I've been a part of in the game has been a constant for all of these years. People have come and people have gone, but for the most part, I've played the World of Warcraft with the same names, the same faces, the same people. I'm 21 now, and I started gaming with this crew when I was 17. I can safely say I've essentially grown up with these people. We reminisce on the old days, and we realize that we've all changed quite a bit since the beginning. We've matured together, we've grown up together. People who have never had this experience, as I said before, don't understand how you can form such bonds over the internet. Some of the greatest friendships I've ever had, and ever will have, have been on the internet. Some people you will never forget, no matter where you met them. This is something I've had to think about quite a bit the last few days.

McGraw of the Drenden server asked an interesting question on the official forums: What was your first "wow!" experience in WoW? Replies vary from discovering the autorun button to flying on a griffon for the first time. Many people spoke fondly of their first ragtag outdoor PvP raid. Even a CM chimed in about watching the flyover video when entering the game and realizing that those were actually players running about.

For me, it was much later in the game. I remember adventuring in Zul'Farrak for the first time in my 40s. My group and I fought our way to the top of a pyramid to save a group of NPCs. When we defeated their troll captors and freed the NPCs, we turned to escort them out of the zone. That's when I saw the first group of trolls spawn. Then another. Then 5 more. Then 10 more groups after that. It was like looking down into a canyon of swarming death and I thought to myself: how in Elune's name are we gonna survive this?

Mostly, full group or raid wipes are lame. Really, really lame. But sometimes, every once in a while, you'll have a wipe come along that is so spectacular, so fun, and so memorable, that it almost makes the repair costs worth it.

So let's hear your best wipe story. The shot above wasn't actually a wipe (we finished the Tiger boss in ZG with one solitary hunter left, and it was awesome), but my guild will always joke about the time our Warlock lead accidentally fell off the bridge in MC and onto the head of Golemagg-- who then proceeded to make his way all the way around the instance, grabbing every lava pack and puppy on the way, and crushing every single one of us out of existence. TS was just full of people screaming, yelling, and laughing the whole time. Oh, the Horde-anity!

While out hunting with my undead rogue on the WoW Insider server today, I came across a Night Elf Warrior, several levels higher than me, in the process of ganking a lowly level 10 Priest, and his friend, who had already fallen. They had put up a good fight, taking about half the warrior's health, but the fight was almost over when I decided to step in at the last minute to see if I could do any good.

I figured that, even with half his health, he would take me down as well without much trouble, but to my surprise, I got a couple of lucky criticals in, and with the help of a handy health potion, actually brought him down. I can't tell you how richly satisfying that kill was was, and it got me to wondering...

Have you ever had any PvP moments in the game that were memorable for one reason or another? Ones that made you want to stand up & cheer, or ones so embarrassi! ng (like being killed by a rogue 10 levels lower than you) that you wanted to cringe? Let us hear about 'em; everybody loves a good adventure story...or a good tragedy.