Posts with tag nostalgia

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Nostalgia is a very strong thing. Even in the short lifespan of World of Warcraft, we often look back to better times or particular events with much pleasure and longing. For some, it may be the good old days of 40-man raiding, when every boss downed seemed a great triumph. For others, it may be a particularly hard-won Battleground fight, where, at the end, you knew you gave it your all. But it doesn't have to be that particular. Maybe you miss a certain guild or a group of friends who are no longer in the game. Maybe it was more about the time and the place ... a certain expansion and questing zone. Some of the best times may not involve fighting at all ... just sitting on Vent and laughing with friends.

While I'm enjoying all the friends I have now and like the current expansion, I do long for certain times from the past. I miss the wonder I had when I first stepped through the dark portal and slowly learning just how my class worked (and that it could actually be quite powerful) as I picked up some great questing gear. I miss the group of friends who all played together in Wrath. Some play less now; one has gone off to school and hasn't played on WoW since, one has gone off to another server, and one just hasn't shown up in months. I miss the lighthearted banter, the constant playful insults amongst them, and a lot of laughing I heard over Vent.

Sometimes, I would love to go back to those days and relive them. I would also love to go back to the first very moment I stepped from the relative greyness of Auberdine into Ashenvale -- the colors brightened, the music becoming beautiful and ethereal. I felt like I was truly in a magical place.

Do you have a particular time in WoW that you would love to relive? What makes that moment in time so special for you?

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

Despite the fact that most of the WoW-playing population is eagerly looking forward to and enjoying the content that Cataclysm has to offer, there are still many things that one could look back upon from the previous expansion and feel sad about. Whether it was a missed opportunity or perhaps an achievement that didn't quite get accomplished, I think all of us have something that we feel sucks amid all the hubbub over Cataclysm.

I myself have quite a few things I miss, now that they are no longer obtainable. While it wasn't from lack of trying, the fact that both the Swift Razzashi Raptor and the Swift Zulian Tiger are not part of my massive mount collection is saddening. Both my friend and I went to try for them on every reset, even sometimes on multiple characters, but to no avail. Hopefully, Blizzard will bring them back in some form, but like the Amani War Bear, it feels a little unrealistic.

Second, and while not as tangible as missing a chance at something rare, the fact that I spent the last day before the Shattering doing a long, painful rep grind instead of getting out and enjoying the last vestiges of the old world will forever go down in my gaming career as my biggest Cataclysm regret. As a proud explorer and mystery hunter, I should have been out in the world those last couple of hours before the server reset, grabbing screenshots and visiting familiar faces before they were erased permanently from the landscape I've been enjoying for the past six years.

Instead of looking forward, I ask you this: What do you look back upon from your time in Wrath and wish you could have done over? Done differently? What do you most regret now?

It seems like so long ago. But only three or four years ago, I got a very special drop from Stratholme. No, the original Stratholme, not even the Culling of Stratholme. I want to say we were doing one of the old timed runs, when you tried to kill Baron Rivendare within 45 minutes. But, we just happened to have a night when the rare-spawn gargoyle, Stonespine, appeared. I got luck and won my very own Stoneskin Gargoyle Cape. When I looked up information about the cape on Thottbot, I found myself a little treat.

The very first comment proclaimed that this cape was "white and looks longer than your average cloak or cape." Something about that comment must have caught the imagination of other WoW players, because the comment thread went on for pages. The Stoneskin Gargoyle Cape became a Thottbot meme, and was (perhaps) a predecessor to things like the Three Wolf Moon shirt. It was an amusing blip on the community of World of Warcraft, but not one I've thought about for a long time.

It's with great joy that I am now the proud owner of a Saronite Gargoyle Cloak, which "drops" from the box after you complete Icecrown Citadel's gunship battle. The flavor text for the cloak proclaims that it is "even longer than your average cloak or cape." It's an unmistakeable shout out to that original item, and one that had me giggling like a mad man. I love it when Blizzard pokes a little fun at themselves, and indulge in a bit of metagame.

I usually leave my cloak invisible, but I absolutely had to turn it back on for the Saronite Gargoyle Cloak. And I assure you, gentle reader, that this item is absolutely white and even longer than your average cape or cloak.

Sometimes denial works for you, and I think that's why I like this forum thread so much. It's full of nostalgia for a simpler time, when PvP meant going to Southshore and murdering some Alliance, when the encounters in Molten Core were the most epic thing in the game, and speaking of epics, when seeing a player outfitted with all purples meant that they'd be raiding for weeks with 39 other people. This thread willingly looks back and sees things not as they were, but as we remember them: super fun, refreshing, and completely empty of the problems and quibbles we have to deal with today.

