First Day Playing WoW (Day 3)

*cough* I think I might've missed a few days here, but hey, I didn't have to do these sequentially.

So, my first day playing WoW - it was July of 2007. I know this because July is when my company goes on a summer-shutdown meaning the offices close and everyone takes two weeks off to go do other stuff. As programmers, we usually use this time to do a lot of testing while all the users are gone without fear of breaking something but for whatever reason that year I remember not having a lot to do so I worked from home quite a bit.


One sunny morning, I remember logging out of work fairly early and wondering what to fill my day with and the thought came floating down that I'd seen my brother playing Warcraft the other day. Maybe I should see if it's any fun. So, I downloaded and installed the game, plugged in a 10-day free code thingie, and stared at the list of races and classes before me.

I honestly cannot remember why I picked a human mage, but I did, and logged in. I still remember the camera panning down onto my little female human from the sky in Northshire Abby. After I began questing, I don't think I actually moved until I hit level 10.

Getting new spells as I leveled was particularly exciting, seeing the zone spreading out further and further made me open up the world map so I could gawk at the zones wondering how long it would take me to see them all (mind I thought I'd always be running through them, or at best, getting some kind of land mount). The most frustrating period was getting killed over and over and over again by the Murlocks around Stone Cairn Lake while trying to get the remains of the two soldiers (is that quest even in the game anymore?) until I realized - I could ask for help from other players.

I have a distinct memory of taking the road east until I wound up in the cross-roads and I selected one of the spiders and saw that it was level 13 or something - so much further up than me! I couldn't wait to level up and kill it. Running west, I stopped at the gated bridge heading into Westfall and thought, oh, I shouldn't go until I finish leveling up here, it's probably too tough.

Occasionally I saw gryphons flying overhead and wondered what the hell that was. How were people riding those things? I don't think I even stepped into Stormwind other than seeing the bridge and the statues and then deciding it was probably too high level for me, even though there were quests sending me in there.

My boundaries were the waters and walls around Elwynn Forest. That first day was spent in the sunny woods and later that night, after hitting cap, and realizing I couldn't level any further, I signed up for an account, deleted that character, and re-rolled on the best RP server I could find after a bit of web-searching.

Who knew.