My good friend has gotten me addicted to everything i've been addicted to in life. Cigs. CS. and now WoW. he has a way of persuading me to do things I may not want to do, but deep down can't wait to do. We sat at a diner for 3 hours once while he explained every detail, every nuance that makes the game special. Needless to say, I'm very much happy with the game (although, I have occassionally spit and screamed and cursed at my monitor for 60s ganking me at low levels, losing need rolls on really really really must need gear, and the endless grinding).

Any good stories out there?

My brother, who is a game store manager, came and visited for a week at the end of October this last year.

He brought a huge stack of games that he bought or was given from the various conferences he went to.

One of them was World of Warcraft. He played for the first few months when it was released but stopped because he was busy with work and didn't have many people to play with.

I sat down loaded the game and sat through a couple hours of patches (since this was a year after the game was released). After everything was working, I just picked a druid because I like the druid hero in Warcraft 3. Well as it was I didn't log off. I kept playing because the game rocks.

Before this I always played real time strategy games and didn't like these types of games at all. Actually, when I heard Blizzard was making a MMORPG I was ticked - I wanted another RTS game since Blizzard makes the best. On the flipside Blizzard did an amazing job and I love my first MMORPG ALOT!

Originally, I played a good bit of Warcraft II over dialup with some friends in the dorms in college (95-96?). Flash forward nearly 10 years, and a coworker of mine who'd been in WoW beta told me many good things. Looking for an MMO methadone to counteract my 5 year Evercrack addiction, I picked it up and gave it a shot. Been playing for about 13 months now. My wife is much fonder of WoW than she ever was of EQ.

I had been playing EQ for 3-4 years when WoW came out. When it was released it seemed like EQ started losing more and more people which is why the guild I was in crumbled. Was a real bummer because we were only two big kills away from the Plane of Time. It was like the third big guild crash that I had been a part of and it just seemed to kill the game for me.

A couple people that I knew had started playing Wow and got me to try it. Been hooked ever since.

Woot. yay for addiction!

Well I was a 4 year vet of EQ and after all of my in game friends moved to WoW I gave the free 10 day trial a shot. On the 5th day I bought 2 retail boxes (one for me and one for my wife) and we are having fun like we havent had since the early days of EQ. Hopefully it will continue.

Kireth
21 Druid Arthas
70 Paladin (EQ Xegony) Retired

I played WC3 and WC3 FT fiendishly in college(03 - early 05). I was always on battle.net, and my roommates and I had a 4 person LAN, so we'd play 2v2 games, or 4vs computer games. Good fun. Then WoW came out. I initially resisted the urge, as I had to graduate, and I knew how much of my time would be drained by WoW.

Fast forward to August 05, after I had traveled europe, gotten a job, moved in with my gf and was getting bored with life, and my RL buddy from college who I hadn't seen or talked to in a while called me and told me he had just got on wow. I went out and bought it that day, and have been addicted ever since. Its really cool, because another RL college friend plays too, and even though we are hundreds of miles apart, we get to hang out almost every night, puff, drink beers and joke around just like we did back in the good old days. Sometimes we'll meet and just hang out somewhere and talk ingame, sometimes we'll bg together... The only crappy part is that now when I stay up till 3am playing, I have to be at work in my cube at 8am, which hurts.

Actual quote from my friend that got me into the game: "WoW is like crack, heroine and pcp boiled together, then injected into my skull while chewing on an adrenal gland and railing heaps of coke."

I played EQ for about 2 years and finally kicked that addiction and was completely done with MMO's (yeah right). Quit EQ for about a year, then met some friends at the base I had just gotten stationed at where we started to talk about old EQ days. *sigh* So I started playing EQ AGAIN, but only for about 6 months, when I quit again. Boy my wife was happy.

Then my friend comes back from new york and says "Hey man, guess what i bought you while I was back in NY!" *sigh* Here we go again, lol.

Well, I'm still playing 13 months later and still loving it and my wife is still hating it, lol.


Oh, Yakiniku, good to see another SH poster here :) I know we're on opposite factions, but I'll keep my eyes open for you so I don't attack you without realizing it, hehe.

This is my first game of this type at all. Before that the only games I really played was the occassional FPS, and sports games on a console.

My co-workers talked about this game to no end for months and I was disinterested. About 2 months ago a magazine I get had a trial version of it. I was home sick and figured, what the hell, worst case I lose a day home being sick.

I started off on the Horde, playing a warrior Orc, went exploring too far and got my arse handed to me by anything the breathed on me. Tried a few others, until I found the NE Druid. My friend also created an NE Hunter at the same time so we were questing and grinding together which was a load of fun. He stopped playing for a while b/c of a g/f and I started picking up on lvling, grinding, joining a guild and expanding online friendships and I just got hooked.

As per my signature I'm now lvl 34 and having a blast with my Druid.

I always liked Starcraft. :D

There wasn't really any element of chance to how I started WoW. I'd been keeping up with it since Blizzard announced it at E3 ... 2003? Got into beta in mid '04, and pre-ordered a box, so I was all set for release.

