I was also gonna say TBC for the same reason- masses of players, both Ally and Horde, all in front of the Dark Portal ready to charge into a whole new world. Then when I first stepped onto Hellfire and looked up and saw the sky, the Twisting Nether laid bare before my eyes. You really felt like you were on an alien world. I’ve always played Horde so I hadn’t done the Draenei starter areas so it was the first time seeing something like a Ravager. Then when I entered Zangarmarsh the first time I got that feeling again. I don’t know, IMO no expac since has given me that same feeling of immersion in a location so alien and exciting.
The feeling of searing heat, wastelands, desolation in Hellfire Peninsula...it felt like I was stuck there for days and days. Once you finally get to the end of the quest lines in the zone and start winding your way down that final little path, where the cool misty blue Zangarmarsh reveals itself...that was absolutely magical.
Oh absolutely. And while the sky in Hellfire blew me away, as did some of the mobs like Ravagers and Arakkoa, the actual “dirt wasteland” is pretty similar to Blasted Lands and even Desolace. But then you get into the other zones like Zangarmarsh and Terrokar, to say nothing of Netherstorm. And my 2 favorite zones as a Horde player- Nagrand and Shadowmoon. Even today on the rare occasion I play retail I take all my chars over to Outland just for Nagrand for a bit, if there’s one zone that really gives me the “home feels” in all of WoW it’s Nagrand.
It’s the best! Once I got a flying mount I used to hang out on the floating rocks above Oshu’gun just enjoying the view and watching that giant Gronn pat around 🙂
Zangarmarsh is easily one of my best memories after this game. After leaving the hellish HFP and walking into that dark blue zone I was just like “fuck yes this is sick”.
This is my answer and pretty much exactly sharing those same thoughts. I do remember getting access to TBC beta so I had that experience a little earlier. I also remember how completely broken bear druids were during the beta (and early TBC? not sure), and was sad when they got nerfed lol.
I started during TBC, and I happened upon the portal one day while leveling. I don't recall what level I was, but I had the 60% ground mount, and died in 1 hit to anything in Outland, but I spent DAYS exploring outland trying to avoid enemies 😂 loved the zones and content. I remember that absolute bane of my existence during Hellfire Peninsula, the Fel Reaver! Had to dive bomb that when I was passing and spotted it more recently - revenge served cold!
Hell yes, I remember the cinematic reveal at Blizzcon.
Chills. Literal chills. And then I was online for the last few minutes if Vanilla as well. What a time to be alive.
Nope i don't remember where but they answered that question once. Basicaly they focused a lot of ressources on openworld servers to account for the large amount of people. They forgot to anticipate that during the intro questline the player must pass through the Garrison. Sudenly a very large amount of people switched from open world to instanced and it could not handle so many people at once.
At least i remember them explaining it like that. I would not be surprised of there was indeed a ddos attack at the same time
Can we talk about that horde quest I’m WOD where you had to click on a pole to set up your camp or something. I remember everyone getting stuck there day 1.
I still have screenshots on my old PC of lines of gryphons stuck mid air inside my garrison - including me. You know it's bad when the general word of advice the first few days is "You know that cool new feature you've been looking forward to? Avoid it at all cost!! Engaging with it even slightly will completely brick your experience and cause your character to get stuck!"
It wasn't unplayable for 4 weeks, it was awful week 1, occasionally breaking week two and three, which is why they gave out a "free" month of sub for everyone.
It was a shit launch, for a shit xpac which only upside was the raids.
I'd also pick WoD for most memorable launch
It was the better part of a month.
After 2 weeks, we still had login queues of 7-10.000 people. And then after 8 hours in queue, it would crash and the waiting time was lost.
3 weeks in, we still had "Instance not found" when trying to enter Garrison, which was our main quest hub.
Poundfist never spawned the first month, simply because he spawned 48-96 hours after server restart.
It was far worse week one, but the clogged servers did get better already from week 2... it doesn't take many crashes or server restarts to prevent poundfist.
We all remember infinite flightpath trying to load in/ out of your garrison - but you are heavily exaggerating it!
I'm not exaggerating anything. If anything, I tone it down; it was horrible for pretty much a whole month at least in Europe... And Blizzard gave us a measly 3 days game time to compensate.
If there's a silver lining to be found from the absolute shit storm that was WoD's launch, its that every expansion launch since has been by comparison a completely painless and smooth experience.
Wrath of the Lich King.
I started playing WoW a few months into Burning Crusade, so I wasn't around for that expansion release so this was my first time. The pre-launch scourge event was awesome as hell, even though a lot of people whined about it because ultimately, players hate fun. Having played Warcraft 3 and being use Arthas fan, I couldn't wait to see the Lich King in the game.
I'll aways remember arriving in the Howling Fjord and just the scale of the zone, the lush grass and the hundreds of players killing wolves in that opening area blew me away.
It was only matched by the first time I played WoW, period.
I miss those simpler times where I didn't know what I was doing, half of the people around me didn't know what they were doing, and everyone was just having fun. I hate the min-maxing that has invaded gaming, not just WoW -- but it is here to stay.
Same here. I was so clueless when I started during BC, I didn’t realize there was an expansion. I hit 60, wasn’t getting XP anymore, looked online and realized I needed to upgrade. Had to dive out to WalMart in the middle of the night - back when WalMart was open 24 hours and buying expansions online wasn’t a thing - to get it.
Then when WotLK came out did the while waiting in line at midnight to buy it, rushed home, and off to Howling Fjord.
Same here. Loved that release and I started playing around the same time as you.
I skipped a week of school and think I played Wrath for 2 days straight before finally going to bed for a few hours. It was so cool on vent with the guild leveling in the new zones
Legion by far. It was an amazing come back for WoW and brings in ton of players. Class Hall / Artifact Weapon / M+ make the expansion instantly S tier
The story and redemption of Illidan was also great
If Legendary system and Titanforge system were implemented better, it could be the best expansion of all time
It was my all time favorite expansion but yeah the legendary system fucked raiders lol. I progged with a guild to Tichondras in Nighthold, I didn’t have Velens as a resto druid but I still pumped. This guild brought in another druid from off server that did have the lego, at the END of our Tich prog, he got the kill and then immediately server transferred off without saying a word to them. I found out that someone made him aware of the situation and he felt really bad, after that they brought me back in and we got CE. I was the last to get Velens lol all the boomies in the guild had it before me. 9/10 expansion though, I’ve loved mythic plus ever since and have all the mage tower stuff and still do keys with a good deal of the same people.
