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Starym

Vanilla Stories - Starting WoW, Kel'Thuzad + C'Thun WF, Fishing

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I've borrowed this format from my old Manaflask days, where we asked some old raiders to share their favorite stories from Vanilla WoW and asked our community to share theirs with us as well, and applied it to the great guys here at Icy Veins. We'll be taking a look at a couple of our guide writers' favorite memories from the original game as we wait for the Classic launch later on today, and we'd also really like to hear any of yours in the comments!

Vanilla was very different from modern WoW (as a lot of people are about to find out) and it was most people's first MMO, or at the very least the first they really fell in love with. This is why so many people have so many stories from back then, and it's hard to talk to someone about Vanilla without a story just organically popping out.

Let's start our Icy Veins stories with our Classic and BfA guide writer, Seksi, who will be playing in eHEROES on Gehennas Horde, and we will be challenging APES and the rest for supremacy in the server.

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When WoW came out I was playing Warcraft 3 competitively and wasn't interested in this sort of game at all! Yet, little by little my WC3 friends started playing it and after a few months of leveling and setting up a guild, they were missing healers for Molten Core progress...and by this point I was getting messages from them to try it out every day.

Eventually I decided to give it a try just so they would stop harassing me... little did I know I would be playing this game way after they all quit midway through Burning Crusade, in fact I still am!

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I was playing Undead Priest on the aforementioned WC3 friend guild until we cleared BWL and I got sort of bored during the farm period, so I thought it would be nice to try out Alliance for a change of scenery and made a Gnome Mage! I enjoyed mages/gnome cuteness so much after leveling it up that I realm swapped completely over to it (you couldn't have alliance and horde characters on the same realm at the time iirc, or maybe it was because of there being low Alliance players in my original realm) and really got into PvP, up to rank 11 and the Black Mechanostrider with Balanar's team, a famous rank 14 rogue who did his grind around the point I was in the team.

I then went on to clear everything with the mage and my alliance guild until the Four Horsemen, where we had to stop because of not having enough geared protection warriors so one of my main goals in WoW Classic is to make right with that, as it was the only tier in the game I never cleared while it was current content.

Then we have our newcomer, KingValnimsil, who will be doing some Classic content:

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The best memory for me was when I was first shown World Of Warcraft from my best friend in high school.  We both played for days, at 12 hour intervals at a time even, just to try and get to end game. We would start characters over and try it again if we felt that it wasn't going the way we wanted it to. It wasn't until he got fired from his job that he decided to quit playing the game and find something else to do. But I like to think back on the fond memories and fun times we had playing World Of Warcraft together.

And finally, I'll do one or two myself, and will go for one of the less fun things back in the day and probably the best moment of my WoW career.

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I wasn't really a fan of WC3, as I was more of a Command and Conquer guy, although I had played the game and enjoyed it well enough. Which is why I had no interest in this new MMO Blizzard was making, as I had my old trusty Ultima Online character to continually die and lose all my gear on. Several friends kept asking me to play but I was having none of it, until one them actually made a EU beta account for me, basically came over one day and started installing it on my computer. After that I basically said screw it and gave it a try. 2 days of no sleep later me and several friends that had gathered to watch during those days were hooked.

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The second story is one of hardship, and you can't spell hardship without fish...ing. Ok that didn't quite work out but my point is I HATE FISHING. I hadn't leveled the skill at all at any point in Vanilla and ignored its existence. At least I did up until that tragic point when flasks became mandatory for our raids (which, shockingly, is around the point we started getting competitive) which only meant one thing: Stonescale Eels. LOTS of Stonescale Eels. As most people back in Vanilla that raided, I was broke and so buying them wasn't an option (especially not at the insane prices they went for on our server), so the only answer was the one I dreaded the most.

I had a temporary moment of reprieve when I realized I couldn't really level up fishing fast enough to effectively get flasks for the raids, but unfortunately a kind soul soon stepped in to doom me. Notrhal (prolly wrong spelling on my end), a druid from the guild offered to lend me his character so I could fish the required eels for myself. I mean, if you're gonna be this nice guy that wants to help me out, why not just FISH THEM FOR ME?! Anyway, thus began my nightly fishing grind in Azshara where my hatred for fish, rods and everything water-related grew and grew, but in the end it was all very much worth it, which brings me to my following story.

