20 Days of WoW - Day 3 - My First Day of WoW

[Re-enactment. No living creatures were harmed in the making of this screenshot.]

   I cannot remember my first day playing WoW. Not in any detail. I can tell you that I was using a friend's account to try it out, though. I had heard of it through a schoolfriend who showed me the male Undead's dance. I immediately wanted to play it but my parents wouldn't pay for the monthly fee so I didn't get to. A year or so later a friend let me try their account and I got quite hooked. To the extent that I wouldn't really let them have it back. They got it back eventually and I played on another friend's account. It took about a year but I eventually got my own account. I wouldn't share that with anyone. I was totally hooked on the game - a real addict. I stayed up 3 days straight playing it once. Yikes.

   But, back to my first day.

   I was amazed. I had played a few games on the megadrive before hand - that was it. Sonic, Jak and Daxter, and Bubsy. That was all I had ever played. I thought that you had to save your WoW game. I had never encountered an MMO before. I didn't realise that some of the characters I was seeing were other players, and when I did realise it, I thought all NPCs were player controlled. I thought it was incredible as I made my female Undead (to this day her dance disappoints me. And yes, I remade her on the second friend's account, and then again on my own, and I still have her) and I ran around Deathknell. I thought the game was a little bit dull since it was so small, but then I was sent out of Deathknell. WHAT THE HELL WAS THIS?! My map changed. It was different, and my movement across it was so slow. It was enormous. It was bleak and dreary, but I was a zombie. What did I expect. I thought the game had to have like, another seven zones because of the other races. It was so exciting. I wanted to go and find them. I was told I wouldn't be able to get to half of them, though, or I'd be killed by other players. That frightened me. Unfortunately, I was on a PvP server because that's where my friends were. But I felt safe in Tirisfal Glades. So I stayed there.

   You can imagine my eventual surprise when I right-clicked my map by accident and was shown an island, that turned out to be the whole continent. The game was huge and I got so very, very excited. Eventually, after a week or so, I found out that not only was there another continent, but also another 'planet', so I had so much to explore that I basically forgot life outside of the game for months. Fortunately my mum's MS was pretty tame at that point - she could still walk, talk, think, drive, read, everything. So I didn't need to think of life outside of the game unless I had to go to school. I always did my homework right away, though, before playing because I knew I wouldn't do it otherwise, so I did have my priorities straight, at least!

   It was awesome. Whenever I see a lowbie player with no heirlooms, keyboard turning and running up to me and then standing very very close looking at me, I know that they're new, and I envy them incredibly. I'm never again going to have that sheer awe towards a game that I had then. I know how MMO's work, I know how most games work, and that kind of sucks, in a way.

   My first day of WoW rocked.