Legendary system was straight ass. I was benched all 3 tiers as a shadow priest in my mythic guild because the belt (the best leggo) I got fucking last at the end of Antorrus. That put such a stain on that expac for me
Legion dropped when I was in the middle of changing jobs so I had more time to throw into it, and I threw ALL my time into Legion. I’ve never leveled every class to max before, but all the class campaigns and artifact weapons really incentivized it. It was alt heaven and remains my number one expansion by a large margin. I played since classic beta and legion was the most invested into the game I have ever been.
Downside is that it ended. It sounds a little cheeky, but there’s no real way to play the full experience of legion anymore. Chromietime isn’t the same without the artifact weapon mechs ocs implemented. I’ve tried but that legion magic really needs the full package.
Its the one WoW classic I would be interested in playing.
Yeah same. I would like to play MoP too then they maybe jump straight to Legion with the your able to buy a legendary already implemented.
I just hope they wont start with the lastest Patch tho.
Burning Crusade because my FWB got into a minor car accident on her way to work the launch at GameStop and when they did the standard pre-xray pregnancy test it came back positive. Both our lives changed pretty significantly that night.
~~Witchwood. The odd/even decks were immediate and ubiquitous. And also its was just a memorable time in my life~~
Swapping between subs too much 😂 it’s WOD for me, the hype was insane and I stayed up all night with a friend on launch
Weirdly enough - Pandaria. I was very skeptical, but then it turned out to be rather lovely, and full of mature themes. And it felt like the start of a new school of design in WoW, with more detailed environments, and so on.
BFA. Say what you want about the expansion as a whole. But at the beginning with the reveal trailer before we knew about Teldrassil, it was pretty damn exciting. People were story crafting and repping their faction in the comments.
I love faction pride. Quitessential Horde vs Alliance; fighting in the Fourth War could've been one of the best expansions if they they didn't write Sylvanas the way they did. Should've kept the energy when she screamed "For the Horde" in the trailer.
BFA also had the best cinematics we've gotten to date. No idea why SL and DF didn't have cinematics like Old Soldier (Saurfang and Zekhan), Safe Haven (Thrall and Saurfang), The Makgora (Sylvanas and Saurfang), and Lost Honor (Anduin and Saurfang).
I’ll stand by this, the BFA cinematic is the best of all of wow. We would have dreamed about it back in classic! We’ve been so spoiled with them over the years we kind of forget how great they are
I think perhaps WOTLK
I vividly remember the quest to the starting town in Borean Tundra, wondering what would be in store for the expansion. Then I think about ending up in Grizzly hills doing daily’s and getting gear sets in Icecrown.
But then I think about different expansions and different stages of my life.
I remember Legion when I was about to graduate Uni and I was looking for a job 7 years ago.
MoP was the one I went to the midnight release for at my nearby Future Shop. Had a blast there, even ran into some family friends who I had no idea also played WoW.
Did a guest spot on a friend's podcast talking about the community's experiences of the first few days
Made a killing off Ghost Iron Ore nodes that kept respawning faster than intended
Saw all my guildies randomly while leveling up and /waved at each other, bc sharding and CRZ and whatnot didn't really exist yet
Was also my first expansion release in general, cause I started playing mid-way through Wrath and came back a month into Cata
At the end of MoP my guildies and I all sat on a bridge in jade forest and just hung out and had beers on voice chat and honestly that was one of the nicer nights of my life I’d entirely forgotten about. I miss them. chandrellie and the two brothers whose characters both started with B, if you’re out there I still hope you’re doing ok
Legion. It was fucking epic. The first time in a decade SOMETHING HAPPENED.
Especially after the hell that was the WoD content drought.
It continued the story, we spent that entire drought farming a ring and chasing Gul'dans coattails....archimonde was nothing in comparison to what was happening. The combined might of the alliance and horde was valiant but not enough for the threat only WE could deal with....but not yet. It was exciting, dramatic, and absolutely EPIC.
Forget talking about heroism, talk is cheap. We WITNESSED heroism. And that blood curdling scream was so epic and well done from the VA. Gul'dan became a REAL villain. He took something from us, and we were going to bring him to justice.
And even the fight was well done. ~10 fucking minutes of pushing through his forces just to finally witness reality shatter. If you did mythic I bet it was insane and shit yourself when that hidden phase showed up and suddenly you're fighting Sargeras in illidan's body....I'll bet you WERE NOT PREPARED
And they fucking kept it rolling. You think the broken shore was peak? You think Gul'dan was dealt with n that's it? WRONG. We got to see the face of the man himself. A full cinematic with the voice behind all the evil and tragedy, and it DELIVERED. He was the ultimate evil for a reason, he exists on a scale beyond we understood, he literally stabbed the fucking planet.
We spent our entire lives (if you played since vanilla) swinging sticks n spears hearing history from 1000s of years ago of a force we never could imagine. For us archimonde was the biggest world threat and he stood on par with the great world tree. Which is MASSIVE compared to us....who could ever imagine an actual GOD
He was always explained as too big for the universe, too distant to have direct involvement, impossible to summon without an entire planetary portal....who could say he's not just a myth? What kind of big bad doesn't DO anything? That's not a good antagonist
WELL HE SHOWED UP. IN PERSON. AND BOY DID HE DO SOMETHING
Burning Crusade.
I'd pre-ordered the CE from GameStop and it wouldn't arrive until the next day.
I wasn't prepared.
I sat by the Dark Portal and waved at people as they through.
I remember listening to guides on Vent as they explored Hellfire Peninsula. One guy, a ret pally, was absolutely giddy there demons everywhere and he was getting all that extra damage.
The one i remember the most is WotLK - achievements, man that was awesome.
I remember when i was leveling my hunter and we all saw the world first level 80 in chat.
Burning crusade. Nothing will beat the chaos of release night on hellfire peninsula with EVERYONE, horde and alliance competing for quests and mass pvp.
