The reason I am NOT leaving Nostalrius

[Asha]

The real reason I play Nostalirus still, despite my guild leaving the server.

I understand this may get locked or deleted, and I might get flamed, but I have to get it off my chest.

Let me explain a bit first, I have played WoW since I was 6, I'm turning 17 in 15 days, my uncle first got my family into WoW, back when I was 6, in Vanilla. Nowadays he still plays on Nostalrius and so do I but it is more of a log on and then do Molten Core, then log off.

See my family that played WoW consisted of: my brother, my uncle, my mom, my dad, my aunt, my uncle, 2 cousins, and I. We all played it like a religion, I was 6, but all was good, no body worried about my age, because I was never interfering I just did my own thing.

Skip ahead to why I am posting this, when my brother was really young (13) he got into drugs and alcohol, my mother was also a frequent pill popper, and she is/was an alcoholic. So when we all played those went away and my brother wasn't a disaster, he was our warlock, my mom wasn't a mess, she was our rogue. Later in my life my parents decided to get a divorce, after years of fighting that only stopped when we logged into WoW, or any other game for that matter, but mainly WoW. When this divorce was happening I got quite depressed, my brother was never really around, he was always gone; my sister moved out as soon as she was 18, my house was always loud with yelling. So there I sat, a 10 year old with my mom and dad getting a divorce, my brother a deadbeat, my sister gone. I was alone with nothing but my game, Vanilla WoW.

Now this is where the story kind of changes, that game was my best friend, I would pretend to be sick to play more of it, I would stay in my guilds chat and I made a few really good friends, my mom was remarried to a man she met when she was raiding, and my dad was a bachelor, that's when I went to a summer camp, I came back so happy, but so much had changed in just 7 days, I was removed from my guild for inactivity (which was strange because we had a 1 month waiting period) and my mom would never stop fighting with my then-step dad and my real dad was pretty seriously dating a girl.

With all of this my mind was going 100 mph with thoughts, a big one, 'I am not adapting fast enough, therefore holding down my family, I should just leave'. However I had one friend who never left me, except it cost me a monthly fee that I just couldn't afford sometimes, Vanilla WoW. I played it, doing the same thing over and over, I would start a character level it to 60 and then restart, a part of my mind made me want to keep doing that forever, I was content. With my brother long gone into Idaho (2 states away) and my sister pregnant, my mother now fighting with my then-step dad and my real dad getting engaged, I was really in a tight spot and I didn't like it, most of all I missed my brother, I couldn't stand being without him, every time I would think of him I would only remember this one sequence of my childhood: I had a nightmare, he brought me onto his bunk, we sat under the covers with a book and flashlight and wrote down games in the book, very detailed games we would act out with the neighbor kids later that week, but with my brother gone, there was no safety, nobody there to help me when i needed it the most.

When TBC came out a lot of my aunts , uncles, and cousins started WoW again, but I fell in this depression, my Vanilla WoW was gone and now I would never play WoW the same way again, I just kept leveling characters, up to 60, then restarting, maxing the server slots then deleting the characters to make new ones because I didn't want to leave Vanilla.

In all of this depression a lot of shit happened, I reached high school, my mom got divorced, so we lived with my grand parents, my dad got married, my brother's fiance cheated on him so he was an even more unstable drunk, and my sister's life was on track. However I fell more and more into this hole that was unfillable. All I did all day was go to school come home and instantly play fake Vanilla WoW with myself, and occasionally get on Skype with my cousin and his friend.

I've gotten pretty much through high school now (this year a senior) and then I found Nostalrius, the things that kept this hole in my life sealed have been games, mainly fake Vanila WoW, and now with Nostalrius I can play the real Vanilla WoW.

