happy birthday w.o.w.

I'm not made for MMOs, but I really enjoyed WoW's lore.

...and I liked the videos! :P
...I prefer the other way, charge one time and then no monthly fee but charge again on the expansions.. ;-)

Fixed that. ;)

I've spent quite some time in WoW, had a blast with Lich King. Then Cataclysm came and I switched from PVE to PVP because I did not like the world changes at all, I even think that I leveled my char mainly in PVP to 85 at that time.

I switched to Defias Brotherhood, since on my old server I was at the end of the ladder of rated battlegrounds aaaaand did find a nice rp guild there, had an awesome time there, awesome rp events - basically rp players generated their own content.

Then Mists of Pandaria was released which I even liked less than Cataclysm, most of the people on Defias left WoW, server population dropped to half with the open world PVP changes - many rp players were open world pvpers.
The streamlining process changed the whole gameplay and mechanics of my class, so I said fuck it, I am out of here aswell.

Apart from that, the community changed a lot and I mean a lot with the Cataclysm expansion.

They should have put more of that into the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch4rc5W4dKY

edit:

Sigh, that was the rp guild, good times:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1MEkwobgI8

And that 6 hour fight in the tram between ironforge and stormwind on a saturday night, with varying numbers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLEcQKUVjJE

That's impressive, if my math is right I've enjoyed WoW for about 0.001% of the time it's been around.

You're right of course. I agree with you but my wallet don't.. :P

:D :D ;)

vaugley interesting
i honestly dont se how it related to wow's or any other mmo's grinding mechanics
which is what puts me off them

Yeah, I liked those a lot, too! Still remember the first cinematic trailer, showing the races and classes. Was really cool. And Illidan...

I never played WoW, or any MMO. I like the idea of playing with lots of real people, and having a living, breathing, changing world.. but I find the time constraints too much. I don't want to have to play a game once a day to keep up with other players or not miss out on events etc.. that just sounds like work more than fun.

What killed WoW for me was when it brought instant-teleportation to dungeons with players from other servers. The sense of distance and exploration goes away when you don't have to actually manually find players in your world and actually physically walk to the dungeon entrance and enter together. The dungeon-queuing thing just messes with everything, I mean you don't even know WHERE a dungeon is when you enter it unless you've looked up the lore online or something, you just magically appear in it with all the right player classes and NO ONE TALKS, they just go through the dungeon like a routine. I mean imagine a game of D&D if no-one even attempted to talk to the other players, instead just rolling the dice and curtly saying what spell or whatever you are using.

I remember when I played WoW my best experience was I think an early Undead/Forsaken area (Tarren Mill?) where we were fighting "wild" undeads and skeletons, their was a dungeon where you had to go in to kill the whole family of undead, I tried going in by myself for a quest, but it was too hard and I retreated, then I found another player walking around and we formed a party, we eventually found two other players and finished the dungeon. What made it memorable was how ad-hoc the experience was, like I actually met these people on my adventure and we talked in the chat log.

Seems to me like WoW's success turn MMO's into single-player games with some online features.

For me the reason not to try it even for free was because I was a bit concerned I might find it too addicting. I knew two people who were playing it a lot.

Anyway, I have seen the South Park WOW-episode, I think that should be enough. Now I feel almost like I've actually played the game.

It never really got me. I played D2 a LOT and modded the game a LOT, but with WoW I felt a little hmm.

/rant start
1. You couldn't do anything solo, as soon as the quest nears its end or some kind of boss is involved, you needed a party or even more other players to continue (of course you could grind for a few weeks and then kill the boss, when the loot or XP is not relevant any more).
2. The quests are ALL the same.
3. I was never a huge Warcraft fan.
4. The comic style graphics with massive bloom effect. This takes away the creepiness that D2 had.
5. By now, what you call improvement, WoW is an E-Sport-PvP-Raid game and not role-playing (there are more H4xxx0rs than Legolas in the world).
/rant end

And yes, I did play it on release and got like the first four or five upgrades but never had a maximum level character :D
http://i.imgur.com/G5v2GZR.png

p.s. actual Jakobs was a character I tested my then new Logitech G15 with :D

Ah, I didn't know that. Anyway, playing only the beginning is not much.
I also forgot to mention the DRM problem..

I frankly don't know how free2play manage to do profits lol (not pay2win).
WOW always seemed like a luxury service to me.

I admit that I never loved the game's cartoonish look and grindy gameplay, but it's like I missed a big piece of gaming history (same for the first MMOs). Also, it seems that many people made a bunch of friends in there :\