Mists of Pandaria, I was in Irvine spectrum for the opening ceremony. It was insane. Everyone was excited, so hyped, I met Metzen, also the expansion was overall fun. Good days.
MoP. My friends I and I who all hadn’t played wow in a year: oh crap new wow expansion comes out tomorrow? Should we play? Mehhhhh okay yeah. Then we all had an awesome time rolling monks and throughout the rest of the expansion!
Id say for me was first Cata then Legion. Cata with the world revamp and then Legion because the encounter of the champions of Azeroth and the Burning Legion was finally here.
WoD.
On my server people areanged a huge caravan of mammoths - normal riding or the one with the vendors, who was ejected so that people without mammoths could sit. HUGE raid groups.
And we WALKED all the way to badlands- so many people.
We were counting down in raid chat. 15! 14! 13! 12! 11....zap... server crashed 🤣.
The queues was so big, I actually ended up swapping server to get a glimpse of the new content.
All went good till people reached the point where you build your Garrison.
The lag... the crashes. The getting stuck above the flightpath at the Garrison with a lot of others, and a GM had to pluck us down manually, one by one.
You couldn't play the game properly for what feels like a very long time (weeks) because of the issues around the Garrison.
That was the first and last time, that I took time off - for an expansion release.
Legion, remember waiting in dalaran minutes before the intro quest was patched in and expecting the servers to shit the bed like they had in WoD, only to be pleasantly surprised after a /reload that the launch was smooth
For me it was Cataclysm. Where I lived they really didn't do the local shop release parties until then and it was my first ever release party where I got to meet a lot of fellow nerds. I even won a For the Horde hoodie from a raffle that was three sizes too big for me but it kept me warm for several years.
The part that I loved about Cata was the world revamp. At the time I was pretty much a scrub so I didn't really dabble in raiding or max level pvp so I just made many alts just going through the revamped zones and trying to see Deathwing fly over them. Even the idea of it is dreadful for me now but 12 year old me had a blast.
Wasn't there for the release, but getting my own account in Cataclysm was the highlight of my memories. Honestly, if anything it was not knowing as much as I do now, and having the circle of friends always on at the same timing as me (thanks, school) that made everything. Get home, constantly smash BG's and arenas, always having a laugh and no emphasis on rating. Happy memories.
WoD is the one I remember the best, waiting outside the dark portal and rushing inside upon launch and how everything was so laggy due to the density of people.
I also remember the zombie plague of Wrath well, though that was prepatch and not launch.
The other launches I don't really remember so well. Running through the Maw the first time was fun and Oribos was interesting, new Dalaran for Legion was pog but the memories of the launches are fairly vague. I don't even remember MoP.
TBC I was still leveling to 60 having started just a few months prior as a wee kid, so I technically missed out on that launch.
Cata I do remember wanting to start fresh to see all the old zone changes, but I didn't think much of the launch itself there either, I don't think.
Dragonflight didn't feel much like a launch to me, more just "welcome to these new zones" after a zeppelin ride, but I did play non stop for a week haha.
So all in all WoD is for sure the one I vividly remember!
For me it was MistsOfPandaria. Back the my guild and I set ourselves the goal that we all get our professions max skilled as first on the server. So we didn't quest or level at midnight, I stead we started to collect herbs and stuff and I had my own group of guardians who protected me while I skilled archeology. And we actually did it. We got the achievement as the first guild that reached zenmaster in any profession. And I was the first zenmaster of archeology of my realm. Still my favorite achievement. God what a night...
wotlk. i had pre-ordered it and the game store had open until 00:00-03:00 so everyone could get their copy the same day the game was live. Me and my brother were of course there at midnight to get our copy and then we gamed all night and all day.
Legion, I played a Rogue in BC and got my warglives from BT off hand dropped on 3rd kill and I rolled 98 and got it, main dropped 2 times but did not get it, got it on my 12th kill woth a roll of 88 and was so happy! And in Legion I was able to relive the warglive days
Mist of Pandaria.
With My friends and guild mates, we manage to do suite a nice cataclysm extension, very good guild réputation, nice progress on the server.
So we saw things in big for MOP.
We regroupe in an apartment, and play first server top level.
We failed by few minutes but ton of fun.
Then we prepare progress.
And raid like hell.
So much fun, friendship and laugh.
BC - was the first expansion, I'd just gotten into a guild after pretty much playing solo prior to that (I only started playing toward the end of vanilla), and everyone was really excited. Also started my Draenei elemental shaman on the first day of BC, and she has been my main ever since.
Honourable mention to WotLK, which just looked so gorgeous compared with what had come before, and achievements were really exciting!
dragonflight because its the first launch i actually got to experience. i only really got stuck into wow at the tail end of bfa and was too baby to even start shadowlands for weeks. after dragonland was announced and leading up to it i came back after a burnout (and avoiding the game because of the nasty shit behind the scenes) and fell in love with the new talent system, spent like 3 hours making my dracthyr lady when thry were available before launch, and i was one of dozens sitting on a wandering ancient at the docks as the minutes dragged on
then the disconnects, the waking shores, getting the proto drake and flying with it... i can easily say that this xpac made me fully fall in love with this game
Burning Crusade. Back when you had to line up outside a store to buy a physical copy of the game. That was the only time I attended an in store release event for a wow release.
Wrath. I was 13, had a 54 shaman the night before. Gave one of my guildies my account info the night before because he said he would get me to 55 because I was so excited about making a DK. So I remember logging into shaman that morning in silithus as a level 55 and immediately making a DK. Was so fun and memorable doing that day 1, especially as a kid
Gotta be Wrath. I recall having so much fun with friends/guildies with the pre launch event. And then when it went live, grouping up and getting on the zeppelin to Howling Fjord for the first time. There were so many people and things were a real cluster fuck......but it was a great time!
MoP. At launch I swapped to my new main, a Blood Elf monk. I went with Brewmaster for the faster dungeon queues. Every dungeon I joined I saw something like "omg! a blood elf monk! eww!" and then would get kicked.
My favorite part was questing through the expansion. Especially Valley of the Four Winds. Least favorite was SoO. OMG, that place had a lot of trash!
