1.1. First Steps

Part I: Vanilla

"Gear doesn't make a bad player good."

World of Warcraft login screen,
during the Vanilla ('04-'07) era
Copyright 2004 © Blizzard Entertainment

The Gamer

Let me make something perfectly clear: EverQuest. fucking. sucked. I squandered four months of my life wandering Norrath trying to establish just what it was, exactly, that everyone found so "revolutionary". It looked awful. The game was brutally unforgiving -- death was unnecessarily punitive, wiping away days of experience. Investment was demanding, hour upon hour of tedious grinds in a less-than-exciting world, and the eventual payoffs were laughable, at best. Huge risk. No reward. I remember being up late one night, standing on a frozen plateau overlooking Everfrost Peaks, and thinking to myself, what the hell am I doing here? I've played this game for four months. I have nothing to show for it. I don’t know anyone online. I haven't met anyone in-game. I don’t know what my goal is. I've barely leveled at all (I was 21)...and I have absolutely no interest in pursuing this further.

EverQuest's publisher (Sony Online Entertainment) made the decision to cancel very easy. Every move they made was textbook of how not to treat your customers. Server crashes would result in massive losses of experience (and therefore, played time), yet no official ever stepped up, apologies, took responsibility, or offered us any kind of refund. Oh. Yeah. About that. We messed up. Tough shit. See you in game. SOE showed me truly selfish and shallow a corporate enterprise could be. When I closed my EQ account, I vowed never to play another MMO again.

Meh, I gave it a solid attempt, but honestly, MMOs weren't for me. I'd been playing video games since childhood, priding myself on my console collection. At its peak, I had a NES, a Sega Master System, a SNES, a Sega Genesis (plus Sega CD), a Turbo-Grafx 16, a 3DO, and even a NeoGeo. When it came to video games, I didn't fuck around. Fighting games were my choice du jour, back in the day, but honestly, I played a little bit of everything: platformers, racing games, puzzles, shooters, RPGs, hell I'd even play a sports game...if it was good. But I nerded out like nobody I knew. Instead of reading comics, I read video game manuals; instead of popular music of the day, I was recording video game music and listening to it on my walkman. Even the nerds that knew me were taken aback. I took this shit seriously.

As I left high school and headed to college, PC gaming...and a new genre...took over: FPS. First, it was DooM, and then with the discovery of the Internet at my local college campus, Quake soon followed. I built a Quake clan and had regular LAN parties that went until all hours of the morning. We played CounterStrike and Team Fortress until we couldn't keep our eyes open. It was at these LAN parties that I was first exposed to another genre of game: RTS.

Kael'thas confers with Lady Vashj after arriving in Outland,
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne

The Gamble

I was enthralled. So much was going on at once, it felt like a human being couldn't keep track of it all...and yet, they did. I watched as my friends played Warcraft II games that culminated in massive attacks, collaborative defense, and tactical advances that slowly edge the game in their favor. It was too late for me to jump on the Warcraft II and Starcraft bandwagon by that time, so once I heard that Warcraft III was in development, I hit the books, hard.

Scouring online forums revealed a level of depth I hadn't really seen in a PC game. The expansiveness of the story, the characters, the plots...this was far more than a similar orcs vs. humans. I was continually stunned by the artwork -- the early Metzen and Didier sketches were so stylized and unique. There was never enough.

Every time I came across something new buried in the Blizzard fandom, I felt drawn toward the franchise. At the release of Warcraft III, I dove in, played through the campaign religiously, watched as the Humans continually ignored the pleas of Medivh about the return of The Burning Legion. It disgusted me. I watched as Thrall took the "bad guys" and constructed the Horde, built Orgrimmar, vowing to fight oncoming invaders. It invigorated me. I watched Arthas fall and become The Lich King; I watched Illidan hunt him while he himself was hunted by Maiev. I built small cities on the fields of Lordaeron, the red dirt of Outland, and the frozen wastes of Northrend. I did it all...and I wanted more.

So, when Blizzard announced their next entry in the Warcraft franchise...my heart sunk.

World of Warcraft? An MMO? Made by people who loved EverQuest?

I'd played video games my entire life -- and I knew what was fun; EQ was the very antithesis of enjoyment. And how that company treated their fans? Would Blizzard be the same? I was very uninterested in pursuing that experience all over again.

So, I had to take a very big gamble.

~~

World of Warcraft was released at the end of November of 2004, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. My only previous experience in an MMO had ended in disaster. Once the chaotic servers stabilized after an insanely unprepared launch of the game, Blizzard went out of their way to apologize for the instability. I remember being surprised by this stance. What? A company that cares about its customers? Willing enough to accept responsibility for their lack of preparedness and even issue refunds as an act of good faith?

There were other little signs that World of Warcraft (and Blizzard) would do things a little differently. They took great pains to enforce appropriate names, and even had system built into the interface to allow the reporting of any observed names in violation of the rules. Wow. A company that gives a shit about rules...and actually enforcing them? For the sheer volume of trolls (the gamers, not the race) online, looking to push the envelope as far as they can in every opportunity possible, it was a nice thought to see a company attempting to care. But would they go the distance?

I decided to test this apparent integrity by getting into a routine where where I would catch shitty names, quickly /friend them (adding them to a personalized list of contacts in game), then report their inappropriate names to Blizzard. Then, I would sit back and watch. Sure enough, in less than 24 hours, I would log back in and see the person's name fixed -- renamed to something more appropriate.

Impressive! And...my condolences to "Loves2Sp00ge69". Sorry about getting your name changed.

It was, of course, because Blizzard was different. They did care. At one point, at least. But we'll get into that later.

Kerulak prepares to accept signatures for the

creation of the guild Descendants of Draenor,

Thunder Bluff

The Guild

So, there I was. Back inside a game I swore I'd never set foot in again. Well, I thought, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to set myself up for success. I'll play by the MMO rules, if that's what it'll take.

It became obvious, pretty early on, that I would have to band together with others in-game -- done by forming what is referred to as a "guild" -- in order to get anything accomplished. And creating a guild starts with choosing a name.

Names meant a lot to me; I felt strongly that the first impressions you get after reading a guild name would speak volumes about the folks comprising the guild. And although it might be a kick-in-the-pants to name a guild "FAILURES AT LIFE", I couldn't help but feel like it was a direct reflection of the guild mentality. I wanted my guild to attract a different type of player, one who shared my nerdy love of the Warcraft universe; who would read our guild name, and say to themselves "Ah, clever! Someone knows their Warcraft shit!"

I dug deep into the lore, looking for a clue. The gang of misfits I rolled with all agreed that we would take up the cause of the Horde and fight for the Orcs and their allies, since they were the ones to take a stand against The Burning Legion in Warcraft III -- we chose honor over hubris. Victory...or death.

Back in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, I remember that the Orcs came from another world, one now ravaged and torn by conflict. This broken, barren wasteland was referred to as Outland, but before its destruction, it bore another name: Draenor. It was this name of the Orc home world that struck a chord with me. What better way to identify with the cause of the Horde, originally driven by the Orcs, than to take the name which defined their origins? And with the Tauren, the Forsaken, and the Trolls aligned with the Orcs to form the "evil" faction in the game, the Horde carried on the tradition of those first Orcs that burst through The Dark Portal from Outland into Azeroth. We were the Horde, and we were their descendants.

And so it was, that on that day of November in 2004, we became known as Descendants of Draenor.

It would still be awhile before we set foot into the unexpected territory known as 40-man raiding. You have to crawl before you can walk. And for me, crawling meant not only leveling to 60, but ensuring each member of the guild did as well...without clawing each other's throats out.