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The fishing incident happened during Naxxramas progression, which was the weirdest thing ever in Nihilum. After our C'Thun World First we were actually in the spotlight, despite that kill not being really impressive, as we basically only got it because the hotfix came at EU times and we were non stop wiping on the boss to get experience for his eventual nerf - which turned out to be completely pointless as Blizzard massively over-nerfed the boss to the point that the kill happened completely by accident. This is another mini story here, as I actually wasn't on the C'Thun kill, after infinity hours spent wiping on that god damned eye, as I decided to pick exactly THAT day to go out for coffee with a friend instead. I mean, what is another day of wiping going to matter in the end right... Anyway, they were just going on about their daily wipe ritual when suddenly on one pull everyone was still alive and the guys inside the stomach weren't horribly melted. No one was using potions or flasks because it was random wipes to get some muscle memory, so in the middle of the pull Kungen called for flasks (although I'm sure they weren't even necessary) and the boss just... died (and later spawned many Oozeling conspiracy theories which, I'm sorry to say, aren't true - it was just the mega nerf that got us the kill). The ensuing phone call I got while on said coffee was one of the sadder points in my WoW career.

On to the main story though, we had quite a lot to prove in Naxxramas and you'd expect a World First to be pretty good motivation to go and push on in the next tier. You'd be wrong. At the start of Naxx Kungen and a few other key members randomly decided to instead watch the football World Cup and just not come to raids. And so the rest of us went pushing through Naxx very slowly, taking down the easier bosses until these lunatics decided to come back. It really shows how different the race was back then, as we literally lost a week or two of progression to the World Cup and still managed to catch up (Naxx lasted some 2 and a half months total)! When they came back we swiftly pushed on and even got a World third on Horsemen, and were in the running for the Ke'thuzad World First.

I was working at the time, with my routine consisting of getting up around 5:30 AM to get ready and go to work, working until 4-5 PM, getting home and then raiding until around midnight. The weekends were basically the only time I ever really slept properly. When we actually caught up and a World First KT was a possibility I really went into it even more. We knew the kill was very close, either for us or some other guild, and the reset was coming up. On the final day in the evening we had our big shot at the kill, as the US had already gotten their reset (and as far as I can remember Death and Taxes were our No.1 competitor at the time) so Tuesday night was our time to shine. However, at some point in the evening the boss bugged out on us and despawned after a wipe, deciding to not come back at all. This meant we had to reclear ALL of Naxx to get back to KT the next day, which also meant we were going to be starting a whole lot earlier than usual. This also meant that I wasn't going to be in the raid as I had to work (I have no idea why I didn't just call in sick - perhaps I had already done it too many times), which also meant I would probably once again not be in there for the endboss kill. But, more importantly to me at the time, I was in the dark as to how things were going while I was at work (no internet smartphones for me back then). And so for the full day of work I was constantly calling up my friend Crowley who was the healing officer in the raid, asking him for updates on both our and Death and Taxes' progress, sneaking off behind a corner every hour and waiting with baited breath to hear if the US guys had taken Kel'Thuzad down.

Luckily for me they hadn't, and the raid was almost clear by the time I got home. But, of course, the raid was completely full and I actually had less frost resistance gear than other DPS/off-tank warriors, and it was Saphiron time. And so disappointment no.2 arrived as I sat running around the Org roof waiting to hear news about the kill, as they moved past Saphiron to KT. However, it seemed another C'Thun wasn't in the cards for me, as I got the whisper soon after that that a warrior wasn't really performing well enough and if I could get my *filtered* in there ASAP. This truly was a big moment for me, despite the fact I was actually an officer in the guild for a while already, getting that call "we need you in here, you're better than guy x" was really a huge deal, not to mention the fact I was about to race for my first World First endboss that was actually very possible and perhaps even probable.


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I'm tanking the endboss of Naxxramas on the World First kill. It doesn't get much better than that.

The rest you already know, we got the kill and the World First, it was insanely huge for all of us, but for me especially considering the day I'd had before this. The icing on this very large cake was that not only had we proven to be a top guild after the C'Thun nonsense, but the amount of people that had gathered in Orgrimmar on our sever waiting for us as we came back from the kill was incredible. The feeling of seeing all those very real people there cheering us on, whispering and yelling congratulations was truly one of the best experiences in my life and I can't really put it into words properly. Instead, here are some screenshots:

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First off, I apologize for this turning into "Starym's Vanilla stories", I got a little carried away with that Kel'Thuzad story (got a little emotional when I found the screenshots). But we really want to hear from you and your Vanilla experiences, so don't be shy and head on down to the comments and share!