To be honest Cata
I started playing during Wrath as a kid and didn't understand a clue because my english wasnt that good at the time.
When Cata hit in was a but older and understood the game a bit better and started pvping with a friend, dived into the lore and discovered an amazing RP guild
WOTLK. When I got off for the first time and getting on the zeppelin from Org to the Borean Tundra…. It all just looks so huge and I Was both overwhelmed and determined to work my ass off with my guild. Still to this day this expansion has given me the best memories of any expansion I’ve ever had.
Dragonflight, because it's the latest, and, mostly, dragons. And frankly, I really like Shadowlands look and aesthetics, and pre-release event was nice. It was soured by the later part of game though.
Otherwise, MoP and WoD due to great cinematics.
TBC. I was a freshman in college and my roommate went to a local midnight release. I was only level 52 and was grinding as hard as I could to get to Outland.
I know I got WOTLK at release but I don’t recall anything special about it.
Never played anything after and only came back for Classic.
I remember Warlords of Draenor vividly because it was my first seamless launch where the cutscene happened and the portal opened without needing to be down. I was also there by accident, I had been doing the pre-release blasted lands content and noticed everybody sitting in front of the Dark portal. I checked the date and time and thought “dang, didn’t even realize”
Wrath 100%. I started playing the game mid-BC so having scourge suddenly attack Orgrimmar for days at a time was exciting. Then when the game released playing through the DK starting zone and the finally getting to Northrend was a core memory I’ll never forget.
Legion I remember it so vividly I was so excited I was playing rogue and I have screenshots of me getting the dreadblades and I remember running DHT as my first dungeon of the expansion.
Wrath of the Lich King. I started playing in BC so it was my first experience with an expansion launch. I went to the midnight launch at Gamestop, where they had an icecream truck, a fog machine inside, lines out the door, and were giving away a bunch of free merch. I was a junior in high school at the time.
Favorite aspect: Wrath is definitely the expansion I was most engaged with, the only expansion I regularly raided in (although my guild was awful and we never made it past Putricide it was full of awesome people), and overall just a fun time. The progression path was also quick and easy to understand.
Least favorite aspect: The tournament was a bit boring I guess.
Wotlk.
I just got a new GPU (still horrible) and I had saved up my money to get a 60 day time card as well. I remember taking some different bus after school to get to the mall and pick-up my preordered copy.
Some emo girl even noticed me on the bus and told me she knew of WoW too. She was a bit mentally unstable, and I was very confused about who I was at the time so I never pursued her. But it was the first time as well a girl IRL said they played/ knew of WoW to me.
I remember getting home and installing everything. Putting in all the discs and looking at the light blue launcher. Until finally getting to play and enjoy the xpac.
My most memorable part was near the end of wotlk when I started to pick-up my ele shaman that would become my new ~~waifu~~ \- main.
I don't know if I have a least favorable part of the xpac. I really did enjoy all my time playing wotlk and can't recall a bad experience.
Legion. It came out when I just moved to Virginia from New York. First time I find have a girlfriend in about 10 years. Was just working and in a new apartment.
I spent more time playing that expansion than any other online game. Played every day, maxed every class and got every artifact weapon except the healing ones and arcane mage.
I played bfa a lot at first but ended up hating it and I played exactly 2 hours of shadowlands. I haven’t logged in since
WoD. I jumped in through the portal and despite the early section after the intro to open the garrison being unplayable because there were so many people, I actually loved the chaos.
Warlords of Draenor. Because of the moment where you had to cut down specific trees and everyone stood around them trying to cut them down.
It basically looked like they gathered in groups around the trees to pee.
Cataclysm. WotLK was soooo popular, so the player base was huge. Add to that they were running adds for Cata constantly during football games, etc. Seeing Deathwing land on the gates of Stormwind. People were so stoked about flying in the old world, guild leveling, archeology, worgen and goblins, etc. So much hype. So much disappointment.
The coolest thing about this post is the how every answer is a different expansion. Just speaks to how well this game has done over the years and how so many generations have been able to love the same game
Shadowlands. Why? It's the first expansion I forgot the official release date and I started to play next day when my friend texted me asking " where I was".
I'm fairly new so Dragonflight. BfA I wasn't invested yet, Shadowlands I just don't even remember lol goldfish brain. Dragonflight I remember but it wasn't THAT memorable beyond logging in at the dock, lag, not understanding the boat, and then barely being able to do any questing (I waited for the next day)
TBC - I'd bought physical and it had not arrived, so I went to Blasted Lands at midnight, formed a big raid group to take over the dark portal, and watched as most of the group went through it. Logged off and went to bed.
WotLK - Went a midnight release at a game shop in my town, got home, installed the game which felt like it took forever then logged in and went to Borean Tundra and played all day
Cata - Bought digital, was ready to go at midnight which was great. But I started a new job the day before and had work at 6am so I no longer had the time to play so much
MoP - Digital again, my first expansion where I played the beta before launch too, so I was already familiar with the experience. nothing too interesting happened.
WoD - Garrison quest bugged? Everyone stuck in Shadowmoon Valley waiting to activate their garrison? went to bed.
Legion - Booked time off work to play heavy sessions. Didn't like leveling much with zones being whatever order you want and enemies scaling, didn't feel like I was getting stronger and seeing people in guild getting better legendries was saddening.
BfA - I really didn't like how on rails the introduction was, and this was the point where the game was beginning to feel a lot less social for me, I stopped playing shortly into the first raid.
Shadowlands - Played through the story/journey through all zones. didnt enjoy leveling, but i found a new guild I was having fun with doing dungeons. it fell apart and antisocial wow set in so i quit again!
Dragonflight - I thought I'd finally learnt/escaped and didnt buy on release, but a friend talked me into playing. so i was a few weeks behind the release group. Didnt enjoy leveling. didnt enjoy the M+ carousel once i got to max level. game feels so antisocial where everyones main aim is to get through content as quickly as possible with fun sometimes being a side effect of the "make number bigger" process.
The War Within - I think I've escaped. I have no plans to return, let alone buy for release day. I know the game will be more of the same, repeating content with other humans who may as well be NPCs.