(Unfortunately the box showed up a day late, but a friend let me use her CE guest key so I could play the first night. :P)

i was in eq for several years - some rl friends of mine started wow, so it thought great thisll be more rl-friendly than eq... it somewhat is, but then again not really :)

Oh, Yakiniku, good to see another SH poster here :) I know we're on opposite factions, but I'll keep my eyes open for you so I don't attack you without realizing it, hehe.

/bow

I'll keep an eye out for ya too. :wiggle:

You could say it all started when an ex-boyfriend got me hooked on Diablo II, if you wanted to get picky.

I quit games for a loooong time after that, until SW:G came out. I was intrigued, began playing, and landed in the laps of some absolute crazies on Sunrunner. They became my guild. Our name? Realm of Emotive Insanity. That should probably tell you something.

We all defected to EQ2, frustrated with the constant attempts at rebalancing and the lacking content. We lasted there for a year or so, until the expansion. We were boooooored.

Now we prowl the length and width of Azeroth, frightening the lemmings. Dyslexics Untie!

I wish my gf would play. :mad2:

played EQ since 98. Bunch of friends were talking about WoW before it was in beta, eventually got in during phase 2 of beta for WoW and have been playing off and on since. I picked up WC3 during phase 2 to have something to do during the down time and get a bit of the lore of WoW. Aside from that I had never heard of Blizzard prior, as I was never a Starcraft or Warcraft player. I did finally understand what the term "Zerg" meant after all this and what exactly people were referring to in the "b.net kiddie" players =/

Heh, wish my wife would play too...She wants me to get on myspace.com, but i told her the only way i would was if if she made a wow character...Probably goes without saying, I still haven't made an account on myspace, heh

I was always reticent to get involved in a subscription based game, but loved the whole Warcraft Universe since WC2, I had to give it a try, and have been loving it ever since.

i used to play star wars galaxies then when the New game enhancement (NGE) came which completely ruined it by changing the game too much i left and started WoW which is a lot better in almost everyway

My bf got hooked by some of his friends he played other games with. They basically said they would pay for part of his subscription if he would join up with them. Then I watched him and thought it looked like fun. I played on his account for a few months, but then decided it would be more fun to run with him than have to take turns playing. I got my own account....and that's how it all started.

This is the first computer game I have played. I played console alot growing up....but never really got into computer games until now.

I got started kinda like Buttons did. My fiance is a big gamer and has played all the other Warcrafts and Diablo and many others. I was never interested in the other games even tho he desperatly tried to get me interested. But after watching him play WoW for a few months, I wanted to play..... and now I'm hooked! My first char was a female night elf rogue, lvl 40.

Well I started out playing eq myself. Played it off and on for 6 years though the last year it just got really boring and they kept releaseing all those broken exspansions. Though was able to get the wife interested in EQ the last year or two. After about 4 months of no MORP we desided to try out a different one. It was a toss up between EQ2 and WoW. Though after the way sony handled EQ I really didnt look forward to bi-yearly exspansions and having to fork over the money just to stay current with content. So desided to give blizzard a try. So far we have been very happy with the results.

I always played FPS. Quake, Half-Life, and Thief are the ones that took most of my time. I was in a Quake III clan for about a year before it disbanded and then hung out with a bunch of x-clan mates at thier new clan's web page and server. Last March someone suggested WoW. And soon half of the regulars were playing and it sounded pretty cool. But all I had was a PIII 733 with a Voodoo 3 Ti200 and 384 RAM....a tad too slow on the proc side....:) but I took a chance that it might work. And it did!
It slowed to a crawl in IF even after the 512 machine max upgrade. But was still playable. I managed to level to 47 on that machine until I got myself a new one for Chirstmas. I'm lvl 52 as of today and hope to reach 60 before the expansion pack.
Note: Half-Life2, Quake 4 and Thief:Deadly Shadows are sill waiting to be played. (Thief Fan Missions are still played a lot though! :))

Well my friends and I were talking about games a few months back, WOW was mentioned and none of us played, we were like WTF? So we started and now its taken over our lives. I'm only at 31 with my main (human warlock) and started my NE druid a couple days ago. Despite the problems with lag I love this game. Lvl 60 or bust!

Go back about ten years or so-- EQ first came out and I and my gaming buddies were looking for something to do in order to stay in touch. We'd all started moving and traveling and it wasn't about hanging out at parties and raves anymore-- we just didn't have time to get together and tabletop game, so MMORPGs seemed like the next logical step. It got us together, and we had a great time hanging out even though we were states away, had kids and jobs, etc.

Several years back I got a poke from a friend about a job opportunity. It was for Blizzard Games doing textures for something called "World of Warcraft." I felt like such a total boob for saying "World of Warcraft? Uh, sure, yeah, I've seen it..." during the interview. *headdesk* Fortunately that didn't hinder me-- I got really far in the process and ended up turning it down because of other reasons, but there was a bee in my bonnet about not being better prepared.

