Shared Topic: Looking Back

After what feels like forever, the Shared Topics are back from their holiday vacation! I wonder if I still remember how to do them.

Speaking of remembering, this week’s topic involves looking back to the beginning of Wrath and everything that we felt and thought during that time. It was proposed by Jaedia from the Lazy Sniper and, of course, you can find a link to her take as well as to all the other participants’ takes in the thread on Blog Azeroth.

Looking back to my first memory of Wrath…

The first morning of Wrath I was actually sitting in Blade’s Edge, trying to solo a group quest. Well, I wasn’t sitting there, but my character was. I, the player, in my room, was feeling pretty bummed about my solitude in Blade’s Edge. The rest of clique, my partners in crime, were online. Their locations read Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra. I wasn’t sure where those were, but I was pretty sure they were somewhere I couldn’t get to.

See, I was trying to be good. The fall semester of second year pharmacy school is the brutal one. 7 or 8 difficult courses, over 30 hours of classes a week and more than that in study time…I didn’t have time to obsess about grinding 10 levels. Besides, money was super tight and video games are an expendable luxury. I was worried about passing and about not starving to death.

But I was sitting alone in Outlands with all my friends away in Northrend, happily grouping and laughing and holding hands while prancing gaily through meadows of flowers.

Author's impression

No time or money.

VS

All alone in Outlands.

Two hours later I was installing my copy of Wrath. I would have installed it sooner, but it takes awhile to get to the mall and back.

I remember respeccing to retribution. I remember things dying all around me and squeeling with glee. I mean, me squeeling in glee, not the things dying around me.

I remember being impressed by the quest diversity. Sure, there were the “bring me 3439483 ears” quests, but there were also vehicle quests, cut-scene quests, riding on missiles quests and torture quests. Yeah. Torturing someone with a needle until they passed out was a little, um, you know, but it was pretty original. I can safely say, before that day, I had never tortured someone in WoW with a needle until they passed out before.

My favorite moments, though, involved stepping into the new instances.

See, this was theoretically my first expansion. I started playing long before BC, but the first max level I reached was 70. When I started running dungeons with guildies, it went kind of like this:

“Now you pull this group.”

“Now you turn right.”

“Now you pull that group.”

“Now watch out for the pat.”

Kinda bland, really.

When Wrath came out, suddenly I was allowed to explore instances at my own pace. My friends were just as unfamiliar with them as I was. Together, we discovered the paths through Nexus. Together, we were confused by the Prophet Tharon’ja fight in Drak’Theron Keep. Together, we gasped as we fell a looooong way through the hole in Azjol-Nerub.

There was no one to tell us what to do, what to expect. We had to tell ourselves what to do and see what happened. We compared impressions and laughed at our mistakes.

We learned quickly, so the magic was short lived. Still, looking back, I’d have to say that those first few weeks of Wrath were probably the most enjoyable in my WoW life.

In the end, I didn’t regret buying Wrath. I still passed my semester, paid rent, didn’t starve and had a really good time leveling to 80. Which goes to show that I probably try to be masochistic for no reason.

* * *

On a completely different note, please take notice of the out-of-office sign.

I’ll be away at a conference until next Monday with very limited net access. Seriously, I’m staying at the only hotel in the country that doesn’t have free wi-fi. I’ll try to make a decent post during the week, but if I fail, rest assure that I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth and abandoned my blog.

Explore posts in the same categories: General WoW

Tags: looking back, nostalgia, shared topic, thinking, Wrath

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