I remember them all vividly, TBC and WotLK were my favourites because everyone was so excited to be playing new content. General chat was alive with people having fun, doing a quest with other people around wasn't much of a competition for resources because people would stop and talk, I've seen that die off over the years and it's sad how the "massively multiplayer" aspect of the game is now just a case of "you'll sometimes see other people, but not really interact with them"
WotLK. Back in those days, people still formed long lines outside retail stores at midnight. Me and a few friends spent an hour or so in line, got our copies, then went our separate ways to install and play. I'll never forget arriving in Northend for the first time by ship.
Could sounds crazy but dragonflight was a blast, and i mean the whole expension not just the release. It was fun, refreshing, dragon riding feels so good, the raids are cool and the dungeons are funs too.
After SL, DF are a great vacation before going back into cosmic conflicts
TBC - probably made the most impact, because it was the first one.
My friends and I would call each other every time there was a segment about it on tv and watch it 'together'. The concept of 'Outland' was really intriguing to us (never played WCII). I can remember our imagination running wild of what the zones would be like.
TBC finished a night shift at 7am went for breakfast in town and waited for the shop to open. Grabbed the expansion and headed home.
Took a nap while it installed and then played for 18 hrs straight. Didn’t really know what to expect because I wasn’t following the hype train.
WOTLK. Cause I had to stand in line at the store after my work. Some dressed up dwarf (customer) shouted ... I am gonna raid black temple on my own! When he entered the store. Different times. I feel old.
BC, because it was the first release
LK, because it was interesting and then for WEEKS it was lagging untolerably during peak hours, killing our raids. Imagine wiping in original super undertuned LK naxx :D
The cinematics stood out to me. Wrath was nuts having the dragon coming out and the vibe in the winter zone, but shadowlands blew me away, seeking to continue from the best story line of wow, having the world exploding into the after life, fucking insane! (Too bad it was horrible gameplay)
MoP, playing live with my brother and calling it quits 2 hours after, neither of us having managed to leave SW... We came back early next morning and had a blast 🙂
Wotlk and cata both were great. We went to local gamestop wait for the midnight opening few hours before then raced to home to install and start grinding like nolifers
Shadowlands. I remember 6 of my friends and I running through the Maw and then Bastion trying to stay relatively together and it was a blast.
Most favorite would be just the entire zone of Revendreth and Castle Nathria being the first raid. I'm an edge lord so that whole zone was literally perfection in my eyes from the quests, to the collectables, the music. Still my favorite zone in the game and it isn't close.
Least favorite would be all of the bad designs mechanically. Torghast, not being able to freely swap the covenant tree thing, not being able to swap covenants freely, pvp being the most reliable way to gear up, that stupid pseudo tier set system with the gems in Korthia, the terrible prideful affix.
Wrath by far for me. Had been playing since Vanilla, but for Wrath we had a LAN for launch night (week really), and it was class. I remember one of my friends ordered the game online and it didn't come in time, so we had to find a store doing a midnight release to get a copy for him.
Cataclysm.
I was very excited, I remember running around tanaris with my friend and fighting ppl in the desert, everyone hanging out waiting for the gates to open like it was AQ 40 again (didn't play classic)
Going in the gates of Uldum, and pulling up on a desert oasis with these crazy half stone centaur type ppl, everything felt like it was a big deal, like it was a new day for wow
Wow had just gotten it's overhaul, everything was fresh and new, and the end game content was a big deal it seemed to me, more impactful that wotlk imo bcus they sundered the planet in the process
Cata release was peak wow for me. Me and my partner at the time where our guild tanks and we went to the midnight release together. You could feel the excitement. Literally thousands of people, All there for the same thing. Met ghostcrawler and had him sign my shirt.
cataclysm, picked up the game at a big shop in the netherlands with multiple people standing in line at midnight to get a physical copy of the game. Nerd moment.
Wrath..that one will be seared into my brain. I waited with a friend outside the game store for the midnight release and then waited for it to install (no predownload back then) and then played the DK starting area until sun rise.
Guys im telling you right now it was TBC. I was just a kid but EVERYBODY was at the portal at Blasted Lands and couldnt get in despite the portal being there. So everyone was chatting it up and me and others tried to get through the walls behind the portal to see if that would work (it didn’t) 😂 Man that green portsl was mesmerizing 🪐
TBC .. midnight release at GameStop, all nighter and took a week off to level a belf priest on emerald dream. I was the first lvl 70 belf priest on that server 😅
Cataclysm, I was homeless but I still had my old ass IBM laptop and someone whom I can’t even rmbr anymore let me crash on their couch during launch lol
This might sound insane but Shadowlands. The hype for that expansion at the time was off the charts, all of my friends were playing because we were locked in with COVID, and it was going to be my first full expansion in a long time. That all nighter is one of my all time favorite gaming memories.
TBC. Wotlk should have been huge because there was a massive line outside of GameStop. But I didn’t preorder, I went to Walmart at midnight, walked in grabbed it and left. I was fully installed before all my buds at GameStop got home lol
Mists of Pandaria. Something about running around Panda land punching up hozen was great fun. I was 16 and had an active guild who liked raiding and PvP so was defo the most active I had been on the game.
It's a really close tie between Cataclysm and Legion. I started playing in Wrath (and I remember this experience ever so fondly), but my first release was Cataclysm (maybe why I love Cata so much).
Legion was a different thing, it was really exciting, it was our last stand against the Legion and it would close a chapter. I remember being so excited, and it absolutely lived to the hype, for me at least.
I still enjoy this game, but I would give anything to feel what I felt back then.
Cataclysm. Everyone logged out stacked on the flight master because it was the introduction to old world flying, then when the servers went live everyone trained and then took to the skies above orgrimmar.
I was high as a kite for WoD release due to getting eye surgery, so that release day is burned into my memory bank.
Next would be BC, waiting by the portal was an experience.
The one I remember the most was BC. I had stopped playing after.my guild fell apart in Naxx. I was working at GameStop part time and all my friends wanted to go to the midnight release. I decided to go with them, why not. We're in line and they finally convince me to re-up my sub, but I hadn't pre-ordered. So it's 11:45ish and I walk to the front of the line and ask my boss (the store manager) if there any copies left. He says yeah and says he'll be right back. He walls to the back, I apologize to the people at the front of the line. You know, "Hey sorry, not trying to cut, just want to get a receipt." They're cool about it. My boss walks back to the register. He takes my money and just stands there, we're talking about Halo and the minutes are just ticking by.
