Old Game .... Returned

The gaming world has been alive with the sound of music lately.

Yep.

(as always with the pictures, click for bigger)

The music and theme tunes of World of Warcraft Classic. That one will never catch on, it's just a more cartoony Everquest clone. Right ? Haha, maybe.

One thing about WoW over the years, it's had great music. Varied music. Music that makes you a little bit nuts sometimes. Quite possibly music by someone who's been in the gaming news lately. We shall not speak his name due to what he's been doing. Enough about him, back to WoW !

I'm not going back into WoW Classic. At least, I haven't been pulled into the addiction just yet. I think if I did reinstall it, I'd actually go to the current version with all of the expansions.

That one's from new WoW. Spot that telltale shift to 16:9 resolution ... We'll come back to new WoW. This one's more about the old times and a bit of a journey.

I first started playing WoW in early 2005 and little did I know it ... but it would be a significant part of my life for quite a while to come. It led to some mental issues. Aggro with friends. Aggro caused by people we were required to play with for various reasons. Other issues. You see, the relationship I had at the time broke up in mid 2005 with my partner moving out. I had seen that coming ... but didn't want to be the one to make the move. WoW ended up filling in the hole that the failed relationship left. And possibly worse than that, there was someone lovely in one of the other guilds who was instrumental in setting up the raiding guild alliance that we had going. At that particular time, I was rebounding on a bunch of people and getting very confused when it didn't go anywhere. Cue more of those mental issues.

There were some good times. Some awesome times. But I'd found myself in a position where I was the head of a smaller guild that raided with others ... and at this time, raids needed 40 people working together to a common goal. Lots. At least it wasn't the brutal raiding that followed where the game became very punishing to small errors. Those issues steadily increased to the point where I absolutely required myself to take a break from the game for a few months and hand over the reins of the guild.

I was always seen as an experienced, high quality player ... but never again took up a position of being an officer in a guild. Yeah, there's prestige ... but what's that worth in the end in a game ? Not much, it's definitely not worth the hassle, stress and occasional death threat that comes with it. Yes. I had a death threat from an individual that we kicked out of our guild for lying, cheating, stealing and generally being an obnoxious so and so. The guild officers had to act as enforcers to get people to behave and because I was the Guild Master and later ex-Guild Master, people looked at me to essentially be the executioner. You'd upset some, get the applause from others.

And there were other people like the one with the death threat. So it was a combination of the raid mechanics and the people we had to play with which led to me becoming really unsatisfied with the Warcraft endgame. Going into gaming addiction that far does some odd things to the mind as well, which may well look apparent if you go back to some of those 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009 and so on posts.

However ... find a good guild with great people and, it's an incredible game to chill out in.

And there's a few of those great people down there. Guildlink and the Mercenaries were a great crowd while that lasted. I hopped sideways into a guild with a bunch of lovely Swedish people called Violence Reborn. Another group of awesome people and Krinza helped me out considerably with those mental issues just by being a fantastic friend.

The Violence Reborn people joined our little collective after an incident which saw a bit of a schism with another group leaving. Our little group of crazy mages had gotten used to one person looking after us and then ... suddenly Sandra playing Krinza. That was a fun, healing raid after the other group left under a cloud. I think I was quite quickly sending whispers like "I like this one, can we keep her ?" to our raid leader lady. That's a memory I'll hopefully keep around while others have faded ! Lots of fun and craziness was had that day.

There were quite a few more fantastic friends along the way as well.

With great gear. This was an ongoing joke in the raiding. Some of us had some comedy gear which we brought out when we were ... off duty ?

Yep. There were more than a few times when I'd sidle up to someone, say something daft and quickly grab that screenshot before they could leg it.

And there were shinies too. One of the best memories is when we staged a commando raid to smuggle our guild group of Dark Mercenaries into the Alliance (sworn enemies) capitals and into the tram tunnel that connects two of those cities. There was a rumour of a sea monster living under there :

Yep. That's us, dressed in tuxedos and party dresses, infiltrating to the heart of the enemy, giggling like schoolkids all the way. The best of times.

It was really important to know where to stand when giant enemies fell around you.

Standing near things that gave you health was handy too.

There may have been some shameful behaviour along the way but. COOKIES !

I also chased other things later ...

Chasing Rainbows is a guild that was set up by lovely youtuber and now streamer, Katherine of Sky (link's over to the right). She has a lovely soothing voice, possibly one of the best voices in gaming. And a lovely lady too. She plays mostly Factorio but there was a little spell last year when the Chasing Rainbows guild was set up. I really enjoyed my (admittedly pretty short before I suddenly walked away from the game) time with them.

That panda was fierce.

Also had a sister mage with a Pointy Hat. Gear is important. Getting that gear stylish ... critical.

I really enjoyed the time in old WoW but I don't think I'll be going back in. (Gaming Addiction can have its way with you when you least expect it). There were good times, bad times and along the way, a lot of very awesome people.

There's a few old friends and fantastic people in that shot. But it did become time to sail off into the sunset after a while and I found a perfect escort ...

Also random conga line.

It's been fun looking through the screenshots again and remembering those good times again, with the Mercenaries, with Violence Reborn, with Guildlink, with Chasing Rainbows and the little group of local friends I was in a guild with too.

PS Addon - ancient high fives to the wonderful and let's see how many of these I remember : Souleater, Zaphyr, Fubb, Charge, Sarai, Krinza, Cloudberry, all of Dad's Army, Doomprayer, Sam & Aella, Tananka, Marracy, Tufflan, Alex, Laina, DT, Evi, Truthseeker's family of alts .... and there are so, so many more.