Remembering World of Warcraft

The other day the Wayback machine took me back to my first ever blog that was hosted on blogspot. It was the early 2000s and I was an English literature student at the University of Bern. I had only just moved close to campus and inhabited a 6-bedroom flat with four other students whom I had personally managed to recruit so we could afford a place in the Swiss capital. The times were exciting and I am happy I got to live that free spirited campus life that was so full of comings and goings, meeting new people, partying and late nights out. Bern is my place of power to this day for this reason.

With living an independent life also came a new PC I could use for my study work and my first own internet connection. I remember my 56k modem very well – the sound it made when connecting is the stuff of legends. It was also hell because we were five students in the same flat with only one phone line and mobile phones were only just becoming a thing. Kids nowadays have no idea.

Once the phone line situation improved with ISDN, nothing could keep me from exploring the many diversions of the early internet. Online gaming soon followed with my first foray into FFXI. I tried Everquest for a short while too but the graphics felt incredibly dated, so I stuck with FFXI until WoW came around. Courtesy of the Wayback machine, I managed to find the first screenshot I ever posted on World of Warcraft:

The US beta, for which I was lucky enough to obtain a key, had just concluded. I was completely in love with the priest class and Elwynn Forest and couldn’t wait for the official EU launch in February of 2005. As I look at the old screenshot entry I am somewhat puzzled at the date stamp for the post; the US beta I joined was in fall of 2004 so something must have gotten mixed up in the blog’s archive. Anyhoo!

Twenty years later

World of Warcraft is celebrating its 20th birthday this year and many bloggers like Shintar are paying tribute to their time in Azeroth. Between 2005 and 2011 much of my free time was consumed by WoW. I was living and breathing the guild life with the two raid guilds I became part of and co-founded with buddies. I came to learn just how real and profound a digital life could be, how strong the friendships and how dear the shared moments and victories. For quite a while this made us weirdos and nolifers in others eyes; what on earth were we doing wasting entire days per week playing an online avatar? How were these strangers we hopped on Teamspeak with every night so important to us – in some instances more important even than “the real people out there”? You have to experience it. I don’t think there’s ways to explain MMORPG communities to people who don’t play. Luckily in 2024 you don’t have to do nearly as much explaining as we did back then. Or maybe you do and I’m just no longer aware of it.

After besting Arthas 25 with my guild Adrenaline

I left WoW at the beginning of Cataclysm. Like so many it broke our raid guild which already had had to deal with reducing from 40mans to 25mans in the past. I was burnt out and so was our GM who had founded the guild with me at the cusp of The Burning Crusade. We had bested the majority of raid content from there with our fairly casual guild. We had seen Adrenaline succeed all the way to Arthas 25 and spent the better part of our twenties updating DKP lists, recruiting members and running forums. Then finally we were spent.

Over the years I came back twice if memory serves, once at the beginning of Warlords of Draenor and shortly during Shadowlands. I sort of regret both attempts to rekindle my relationship with WoW. Too palpable and heart wrenching was the absence of old guildmates, too heinous the changes Blizzard had wrought over the years. I could not revive the corpse I had buried in Elwynn Forest when I left in 2011.

Me on Nether Drake at Adrenaline’s 1st Sartharion 3D kill

I treasure every memory from WoW’s heyday. I treasure most the fun times spent in the company of friends, some of whom I also came to know in real life and am still in contact with today. I will never forget the laughs we had online, the magic of working together like a well-oiled machine or the banter in my healers chat. I was a decent enough holy priest but I was great at running the steady healers team we fostered over the years, coordinating the healing raid assignments. I loved every minute of it. We had the best of epic times together.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. It takes you back to a warm place in your life in seconds, only to pull the rug out from under you because you can never go back. I’m glad I kept this blog alive as an archive of my late WoW adventures. Over the years I managed to write a half-decent post every now and then thanks to WoW. The posts that stand out to me now are those that tackled my favorite subjects: exploration, cooperation and that endless quest for immersion. So in honor of the 20 year anniversary, I’m listing some of my old favorites below.

• Vanilla raiding: A Trip down Memory Lane
• Placeholders for real Things, Shortcuts to Nowhere
• Why you really want Attunements. Or: Watch your Keys, Friend
• Achievement (Hate), Exploration and Mistery
• Experiencing Events, Impact and Player Mindset
• World of Warcraft Secrets revisited
• Elwynn, my Lovely
• Ain’t no Shame where there’s Fun
• Holding on to your Escapism
• Where do you go to die?

Happy birthday World of Warcraft! For a time you really were formidable.
Now I wonder how much longer the game can last…another 20 years?