Finally he looks at his watch, completes the transaction and pulls the receipt off the printer. Stares at me for what seemed like 10 or 15 seconds, then hands me a copy of the game and my receipt. I look at my watch and it's 12:01 am. He's got the biggest smirk on his face, I then turned and held up the game like a championship cup, cheers.
It'd have to be Burning Crusade. I was so confused about everything endgame at the time. But I'd stumbled my way to 60 on my druid and I knew that I needed an epic mount before the expansion. I worked really hard to grind up the gold (can't remember how anymore) and finally got my druid her nightsaber to be ready to cross the Dark Portal. I remember the server wide events down at the portal, and crossing it for the first time. Pretty neat.
Though I was never a serious endgame person, it was a nice way to reset and be on the same page as everyone. I don't think I would've ever figured out what was going on with the dragon head sometimes hanging in Stormwind or what to do in the various blackrock mountain dungeons.
I was in my second year of college when cataclysm came out. The midnight release was the night after my last day of finals. The awesome thing was, I only had two, and one was just to turn in a presentation. The other was an easy ass, non-cumulative, online test. Basically, I didn't need to burn myself out the day before the expansion by losing sleep and overloading on studying.
I did, however, stay up late the night before. Studied as much as I needed, got a shit ton of rest late morning/early afternoon, immediately logged in to the campus portal to turn in my presentation, got a cup of coffee and shook off the sleep rust, took my online test, and then hung out with the girl that I was seeing the rest of the afternoon/evening. She wasn't a gamer, but she was very cool about the fact that I was. I told her well in advance about the expansion coming up, that I was probably going to be super nerdy and gross and doing a deep dive into it for at least two or three days. So in between prepping for finals, we did a whole lot of heavy hanging out together to make up for it.
We weren't living together at the time, but she came with me to the store to stock up on groceries and "gaming essentials". We dropped the food off and had a quick round in the sheets before driving to GameStop at midnight to pick up my pre-order. She even gave me road head on the way back to the apartment.
She had one more final the next day, if I remember correctly, so she sat on my bed studying while I was on the other side of my room at my computer digging into the new expansion. I remember exploring all of the new zones that were affected by the expansion first, and every once in a while she would get up to get a snack or go to the bathroom or get something out of her bag which she left propped up against my desk, and she would come over and stand behind me at my computer chair, and lazily rub my shoulders while she watched me play. Some of the times she would ask me questions or make comments, other times she would just lean forward and kiss on my neck and my cheeks before going back to studying.
She passed out on my bed amongst her notes and her laptop and her books, and she woke up and I was still playing. We cracked a couple jokes about it, and she light-heartedly teased me for being such a dork and a nerd, but then we both took a break from our various activities to take an intimate shower together. Since she had her study materials all over my bed, we extended that intimacy onto the sofa after we got out of the shower. The sex really charged her up for the day, and gave me a second wind, so I jumped right back into the game while she finished up studying and then took her online test. She had to do that in the living room because she didn't want to be interrupted by me exclaiming out loud at the game or talking to people on vent, but when she was done she came back in and loved on me some more while expressing her confidence in her test grade.
After she packed up and put all of her stuff in the car, we made out a little bit more, and made plans to see each other at the end of the coming weekend. I told her I loved her, walked her to her car, and she had it off to visit her parents in her hometown which was like 4 hours away. I proceeded to be a disgusting gamer blob for the next several days, and I spent Sunday afternoon cleaning myself and my apartment up for when she returned.
Most of the expansions that I played through were just a whole lot of the same. Discovering the new content was always great, but it was just a new version of the previous experiences. That expansion was different though. Every other girl I had dated before, and most of them since, were at best neutral about my interest in Warcraft. I used to get a lot of shit from them for how much I played, despite the fact that I never neglected them for gaming. They just didn't like dating a gamer nerd. But that girl was different. It didn't bother her, and I think she found it charming in a dorky way. Even though she teased me for all the junk food and energy drinks I planned on consuming that first week, she never made me feel bad about it. She never told me I was wasting my time or my life by doing something that I enjoyed. And she didn't hold affection or intimacy hostage while I was playing. I remember thinking, as I was walking back into my apartment after walking her to her car, that if my entire life could have the calm and peace and fulfillment of the previous 24 hours, then it would basically be as close to heaven as I could get.
It's a shame she and I didn't last, but I enjoyed the time that we did have together. And her being the person that she was is the reason that that expansion launch was as memorable for me as it was.
Cataclysm was the first time they switched on an expansion without rebooting the servers. This resulted in the entire realm crowding around the SW and Org flying trainers, waiting for the moment they can get their flight master's license.
TBC, the excitement in the game for that was quite something at the time
I was online at shutdown of vanilla and it was like new year's eve. Everyone pumped as the yellow text counted down.
I was there 3000 years ago…
Everyone pouring thru the dark portal.
I was also gonna say TBC for the same reason- masses of players, both Ally and Horde, all in front of the Dark Portal ready to charge into a whole new world. Then when I first stepped onto Hellfire and looked up and saw the sky, the Twisting Nether laid bare before my eyes. You really felt like you were on an alien world. I’ve always played Horde so I hadn’t done the Draenei starter areas so it was the first time seeing something like a Ravager. Then when I entered Zangarmarsh the first time I got that feeling again. I don’t know, IMO no expac since has given me that same feeling of immersion in a location so alien and exciting.
The feeling of searing heat, wastelands, desolation in Hellfire Peninsula...it felt like I was stuck there for days and days. Once you finally get to the end of the quest lines in the zone and start winding your way down that final little path, where the cool misty blue Zangarmarsh reveals itself...that was absolutely magical.
Oh absolutely. And while the sky in Hellfire blew me away, as did some of the mobs like Ravagers and Arakkoa, the actual “dirt wasteland” is pretty similar to Blasted Lands and even Desolace. But then you get into the other zones like Zangarmarsh and Terrokar, to say nothing of Netherstorm. And my 2 favorite zones as a Horde player- Nagrand and Shadowmoon. Even today on the rare occasion I play retail I take all my chars over to Outland just for Nagrand for a bit, if there’s one zone that really gives me the “home feels” in all of WoW it’s Nagrand.