Of course, Azeroth's past wasn't really like that. It was hell organizing 40 people to do one boss, much less a whole night of raiding, and if the organization didn't get you, the server lag and disconnects would. Southshore and Crossroads PvP made for great stories, but in actuality, it was really just a zerg fest, and no one actually won, it was really just everyone throwing away their nights because there was nothing better to do. And epics -- well, it was actually pretty cool when epic gear meant something. But boy was it disappointing when you went whole weeks of raiding without getting any loot at all, without even a Badge of Justice for your efforts. Or when you had to disenchant a tier piece because the Paladin set dropped yet again.

Do we want to go back to those days? Probably not -- while there are definitely some good things about them, there were all kinds of issues that have since been solved (and that many of the nostalgists tend to forget about). But every once in a while, it's nice to look back through rose-colored glasses and remember when.

Toussaint is exactly right -- this took me back. Way back to the original login screen and music, when level 60 was the max and everyone was running UBRS and the Plaguelands instances, and "heroic" was just something us players were. Even the Burning Crusade login screen, right, brings back some memories, of wandering around Hellfire Peninsula and raiding in Netherstorm. The roar of the frost wyrm we have now is nice and all, but sometimes we long for earlier days.

Which brought me to the question: what about a theme-switching system? There's no real reason the login screen has to be set to the current expansion -- while it's nice to have a new look to that interface every time we reinstall the program, there's nothing the new one really does that the old one couldn't. You'd think they'd be easy to change around, and if Blizzard just gave us a drop-down switcher in the options, we could choose whichever one we wanted.

Let's not forget, however, that their code is weird -- you wouldn't think that they'd hard-wire the new Battle.net login code to the newest login screen, but maybe they did something silly like that, which would probably mean we'll never see the "classic" login screen again. But still, if there's a way to do it, it would be nice to see that old portal and hear that rousing anthem yet again.

Guynumber from Area 52 brings up a good point: why did Blizzard even bother putting game information in their original manual? Surely, they must have known that they'd be changing the game quickly, and while of course they'd have had no more idea than we had that some things so big would change (no ammunition, anyone?), they could have at least kept in mind that patches were coming.

Curious, I pulled out my old original manual. Here's some tips straight from the original release of World of Warcraft, when Magister's Terrace was a twinkle in a dev's eye, and Icecrown was just a level in Warcraft III, that aren't applicable any more:

• Pallies are only available to Alliance races and Shamans are Horde only.
• As Guymember points out, the manual says you will lose significant experience on death (but not so much as to lose a level).
• Only the Priests, Shamans and Paladins have resurrection spells.
• Attack Rating increases your chance of hitting a target with a weapon.
• As a first level priest, your maximum skill level in holy magic is five. As you cast holy spells, your holy skill will max out until you level up and the cap increases.

Starman over at Casual Raid Leader (is that the same Starman that does World of Warcast?) has a great idea. Right around college graduation every year, there's a study that gets nostalgic about what this year's students will never experience -- i.e. since this year's graduates were born in 1986, they've never known a time without Super Mario Bros., and so on. Starman suggests we do the same thing with incoming newbies and the new expansion -- the "children of Wrath" will never know a time when Onyxia was in the Stormwind throne room.

Larisa has a few more: Children of Wrath will never have to go back and do old instances just for the achievement, or have to decide between keeping that noncombat pet or getting the extra bag space back. She was actually a "BC baby," and as she says, she's never tried to run 40 people through Molten Core, or known a time when there weren't any quest chains in Silithus.

What else will the children of Wrath have missed out on? And are there really that many? I imagine that there are still quite a few vanilla players around, and it doesn't surprise me at all that there are plenty of BC babies (I recruited a few people during BC), but how many new players are really coming in to Wrath for the first time? Are there going to be that many people who don't remember when you had to run once instance over and over for rep, rather than just champion it?

We're waist deep in the content of Wrath by now, and despite the newness of the strange land, it all feels so familiar, too. Not only have we gone back to the gothic (yet sparkly) style of Old Azeroth, but we've been followed to Northrend by a whole lot of old friends.

I've been having a lot of fun bumping into 'old' NPCs and quest givers that I've helping out on my journey from 10 to 60, or 61 to 70. They add a real sense of progression and continuity to the world. I solved their problems years ago, and that's allowed them to move on in life, for better or for worse. It's also strangely heartwarming to see people I did quests for so long ago, like a little slice of nostalgia.

I've heard a few people hating on how many old world NPCs you run into in Northrend, complaining that Blizzard is just recycling old content. I quite seriously disagree in this case. Seeing NPCs progress in the world alongside us gives a much greater feeling of the world being a story, and as we go up in level, the world moves forward. I like it a lot, and I hope it continues into the next expansion, too.

We have an old gallery sitting around of some of the returning faces you'll see in Northrend, so you can check it out if you want. Be warned, there are some minor spoilers inside.

The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Netherdrakes.