But the real reason I was wanting to post this, and why I cried on my drive home from work today was so that I can say this; I play Nostalrius hardly to try new Vanilla content and play the promised raids, but because every time I login to Nostalrius and press that 'Enter World' button and hear that noise that everyone knows, I feel like I've walked through the front door to my home, and that everything will be alright as long as I am on Nostalrius. I play my characters and feel like my family is there, even if I'm not in a group and solo running around in Orgrimmar talking to the NPC's I've conversated with 100 times, I still feel like my family is right there next to me, even though I'm a few of many that still plays Nostalrius, now that my GRIZZLY guild is gone, I know that my mom, Ladymist, my dad, Srguy, my brother, Xantis, my uncle, Zorlos, my other uncle, Gillroman, my cousin, Lavrek, my other cousin, Austicus, and I, Alrek all are in this REAL Vanilla WoW experience whether we are or are not. I play this game not because of the server first molten cores or grizzly cult but because MY family is still in Vanilla WoW and Nostalrius' image of it.

tl;dr, Shitty life, started good got worse, played vanilla thru it all, only reason I am still here is because Nostalrius proivded me to hear that sound of Entering the world so that I feel at home.

Thank you Daemon, Viper and all the Nostalirus staff for not only making this REAL vanilla server so great, but also being able to make it last so long, keep it up, despite all of the negative things.

[Crone]

Let it out buddy, I'm glad you found a way to keep going.

[kenic]

Story time!

Rewind back to 1999. I first met my future brother-in-law when he was 7 years old. He had a host of developmental disorders, and he liked to fight to show how tough he was. Suffice it to say, I hated his guts. But I liked his sister, so I put up with his crap.

Jump to Fall 2004. I've just proposed to his sister, and she wants him and I to try to get along going forward. Shit. Keep in mind this is a kid who's 12 and can't read or write, and likes to punch people for fun. I'm not exactly about to go join his youth group and hang out, but I've been beta testing WoW for the last six months and I figure it'll be a decent way to spend some time together without any punch risk. So I order a pair of Collector's Editions for us, wait in line for the store to open on November 23, 2004, and head over to my girlfriend's place to install it on their computer. The kid's over the moon happy at his cool new game. Sweet.

Jump again to June 2005. My brother-in-law has has hit 60 and has been PvP'ing like a fiend, but he keeps getting kicked out of groups and he doesn't know why. He thinks people are saying bad stuff about him but he can't read well enough to figure it out. I agree to come hang out with him a couple times a week after I'm done at university for the day, so we can find out what kinda shit talking is going on in these battlegrounds.

(Spoiler: Lots of shit talking.)

Over the next couple years we spent a bunch of time together playing WoW. Over the span of a couple years he learns how to read his whispers so he can actually communicate with his party, and I also teach him some basic math skills so he can properly assess new gear for his class. He doesn't get kicked out of groups now, and he isn't so big on fighting anymore since he doesn't feel like such a dummy all the time.

Fast forward to the present: I've got Blizzard to thank for building a game so compelling that my handicapped brother pushed himself to learn some basic life skills. We aren't exactly close since we live far apart now, but at family gatherings we can always count on each other to bullshit about WoW to make all the grandparents feel uncomfortably old.

Despite all the current expansion's shortcomings—and how much I enjoy some other MMO's—I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for WoW.

[Zach]

Story time!

Rewind back to 1999. I first met my future brother-in-law when he was 7 years old. He had a host of developmental disorders, and he liked to fight to show how tough he was. Suffice it to say, I hated his guts. But I liked his sister, so I put up with his crap.

Jump to Fall 2004. I've just proposed to his sister, and she wants him and I to try to get along going forward. Shit. Keep in mind this is a kid who's 12 and can't read or write, and likes to punch people for fun. I'm not exactly about to go join his youth group and hang out, but I've been beta testing WoW for the last six months and I figure it'll be a decent way to spend some time together without any punch risk. So I order a pair of Collector's Editions for us, wait in line for the store to open on November 23, 2004, and head over to my girlfriend's place to install it on their computer. The kid's over the moon happy at his cool new game. Sweet.

Jump again to June 2005. My brother-in-law has has hit 60 and has been PvP'ing like a fiend, but he keeps getting kicked out of groups and he doesn't know why. He thinks people are saying bad stuff about him but he can't read well enough to figure it out. I agree to come hang out with him a couple times a week after I'm done at university for the day, so we can find out what kinda shit talking is going on in these battlegrounds.