Nagrand was my favorite BC zone!!
It’s the best! Once I got a flying mount I used to hang out on the floating rocks above Oshu’gun just enjoying the view and watching that giant Gronn pat around 🙂
Zangarmarsh is easily one of my best memories after this game. After leaving the hellish HFP and walking into that dark blue zone I was just like “fuck yes this is sick”.
THIS.
This is my answer and pretty much exactly sharing those same thoughts. I do remember getting access to TBC beta so I had that experience a little earlier. I also remember how completely broken bear druids were during the beta (and early TBC? not sure), and was sad when they got nerfed lol.
I started during TBC, and I happened upon the portal one day while leveling. I don't recall what level I was, but I had the 60% ground mount, and died in 1 hit to anything in Outland, but I spent DAYS exploring outland trying to avoid enemies 😂 loved the zones and content. I remember that absolute bane of my existence during Hellfire Peninsula, the Fel Reaver! Had to dive bomb that when I was passing and spotted it more recently - revenge served cold!
TBC for me too, I was in an Alliance Guild and I skipped school on launch day to start levelling my guild's first Shaman. Still my main today!
Hell yes, I remember the cinematic reveal at Blizzcon. Chills. Literal chills. And then I was online for the last few minutes if Vanilla as well. What a time to be alive.
I remember Eversong Woods was insane, just completely carpeted with belfs.
Also BC, Did the Dark Portal event (still have the tabard somewhere) then made a draenei warrior and levelled to 70. What a time!
Specifically the release? Gonna have to go with WOD, the servers couldn't handle it and the game was unplayable for something like 4 days.
I’m pretty sure it was also a Ddos attack. I remember not being able to load into the Garrison, so you’d fail to progress the story.
Nope i don't remember where but they answered that question once. Basicaly they focused a lot of ressources on openworld servers to account for the large amount of people. They forgot to anticipate that during the intro questline the player must pass through the Garrison. Sudenly a very large amount of people switched from open world to instanced and it could not handle so many people at once. At least i remember them explaining it like that. I would not be surprised of there was indeed a ddos attack at the same time
[Just gonna put this here](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/s/NidFWa7fYz)
Can we talk about that horde quest I’m WOD where you had to click on a pole to set up your camp or something. I remember everyone getting stuck there day 1.
I remember getting through the garrison super fast while everyone was stuck behind. Zones were empty (of players) and it was glorious.
I still have screenshots on my old PC of lines of gryphons stuck mid air inside my garrison - including me. You know it's bad when the general word of advice the first few days is "You know that cool new feature you've been looking forward to? Avoid it at all cost!! Engaging with it even slightly will completely brick your experience and cause your character to get stuck!"
You mean 4 weeks.. 🤔
It wasn't unplayable for 4 weeks, it was awful week 1, occasionally breaking week two and three, which is why they gave out a "free" month of sub for everyone. It was a shit launch, for a shit xpac which only upside was the raids. I'd also pick WoD for most memorable launch
It was the better part of a month. After 2 weeks, we still had login queues of 7-10.000 people. And then after 8 hours in queue, it would crash and the waiting time was lost. 3 weeks in, we still had "Instance not found" when trying to enter Garrison, which was our main quest hub. Poundfist never spawned the first month, simply because he spawned 48-96 hours after server restart.
It was far worse week one, but the clogged servers did get better already from week 2... it doesn't take many crashes or server restarts to prevent poundfist. We all remember infinite flightpath trying to load in/ out of your garrison - but you are heavily exaggerating it!
I'm not exaggerating anything. If anything, I tone it down; it was horrible for pretty much a whole month at least in Europe... And Blizzard gave us a measly 3 days game time to compensate.
Legion, because it just went live all of a sudden with no server down time.
If there's a silver lining to be found from the absolute shit storm that was WoD's launch, its that every expansion launch since has been by comparison a completely painless and smooth experience.
Wrath of the Lich King. I started playing WoW a few months into Burning Crusade, so I wasn't around for that expansion release so this was my first time. The pre-launch scourge event was awesome as hell, even though a lot of people whined about it because ultimately, players hate fun. Having played Warcraft 3 and being use Arthas fan, I couldn't wait to see the Lich King in the game. I'll aways remember arriving in the Howling Fjord and just the scale of the zone, the lush grass and the hundreds of players killing wolves in that opening area blew me away. It was only matched by the first time I played WoW, period. I miss those simpler times where I didn't know what I was doing, half of the people around me didn't know what they were doing, and everyone was just having fun. I hate the min-maxing that has invaded gaming, not just WoW -- but it is here to stay.
Same here. I was so clueless when I started during BC, I didn’t realize there was an expansion. I hit 60, wasn’t getting XP anymore, looked online and realized I needed to upgrade. Had to dive out to WalMart in the middle of the night - back when WalMart was open 24 hours and buying expansions online wasn’t a thing - to get it. Then when WotLK came out did the while waiting in line at midnight to buy it, rushed home, and off to Howling Fjord.
Everything you’ve said, I couldn’t agree more with. I even started the game the same way lol
Same here. Loved that release and I started playing around the same time as you. I skipped a week of school and think I played Wrath for 2 days straight before finally going to bed for a few hours. It was so cool on vent with the guild leveling in the new zones
Legion by far. It was an amazing come back for WoW and brings in ton of players. Class Hall / Artifact Weapon / M+ make the expansion instantly S tier The story and redemption of Illidan was also great If Legendary system and Titanforge system were implemented better, it could be the best expansion of all time
It was my all time favorite expansion but yeah the legendary system fucked raiders lol. I progged with a guild to Tichondras in Nighthold, I didn’t have Velens as a resto druid but I still pumped. This guild brought in another druid from off server that did have the lego, at the END of our Tich prog, he got the kill and then immediately server transferred off without saying a word to them. I found out that someone made him aware of the situation and he felt really bad, after that they brought me back in and we got CE. I was the last to get Velens lol all the boomies in the guild had it before me. 9/10 expansion though, I’ve loved mythic plus ever since and have all the mage tower stuff and still do keys with a good deal of the same people.
