Do any vanilla / TBC WoW players still play WoW?

[Pawnless Endgame]

Just this really. Vanilla was my fave, but I extend this thread to include new-starters that started during TBC because I still consider that as being retro material. For those who still play now, what is the game like? When/how did you start, and what are your fondest memories of Vanilla/TBC?

I started in Christmas 2005. Knew nothing about class roles, just that I wanted a wizard-type character. I got to level 60 in May 2006 and joined a guild, which was good as we were all new to WoW, but as mostly friendly 20-somethings, we were familiar with the old Warcraft games from teenage years. We clubbed together with attunements e.g. Jail Break, and 5 months later, we had MC/Ony/AQ20/BWL on farm. We got halfway through AQ40 then we ran out of time as the pre-release content for BWL got released in December 2006. Fond memories though as WoW cropped up on popular media a lot like South Park.

Burning Crusade - again good content, although the reduced raid sizes caused problems with guild politics. So it was partly Blizz' doing, but also the guild was to blame as they ditched the DKP system and instead the officers formed the so-called 'loot council' which generated favouritism. For the 1st Gruul's attempt, the core/favoured players were short and had recruit about 5 of the more casual players like me. Got Gruul down ok after the 2nd wipe, then there was an argument on Teamspeak as the core players / loot council couldn't agree on who should get the drops. Next time I logged in, the guild has disbanded and we became 2 guilds. The core/favoured players formed their own guild and they continued to power through the dungeons/raids. The rest of us (casuals) formed our own separate guild and did things at a slower pace. The irony was though that we got further than them in the end and managed to clear Sunwell We just got on together really well and I think that helped.

I quit WoW early on in the Lich King era (some time in 2009), but did "re-lapse" for 3 months during Mists. It wasn't the same though as it wasn't 20-somethings or 30-somethings playing the game. It was now teenagers who weren't even alive when Warcraft 1/2 came out, so very different clientèle... and the attitude that goes with it. Plenty of invites sure, but very little talk between the players which took away the social element of WoW for me. A lot of ninja looting too.

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

I was told a saying in vanilla Rugrat, that the "game only really started when you've maxed out at 60". I think that was true, as I spent most of vanilla doing end-game stuff. The levelling was actually fairly quick for me as I was in groups a lot. Started WoW on 27.Dec.2015 and hit 60 on 1.May.2006. As well as plenty of chatting / online socialising (as if it's MSN Messenger), I also had Winamp on the go, as it was possible to control that via global hotkeys even if you're full screen inside of a game. Obviously once the raiding started, I had to turn the music off and log onto Teamspeak, but I loved being a raider though. Just a couple of raids a week was considered as being a "regular" DKP-wise and we were all in mostly tier 2 gear by December. Except for that damn Nefarian only ever dropped ONE warlock chest, and several shamen chests even though shamen weren't an Alliance class back in vanilla!

Dis86 - agreed, that was how I found the people to be when I tried Mists. A shame really, because the average age of a gamer in the UK is now 37 which is around the average age of OcUK gamers I would imagine.