(Spoiler: Lots of shit talking.)

Over the next couple years we spent a bunch of time together playing WoW. Over the span of a couple years he learns how to read his whispers so he can actually communicate with his party, and I also teach him some basic math skills so he can properly assess new gear for his class. He doesn't get kicked out of groups now, and he isn't so big on fighting anymore since he doesn't feel like such a dummy all the time.

Fast forward to the present: I've got Blizzard to thank for building a game so compelling that my handicapped brother pushed himself to learn some basic life skills. We aren't exactly close since we live far apart now, but at family gatherings we can always count on each other to bullshit about WoW to make all the grandparents feel uncomfortably old.

Despite all the current expansion's shortcomings—and how much I enjoy some other MMO's—I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for WoW.

[Acidx]

My warcraft experience started when a friend introduced me to warcraft 3 in 4th grade, but for the full story I need to go back farther.
Going into 3rd grade, I had no friends. I guess I didn't really realize it but I think I had already developed social anxiety and depression back then, which crippled me later in life. I found a group of guys talking about video games and just sort of latched onto their group like a tick, because I really wanted friends but didn't know how to make them. It took several weeks of me following around and butting into their conversations before they finally accepted me (that was the last time I ever made friends on my own)
One of them introduced me to Diablo 2 when I came over. I loved that game and loved PvP. Back before hacked items were everywhere, I was actually one of the first players with manipulated gear. One of the early hackers wanted someone to test the stuff and I volunteered. People actually knew my name, level 99 Necromancer, Golem. They talked about me in the chat channels and this made me feel a sense of pride.
But we eventually moved onto Warcraft 3. I played a lot of custom games like that mafia rpg and tower wars with my friend. He moved away, but I never stopped playing them by myself. I had no friends at school and everyone in my class would bully me. It was so bad that I couldn't sit in school without crying (which made things worse).
They put me on ADHD medicine to calm me, but it made me catatonic, like a zombie. I literally don't remember 6th grade at all. Apparently, I would make weird noises, walk in circles, drool, and eat salt packets. It ruined my reputation, but I just don't remember it.
Flash forward to 7th grade, a long haired new kid shows up at school. He's instantly popular and not long after, I realize he was my old friend. We became friends again and at the start of the year, we agreed to play World of Warcraft. I made a night elf rogue because I thought Illidan was really cool back then. He made a dwarf hunter.
This was probably nearing the end of vanilla. I remember being level 40 before TBC came out, but it was so much fun. Looking back, I was terrible, but I loved every moment. I would stay up all night and play. The lack of sleep made me pass out in class and made me susceptible to getting sick. Oh well, more time to play WoW. I was an addict.
I joined a guild, Star Shadow Alliance (they later became Paradox), on Gnomeregan and sort of stuck with it until I stopped playing. I played seriously until the end of Wrath of the Lich King.
See, my first experience with Warcraft was the story of Arthas becoming the Lich King. When he died, I felt like my passion died as well. I still played a bit of Cata and MoP (getting to max level, doing dailies, and then stopping) but it was never the same feeling again.
WoW was my life throughout middle school and high school. I really didn't do much else in that time period. I didn't really have many friends.
I did find reddit, though. It's sort of my new substitute addiction for WoW (I've been here 5 years, about the same time that I stopped playing seriously)
I also still love Blizzard games for being my escape mechanism for so long. Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, WoW, Starcraft 2, Hearthstone, and now Heroes of the Storm. My favorite video game will always be WoW, though. What other game can I say I spent ~300 days of play time on?

[Guugle89]

You should try lifting.

[gotmilk0112]

I don't see why I should leave just because some oldfags are stirring up a dramastorm.

I've never seen a private server as massively populated and well-scripted as this one. Last vanilla server I played on was buggy as fuck, many quests were bugged and uncompletable (especially escort quests), and a majority of the population was full T2 players afk'ing in Ironforge.

I'm sticking around.