Skip forward to Christmas, post CoH/CoV burnout and my BF says "you should really try WoW. Seriously, I think you'll like it." Having been burned by EQ (soooo many years of my life spent in that world) I was reluctant... but around Christmas time I went with my dad to grab some Tax software from Best Buy and he saw me reading the back of the WoW box. Since I didn't get something else I'd wanted for Christmas, he picked it up for me.

So... since late December of '05, here I am. :)

A little background first, I had been thinking about playing an MMO since about this past Christmas and looked at many different games from Guild Wars to WoW, but eventually lost interest because of the mixed reviews all the MMO's got on top of the monthly fee.

So on a random day, Jan 21, I decided to go to my local gamestore to buy some used games. As i walked in, the employee and a customer were debating about which MMO was better, WoW or FFXI. I immediately listened in to their conversation and told them how I had been interested in an MMO and maybe this conversation would push me towards actually getting one.

After about 30 min of hearing about the two games, the employee convinced me to get WoW right then and there. She gave me her char name and her server and told me to join and add me to her friends list.

So as soon as I got home I waited patiently for the game to install and download all of the latest content, then finally was able to choose my character. The NE Druid was SCREAMING at me to pick it. I very happily obliged :)

I've been playing for almost a month now and my NE Druid is now level 37 with a 0/23/5 spec. I again thank all of the great people on these forums for helping me with many questions.

I never really liked RPG's or MMORPGs, usually played the FPS's. So last Christmas my youngest son decides he wants WoW and I wasn't keen on getting it due to the monthly fee. Anyway we bye him the game and an extra two months sub. He plays it for a month and says that i have to try it, I said I don't like those kind of games but he persisted. So I decide to have a go just to keep him quiet, next thing I know I'm a level 9 Druid and it's 3.30 in the morning. Now its a fight to see who's playing but it usually turns out my son plays during the afternoon and I get the night. Now just got to get the wife to play somehow.

I played SWG, they tore it apart, and I was like hmm, my wife played WoW so I gave it a try!

I'm currently trying to convince my fiance to start playing WoW. I know she'll give in eventually but that might not be until we move in together. It'd be cool if she played... /crossesfingers :)

I live in a flat with some friends, some of us knew each other from way back when we went to school, and others tagged on during the years we've lived there. There are 7 of us in total, and of those 7, 5 of us are avid Blizzard fans. I myself began playing blizzard games back in the days of Warcraft 1. I then played Warcraft 2, Starcraft, and Warcraft 3. I had heard many horror stories about people becoming scarily obsessed with MMORPGS such as EQ, and I had sorta promised myself never to start playing one. But my friends thought differently, and when the beta was announced most of them signed up for it.

I spent a lot of evenings just sitting watching them play. Bright, cartoony graphics and a hugely expansive world waiting to be explored started to sway me a little, but even right through the beta I still maintained I wouldn't play it.

In the weeks approaching the release of the game I finally changed my mind and decided I wanted to play. Unfortunately, RL was hitting me pretty hard at the time, and disposable income was not something I was blessed with. On the evening of the game's release, my friends got together and decided they would buy the game for me, and one of them would make the initial monthly payments for it so that I could join in and level up at the same time as them.

Things are much better now financially and although WoW has indeed swallowed up massive portions of my life, it's been such a fulfilling experience that I feel really happy I made the decision I did.
Even better, my girlfriend was also convinced by the bright cartoony world, and she has a lvl 60 druid on the same server as me and my friends. It hasn't proved as destructive to my life as I was worried it would (I'm a car salesman, writing this post from work, hehe), and I'm thankful I did change my mind in the end.

-Annik

I started out playing Lineage2 and quit after close to a year being sick of all the farmers and 10 y/o's running around annoying the hell out of me.

Moved to EQ2 because I really like the graphics and was supposed to have a more mature crowd. I still like it, just got bored with nothing to do with 2 toons at 60 for so long.

So, I decided to try WoW out and give it a shot, while I abhore the graphics (way too cartoonish for me and i think it looks like *%$#) I think I got lucky and ended up on a more mature server. I really like the crafting, questing and BG's. So this will support my crack habit till Vanguard comes out.

mmmm Vanguard...be nice to really use my brain again fighting lol

I started playing MMO's with FFXI with my ex. When WoW came of my friends started moving there. My ex wasn't too keen on trying a new game, but by then I was burnt out from getting 2 characters to lvl 65ish (white mage and thief).

I ended up starting a month after release and first leveled a rogue to 60 alliance side. My account was stolen by my ex and my keys trashed by mistake.

Long story short I ended up rolling Horde on another account to hang out with friends from vent (ok and to kill my ex and his friends. It just made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside). Their guild was running short on healers so I rolled a druid. I ended up getting my alliance account back after 4 months or so.

I have both of my characters in hard core raiding guilds, though my rogue doesn't get much use these days. WoW is my life besides work.

WoW is my life besides work.

./salute


-Annik

mmmm Vanguard...be nice to really use my brain again fighting lol

I hear ya! UO was a game of skill until Garriott left and the suits took EA over along with the game...catering to trammies, banksitters (I suppose that's being redundant lol), and anti-PvP whiners.

Here's to looking at VG's launch...or to my beta invite :beerchug: