I had just dinged 51 on my first character (NE Hunter of course of course) & celebrated in guild chat.
The guild-master asked which zone I was going to move on to next, I didn't have a CLUE where to go or what to do. I was 15 at the time, struggling with this whole new MMORPG business & truly struggled my way to 40 let alone 51!
The GM took me aside in a party, said I should come meet him at IF. Because he was the GM I basically did as I was told & made way to IF with haste!
I meet him at the gates of IF (from here on imagine the chat between us in speech bubbles in game because thats how it happened) & we make our way to a section of the mountain that makes up the zone barriers of Loch Modan.
The conversation started with a simple 'Follow me, jump where I jump & do what I do'... Boy am I glad I did!
He said he could tell I was a bit down about finding the game hard to grasp. I admitted I nearly quit a few times & struggled to know if I was playing well or 'right'.
The conversation continues like this as I unload my worries (can't believe I used to be worried about a game!) & the GM shares his wisdom with sprinkles of reassurance here 'n' there. About 30 minutes or so ensues of jumping, climbing, falling & trying again as we talk about the game, my class, making gold... general help that really cheered me up.
Finally we reach the top of this mountain covered in snow with an awesome view of Dun Morogh, at this moment I realise my GM has led me to the very top of IronForge!
We can see everything (as far as my PC could manage back then), a few cool bits hidden away by the devs & even reach the IF Airport. I was absolutely amazed & blown away by this secret. I asked how the hell did he know this? It's amazing! Why isn't everyone here?
He said its a secret that someone shared with him, & he now shares with me because the game is what you make it. Experiences & adventures with strangers & friends.
I dunno if he knew how much this changed the world of Azeroth for me, even the whole game! But it sure as hell cheered me up & made a lasting happy memory.
Thanks Ackers,
Ya drunk old Paladin Dwarf!
Finally we reach the top of this mountain covered in snow with an awesome view of Dun Morogh, at this moment I realise my GM has led me to the very top of IronForge!
We can see everything (as far as my PC could manage back then), a few cool bits hidden away by the devs & even reach the IF Airport. I was absolutely amazed & blown away by this secret. I asked how the hell did he know this? It's amazing! Why isn't everyone here?
He said its a secret that someone shared with him, & he now shares with me because the game is what you make it. Experiences & adventures with strangers & friends.
And now blizz fired 800 of their gms and replaced them with right-click autoreporting...fbm;(
Still, great story; guess the 'olden' days reall were better from a social type of perspective.
As a total noob we rushed into a cave with my friend filled with kobolds in Westfall. We got obliterated several times, until we somehow managed to clear it out. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless (also the first of many).
My very first character was an Undead Warrior that I got to play on my brothers account (was before my parents let me get my own account). I remember leveling him up to 20 and finally realizing I could go train polearms. I spent weeks saving up enough gold to go get the training and then I spent 1g on a Grey polearm from a vendor. I was very proud of myself and I proudly used that grey polearm for a good amount of levels.
Out of all the thousands of memories I think the moment where I realized that the group of people that was kind and helpful accepted me to their guild, was the fondest of all of them. First time I ever used Teamspeak to communicate and I was so damn shy and nervous. I still talk to some of them nowadays.
Other than that:
EDIT:
Love reading all these stories. Getting hyped even more! Anyways;
Some of the best memories I have was playing with an IRL friend who got me into the game a bit after TBC launch. He had two PC's at his parents' place and we would play there all day and night. It didn't really matter what we did, we were constantly having fun, questing, exploring, leveling.
I remember Sun Rock Retreat very well. Love the serenity that place has within those dangerous mountains.
Also remember Ratchet and it's coastal questline fondly. It was a nice feeling havind a big questhub in a relatively small place after running around in the big Barrens for a while.