Header image source.

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59 minutes ago, Starym said:

I dare anyone to comment on my UI.

I'll take the bait. Resolution 800x600?

That's it.

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52 minutes ago, kurdi said:

I'll take the bait. Resolution 800x600?

That's it.

Hmm, that's a good question. Wtf was the average resolution back then? I do remember buying a new computer in BC and basically realizing I'd been hardware lagging like a crazy person all throughout Vanilla without realising it.

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For me WoW wasn't simply the first MMO, but also the first RPG and one of the first fantasy games. I did play Heroes 3 and such before, but my first impression was basically that the Alliance are the good guys and paladins seem to have the most glorious task in this world, so I went on to create a human paladin. I generally was very noobish in the game - along with most other human paladins - but just after 5 minutes in Elwynn Forest I made friends with a guy who saved me from wolves and introduced me to his brother with whom I became Classic-pals with. In general I was very slow with leveling (took about half a year to get to 60), but they helped me a lot. After looking at some guys in Ironforge with their mighty purple-named items that seemed very cool I decided it's time to find a fitting guild (that was Leviathan-Ragnaros (EU)) and try raiding. My raid performance was a bit lackluster to say the least - well, basically I got carried all the time - but since the raid leaders primary goal was to fill up all 40 slots this doesn't mattered much. 39 ppl + 1 noob paladin was a better choice than just 39 people. We did kill Onyxia and did some Molten Core, but then that first guild disbanded, so I went on to join a smaller community that tolerated noobs like me better, altough 40 man raiding was not a reality (sorry for repeating this noob title, but I was seriously bad in WoW in the first few years, which doesn't means I didn't enjoyed it, it's just that I had nothing to do with top-tier raiding). AQ20 and ZG was the most fun times I had in Vanilla WoW, especially ZG, really liked the vibe there. We did group with another small guild to try out BWL, AQ40 and Naxx, but it was mostly just wiping with killing only a few bosses. I can remember that I was never able to obtain the class mount, I just rode a 60% speed horse up until BC.

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November 23 2004 I stood in line at midnight to buy the collectors box of the first WOW game I was 39. And the first server I was on Dragonblight  my first character I named IronDoom I still have Irondoom he sitting in my character list at 80. Then I moved on making different alts my favorite memory setting with my guild waiting for Burning Crusade to come online server crashed like 100 times.

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Haha, great stories! ? there are some weird random ? and formatting in my quotes but the idea comes out so whatever ? hope you have a lot of fun in WoW Classic too Starym!

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Iv got a few that my buddies and I were laughing about just yesterday.

 

The first, I decided to pug ZG and get a chance at Hakkar before the reset. I was a 60 warlock that really didnt know much about raiding other than just throw bodies at bosses until they die really. Well this group needed more people and so I told the leader I have a 56 druid friend I could ask. He said sure and my bud got a invite. To clarify for everyone, my buddy was a 56 BOOMKIN in a raid, not a healer, not max level... Just a 56 boomchiken dropping beams on everything.

The raid went pretty well from what i remember, if we wiped on a boss we did a quick reset and kept going. We eventually found ourselves starring at the corpse of the tiger boss, and wouldnt you know it... He dropped the freakin tiger mount. The group was ecstatic. The raid lead started out trying to give it to someone who actually had epic riding learned, and that did not go over well. So, he said let the highest roll win. I go ahead and roll a 25 and just sigh, then i see my buddy ask what everyone is doing and I tell him to just roll and he might win a mount. GUY ROLLS A SOLID 99. Wins the mount and cant even use it for another 4 levels that he probably wont grind out for the next few weeks let alone pay for the super expensive training. He has been riding that dam thing to this day to spite me. 

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17 hours ago, Seksi said:

Haha, great stories! ? there are some weird random ? and formatting in my quotes but the idea comes out so whatever ? hope you have a lot of fun in WoW Classic too Starym!

Lol didn't notice those, I think they're the emoticons you used in discord that got weirdly converted when published. Sorry!

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