Season 4 ended some time ago, and Wrath is only a few weeks away. While we don't have official word about when Season 5 will start, it probably won't be until Blizzard's finished balancing the classes. Right now, the Arena is a sort of blasted land, filled with teams taking advantage of the relatively unrated play to experiment with new compositions, new talents, and new strategies.

We're going to take advantage of the break ourselves, by looking at the collective of interviews we've gathered in our three months of the Colosseum. There are definitely common themes across what each Arena fighter had to say, and it'd be helpful to take some time and understand what those common themes are, and what they say about the Arena.

While Northrend is a distant and strange land, there are a few friendly and familiar faces in Wrath to ease our pain. These range from joke appearances to lighten the mood, or more serious storylines being continued from WoW Classic and the Burning Crusade.

These familiar faces are spread all throughout Northrend, and we've collected a lot of them in a gallery for you to look through. A few of the returning characters are missing from the gallery for various reasons (like turning in an unfinished quest despawning all NPCs in the area) but we'll get those when we can, too. There's plenty of spoilers in this gallery, though not many of them are massive plot points. Still, if you want everything to remain a secret, I'd be careful.

Oh, before all of you spam the comments about it, no I did not forget 'the Scourge.' I thought that was a little obvious. Also, there are two massive zones and numerous dungeons not yet implemented. There are probably way, way more to come. We haven't seen Sylvanas yet.

Once Wrath of the Lich King is released, we will have a whole new end-game continent. Just like how we got a whole new planet in the Burning Crusade. Since the first expansion was released many areas in the old world have been largely unused. There is very little World PvP going on in Eastern Plaguelands, most pre-sixty instances lay dormant except for quick runs with high level characters, and Onyxia lurks alone until someone nostalgic for original WoW until someone comes to slay her.

Dazknight of EU-Lightning's blade posed the question, what will happen to Burning Crusade content once Wrath comes out. If Blizzard continues to work only on the latest endgame content, it's likely that Outland, The Isle of Quel'Danas, dailies, and everything we currently experience will be largely forgotten. Noxmortum of EU-Kilrogg believes that Outland will be the province of characters leveling from 58 to 68, full of Death Knights for the first few weeks and then more of a ghost land than the Ghostlands. Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley will quite probably become very lonely, indeed.

Q: How many Warlocks does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Just one, but he needs two other people to click on it.

Yes, that's the kind of quality humor that you'll hear on this week's podcast (and the best joke is right at the end of the show). It's now available for listening on WoW Radio and also in iTunes. This past Saturday, Turpster joined me, Eliah Hecht, and Matthew Rossi for a little discussion about all things WoW in the past week. We got in some good discussion about speccing as a mage and lots of other reader emails, as well as:

• A chat about just how much information Blizzard keeps about us
• Whether old world PvP nostalgia is just that, and what can happen with world PvP in the future
• Will Naxxaramas' migration to Northrend mean Tier 3 is going bye-bye?
• And we chatted about the "brutal" ratings required on Brutal Gladiator items in season 4, and why they're there.

Plus of course instant feedback from the IRC channel, and the usual wackiness. If you liked the show or have a comment for us, feel free to send along a note to theshow@wow.com, and we might even read it next week live on the virtual air. Thanks for listening, enjoy the show.

Players are reacting to (quite a few things, actually, in) the Tom Chilton interview we linked to earlier, but one of them is rubbing a lot of older players the wrong way -- when Gamespy asks Chilton about world PvP, like the kind that took place between Tarren Mill and Southshore, he called any fondness for that "nostalgia" -- he says that people didn't really like it at the time, they only want to go back to that because they're nostalgic for it.

Fortunately, we here at WoW Insider keep all of our old archives online, and as you can see, most people did actually enjoy the old Xroads and SS/TM world PvP -- I have fond memories of fighting in Ashenvale as well. But Chilton isn't wrong that there was complaining (isn't there always?): it was usually just complaining that those were the only places any real PvP happened. Nowadays, we've got BGs and Arenas, and actual rewards for world PvP, but it's still a little hard to come across one of those all-out battles that used to rage in Xroads or south of Tarren Mill. Most of the time, the only reason those battles were going on was because, well, what else did you do besides raiding at 70? Now that there's more choices, no level 70 would waste their time fighting lowbies in SS -- there are much more epic rewards doing dailies or fighting in the Arenas.

There's no question that nostalgia definitely makes things better, but Chilton is wrong to dismiss any wishes for SS/TM-esque world PvP as simple nostalgia. Blizzard has a tough line to walk here -- they're being asked to encourage, by careful planning, something that always happened spontaneously in the past (and mostly because PvPers didn't have much else to do). It's not nostalgic to think that it was fun (it was fun), but nowadays we've got choices that are fun and give epic rewards, so old world PvP just doesn't compare for most players.