Funniest memory must be this one. My first raid was Ulduar, never set foot into a raid ever before. Being invited because some other guildie had baby-aggro. I knew what epic loot was ahead of me. So we're there standing before XT-002. My heartrate multiplies by 4. I'm hacking and smashing everything my Gnome arms could reach when suddenly the GM yelled "Hug the boss!". So I started to /hug the boss, only to find myself dead seconds later. Entire guild cried from laughter and killed the boss. An epic dagger dropped which I got for being such a fun-factor. Best part is that I just realised this was the moment that got me into more raids, and thus where my raiding career started.
:lol: Omg /hug the boss everyone!!
For me it has to be finding the world map hotkey like fendor. I literally thought that Durotar was the only level because I saw level 60s there too. When I crossed into barrens and realised there was a map it blew my mind.
For me it was entering Ironforge for the first time with my friend. We were both dwarves, and seeing such a cool designed, player filled city was stunning as a kid.
For me the most memorable moment was in a TBC private server. I joined a PUG for Magtheridon and didn't expect to get anywhere with it as so many Pugs before had failed. But not this time. This time we downed him, and on the first attempt! He dropped the item I needed to claim the final piece of my healing set. I was rolling against 6 others, I rolled 1... But I was miles ahead of anyone else on the healing meter and had the lowest over heal by a long way too. The raid leader /w me asking why I had rolled, thinking I was maybe trying to get a shadow off spec because my raid performance was so good. He inspected me and saw that it was the last piece I needed. Then, BOP, it appeared in my backpack! There was one very pissed priest in the raid that day, but it wasn't me, and I didn't care!
Playing with an IRL friend when we were young, starting out as human warrior and rogue. Decided to see if we could make it to the coast of the Eastern Kingdoms and swim across to Kalimdor (whilst being like < level 10). Took some unintuitive route that took us down to STV - was much easy for my rogue friend to dodge the high level mobs, I was definitely the liability. Finally got the coast and started swimming only to be hit a couple of minutes later with the fatigue bar :lol:. So that quickly crushed our hopes of swimming across - had a lot of fun though and met some cool people along the way!
Not from Vanilla, but my favorite WoW memory was in Wrath, on the day I first read about the Time-Lost Proto-Drake. I was close to getting enough money for epic flying, and wanted something cool to ride for the occasion, so I figured that I might as well give it a shot as I wasn't getting any of the other Proto-Drakes at the time. So I go to Storm Peaks with my 60% flying mount and the wrong NPCScan addon (I accidentally only downloaded the map overlay, not the actual alert), and decided to camp out for the day. There was this Gnome Warlock at the same camping spot that I was at, and it being a PvP server, me being Horde, and him having far better gear than I, he did make me nervous. Thankfully he eventually left, and practically the second he did I spot a silhouette in the distance. I was playing guitar at the time and initially brushed it off as one of the blue Proto-Drake NPCs that roam the zone, but upon mousing over it, I was greeted by the real deal. I threw my guitar across the room and onto my bed as I frantically tried to compose myself, I swear time has never gone as slow as when my miserable 60% mount was trying to reach it. Luckily I made it, and the mount was mine within just a single day of camping, somehow all the pieces fell into place for me. Of course the only issue was that I could not ride it yet...
Here's an image I still have from the episode. I rode that mount for every expansion after.
As for Vanilla, my favorite memory is probably when I got tired of levelling at level 30 and decided to go out adventuring. I went to lots of high level places, but the craziest one I did was going to The Blasted Lands, I went so far that I got all the way to Lord Kazzak, who I was intent on seeing after watching that video of him running rampant in Stormwind. Needless to say I died a lot, not sure where I got the patience from, but I was lucky enough to find him while he was up.
Omg I camped time lost a lot and didn’t even see him spawn once! Thanks for the screenshot :)
Me and some high school friends had just found out school was cancelled the next day due to an incoming blizzard. So 6 of us rallied at a friends house, got some pizza and raided our parents liquor cabinets, then organized a 40 man raid on the Alliance capitals going for that Black War Bear mount. Out of all the raiding we did from late BC to early Panda nothing ever came close to the epicness of that night
Making WoW movies and the different friends I met while playing.