Favorite Retail Experience

[Putni]

It's pretty hard to name one occassion, I was still sort of a kid (more accurately a teenager) and I was a massive Warcraft fan who wanted to experience the story further on.

Basically anything from the story that has a connection to the Warcrafts.

The entire feeling of exploring the game the first time, leveling to 60 barely knowing what the hell I was doing.

But probably the favorite moment (something that I did not appreciate at that moment but thinking back always draws a smile to my face) was getting off the ship in BB and getting instantly killed by the first live Alliance I ever saw with my PvP flag on (possibly the first one I ever saw). I didn't even know what was up, then the goblins sliced the guy to pieces and I realized I just had my first (failed) PvP moment.

Then I ressed and life moved on, guy didn't bother me again and I had no problem will a bit later on when I had to return to BB and started questing in STV for real.

Thinking back, that moment only missed one point: a big sign appearing on my screen "WELCOME TO STV SUCKER".

I experienced STV ganking before I even knew STV ganking existed.

[Smorgeybork]

Anytime the opposing faction invaded a city, or joining a raid and attacking an enemy leader.

[arrows]

~AQ opening was intense.

~Mind Controlling alliance as they ran into Black Rock Mountain and doing silly things before having them jump into the lava.

[faids4you]

my first epic raid piece

[Plip]

Trying to target those eyes in the bushes in Duskwood.

Still freaks me out as to how freaked out I was about them.

/shudder

[Ever]

The first time I entered Stormwind for sure. I was 15, first ever MMO, and was playing completely alone. I switched classes 2-3 times and level to 15 multiple times without ever making it Stormwind. It was getting pretty lonely and repetitive. I entered Stormwind and heard the music...saw tons of high level characters who actually had helmets and shoulder pads with "glowy" weapons riding mounts. It inspired me to keep going.

[Vaped]

I remember leveling up an UD mage on a PvP server, and around level 8 i saw a level 60 Warlock outside of UC and he had an Infernal as a pet. I rerolled instantly and decided that's what i wanted to do, i wanted to go around killing things with an Infernal as a pet (i didn't realize they had to be enslaved, but i didn't care either). During my leveling i went into UC to learn abilities and i saw about 20 Alliance going around killing things inside of UC, i was HORRIFIED. The reason i was so horrified is because of some stupid rumor someone told me, that if your City's faction leader gets killed, the whole place starts to burn killing everyone inside and no NPCs will spawn there for a week. This i believed, so i ran outside to 2 horde who were 60 and told them "THERES ALLY INSIDE KILLING EVERYTHING GO STOP THEM" and then just laughed and seemed apathetic. I started panicking wondering why they didn't give a fck that the city was going to burn! I said fck this and logged off, went on to a RP server... (Keep in mind, i was about ~10 yrs? So.. kinda a bitch boy)

Biggest regret though was leveling up to 60 on a RP server. Once i was 60 i realized the game would have been MUCH funner on a PvP server than RP, and so i just made sure to run around perma-flagged everywhere (Also caused a bit of problems in raids, where sometimes half the raid would be flagged and the other half wouldn't and so buffs wouldn't get distributed evenly to others so the raid leader would always go "-__- everyone flag up!"

I also remember some girl in my raid FREAKING the fuck out because i ruined her character's RP story. She was a NE druid and apparently her character's back story was she wanted to make peace with the horde. Well one day outside of AQ i charged and killed a horde, her being in the same group as me gave her an HK as well. She FREAKED. "People will see it dumb as me trying to make peace with the horde when i have HK's on my character!" -- i felt bad i really did

Another moment was thinking i'll NEVER ever get enough gold in order to buy my epic mount, and i accepted it. At least i was raiding i guess. So one day during ZG the Raptor mount dropped, i freaked! Everyone /rolled out of 1000 and i ended up winning the roll and it was looted to me. Little did i know, because of this, epic riding skill for me was free, i didn't need to farm 1000g, i got lucky with this drop and in return got a free mount (Though i think they ended up changing that later on with a patch, i still kept my training on my NE warrior).

I used to also download tons of vids off of Warcraftmovies, my whole hard drive was full of em all the way to TBC before it got corrupted and i lost ALL of the vids, but i used to fuck around with fraps and think i could make PvP Videos (had some pretty epic clicking skills). But i didn't know much about editing footage at all, so what i would do is record whole BG games and just add music to it. I didn't know how edit scenes, or cut things out which was pointless, but i didn't care i would later show the footage i collected to my brothers and friends who also played and showed them exciting 20second scenes from the 30min vid. I looked at it years later when i was no longer that noobish and it was horrifying. I was blasting Rammstein in my videos on a 60% tiger mount running out the AB's gate taking forever to get somewhere with Rammstein yelling "BANG BANG" -- me and IRL friends never laughed so hard seeing that footage again.
P.S: There was also this stupid mortal kombat addon i had which played the theme song every time i entered a PvP fight, i thought it was the coolest thing ever...

I'm pretty sure theres tons of more funny shit that i love remembering now about retail vanilla, i kinda went overboard with the whole wall of text, but i felt passionate.

[Alterego]

First time entering the Dark Portal and see Hellfire Peninsula. This is so fucking unforgotten and unbeaten in any games (and i played a freaking hell of a lot)...


But well since it is about Retail experience: When i was leveling my first character Night Elf Rogue at level 47 when we started a raid on Orgrimmar at 3 o clock a.m. (I had school 4 hours later)...this is a thing i will never forget in my entire life, and still: there is NO GAME in the world where you can experience something like this .... not even 10 years after. That feeling rushing to a big city with about 40 people to make a heroic stike against the bad horde, nothing compared to this.

of course we were ripped at the AH, still fucking epic.

[Redcap]

Joined the game on a PvE server and my friends all wanted PvP so I switched to Frostwolf server. Leveled an orc shaman to 22 and was all set to try out Wailing Caverns with my brand new totems and crap quest greens. On the way over from finishing Weapons of Choice and Tribes at War quests, I had strayed over near Dreadmist peak and spotted this Night Elf coming down the hill with his nameplate in red letters.

My roommate was watching because he was in the login queue and he said "kill him. he's the enemy, man."

Went in with a shield and an axe (no 2h because no talent in it yet), popped Bloodfury, dropped the snare totem and healing spring, rocked him with flame shock and swung for a crit. The poor guy was keyboard turning in Bear form like a demented furry turtle trying to hit me or do anything useful to stay alive. He was 24, trying to do that stupid Alliance quest of killing the forsaken up on the hill.

Beating him down felt so grand, it's hard to describe with words. I had played PvP games like Dark Age of Camelot, Planetside, some first person shooters... But actually killing someone in melee in Warcraft just felt so smooth and so right. Blizzard did a superb job with the animations and movement of characters. You had to be there back in the day. There was nothing like it.

[tosheybellamy]

Surely the AQ opening event. Nothing beats that for me.. And I felt so bad for the guildies who got sent into random places of the world while on the boat.