#10YearsOfWoW – It Had to Start Somewhere

My WoW story begins, as many do, not in WoW.

After playing WarCraft III I got hooked into the lore, read the first few books and I was waiting for WoW with bated breath, scouring the forums for every bit of info I could find while praying for a beta key. I still remember the first screenshot I saw that wowed (pardon the pun) me: it was a nighttime shot of Goldshire with its blue roofs and lit windows…. so cozy!!

After living of forum crumbs for months I got into Open Beta (and who didn’t?!). It was glorious!!

The discovery of the world, the enthusiasm everyone had, the first *gasp* as you entered the Deadmines final cave (Goonies!!!), hitting wolves for hours just to level your weapons 😉

But then it ended! You see I lived in France and so when Beta ended in November I had to wait to till February for release! The horror!! Thankfully I got a month worth of game before that by getting into Closed EU Beta. I still remember exploring East of Duskwood on my rogue in the 20s and running for my life from lvl 55 vultures. The atmosphere in that zone!

That ended as well (with Gnomeregan) but what a fantastic rebirth to come!

On launch night we were all waiting for the servers to come up and around 1-2AM we decided that it would be a better idea to “sleep now” while the servers were down even if we had to wake up early cause then we could just have a session for the ages. So me and my friend went to bed and told each other that the first guy who noticed the servers up would call the other. Of course I didn’t turn my computer or phone off or anything!

*ring riiiiiing* I lift an eyelid grab my phone and in a hoarse voice “is it up?”, him: “yeah come on, come on!!”. It was 4:30AM….

I crawled out off bed towards my PC, turned on the monitor who decide to punish me with the brightest glare my eyes have ever been faced with and it was ON!!! Showering? For the weak! Eating? Sure, as long as I can hold it in one hand… Sleep? maybe 15h in 3 days. Didn’t I say it was glorious? I had to take a bow.

 The rest as they say, is History.