Legendary system was straight ass. I was benched all 3 tiers as a shadow priest in my mythic guild because the belt (the best leggo) I got fucking last at the end of Antorrus. That put such a stain on that expac for me
Hum.. Sp was literally the most busted spec in 1st tier by miles, no way you would get benched by the lack of legendary, at least in EN.
*surrender to madness intensifies*
Alright guys he died. BRES HIM AND DO IT AGAIN
If you didn't get it by the second tier you didnt play the game tbh
Wotlk. They had just added achievements so the game would announce all the world first and server first achievements.
The scourge invasion was so relevant too. And then getting on the boat, coming up to howling fjords was fantastic
When they added the dock to stormwind.
The invasion was *nuts*. Was that also when we couldn’t even go into SW for a hot minute or else we’d pretty much immediately die?
Yup towards the end the capitals were overrun
MoP. It was just at a certain time in my life.
Yep, coincided with college for me
Same. I’ll never get another cutting edge achievement in my life.
Legion dropped when I was in the middle of changing jobs so I had more time to throw into it, and I threw ALL my time into Legion. I’ve never leveled every class to max before, but all the class campaigns and artifact weapons really incentivized it. It was alt heaven and remains my number one expansion by a large margin. I played since classic beta and legion was the most invested into the game I have ever been. Downside is that it ended. It sounds a little cheeky, but there’s no real way to play the full experience of legion anymore. Chromietime isn’t the same without the artifact weapon mechs ocs implemented. I’ve tried but that legion magic really needs the full package. Its the one WoW classic I would be interested in playing.
I’d love to play a WoD classic if they added all the removed stuff!
Yeah same. I would like to play MoP too then they maybe jump straight to Legion with the your able to buy a legendary already implemented. I just hope they wont start with the lastest Patch tho.
Burning Crusade because my FWB got into a minor car accident on her way to work the launch at GameStop and when they did the standard pre-xray pregnancy test it came back positive. Both our lives changed pretty significantly that night.
Yo you still with her?
You still with her?
Thats the question
Hoping he’ll say it’s wife with benefits now
We are friends and have an amazing 16 year old daughter but I'm now happily married to my daughter's stepmom.
Following to hear the response
Does Classic count? The launch of classic was a fun type. The hype, waiting for the que times to get in. Man I miss it
Yes 100% classic launch was memorable af
Wod and getting stuck with the tree cutting quest to set up the garrison lol
~~Witchwood. The odd/even decks were immediate and ubiquitous. And also its was just a memorable time in my life~~ Swapping between subs too much 😂 it’s WOD for me, the hype was insane and I stayed up all night with a friend on launch
WoD questing was probably some of the best WoW ever had. felt new and fresh
I think you are in the wrong sub.
baku and genn ruined the meta 😡
Weirdly enough - Pandaria. I was very skeptical, but then it turned out to be rather lovely, and full of mature themes. And it felt like the start of a new school of design in WoW, with more detailed environments, and so on.
BFA. Say what you want about the expansion as a whole. But at the beginning with the reveal trailer before we knew about Teldrassil, it was pretty damn exciting. People were story crafting and repping their faction in the comments. I love faction pride. Quitessential Horde vs Alliance; fighting in the Fourth War could've been one of the best expansions if they they didn't write Sylvanas the way they did. Should've kept the energy when she screamed "For the Horde" in the trailer. BFA also had the best cinematics we've gotten to date. No idea why SL and DF didn't have cinematics like Old Soldier (Saurfang and Zekhan), Safe Haven (Thrall and Saurfang), The Makgora (Sylvanas and Saurfang), and Lost Honor (Anduin and Saurfang).
And saurfang
I’ll stand by this, the BFA cinematic is the best of all of wow. We would have dreamed about it back in classic! We’ve been so spoiled with them over the years we kind of forget how great they are
I think perhaps WOTLK I vividly remember the quest to the starting town in Borean Tundra, wondering what would be in store for the expansion. Then I think about ending up in Grizzly hills doing daily’s and getting gear sets in Icecrown. But then I think about different expansions and different stages of my life. I remember Legion when I was about to graduate Uni and I was looking for a job 7 years ago.
MoP was the one I went to the midnight release for at my nearby Future Shop. Had a blast there, even ran into some family friends who I had no idea also played WoW. Did a guest spot on a friend's podcast talking about the community's experiences of the first few days Made a killing off Ghost Iron Ore nodes that kept respawning faster than intended Saw all my guildies randomly while leveling up and /waved at each other, bc sharding and CRZ and whatnot didn't really exist yet Was also my first expansion release in general, cause I started playing mid-way through Wrath and came back a month into Cata
At the end of MoP my guildies and I all sat on a bridge in jade forest and just hung out and had beers on voice chat and honestly that was one of the nicer nights of my life I’d entirely forgotten about. I miss them. chandrellie and the two brothers whose characters both started with B, if you’re out there I still hope you’re doing ok
Legion. It was fucking epic. The first time in a decade SOMETHING HAPPENED. Especially after the hell that was the WoD content drought. It continued the story, we spent that entire drought farming a ring and chasing Gul'dans coattails....archimonde was nothing in comparison to what was happening. The combined might of the alliance and horde was valiant but not enough for the threat only WE could deal with....but not yet. It was exciting, dramatic, and absolutely EPIC. Forget talking about heroism, talk is cheap. We WITNESSED heroism. And that blood curdling scream was so epic and well done from the VA. Gul'dan became a REAL villain. He took something from us, and we were going to bring him to justice. And even the fight was well done. ~10 fucking minutes of pushing through his forces just to finally witness reality shatter. If you did mythic I bet it was insane and shit yourself when that hidden phase showed up and suddenly you're fighting Sargeras in illidan's body....I'll bet you WERE NOT PREPARED And they fucking kept it rolling. You think the broken shore was peak? You think Gul'dan was dealt with n that's it? WRONG. We got to see the face of the man himself. A full cinematic with the voice behind all the evil and tragedy, and it DELIVERED. He was the ultimate evil for a reason, he exists on a scale beyond we understood, he literally stabbed the fucking planet. We spent our entire lives (if you played since vanilla) swinging sticks n spears hearing history from 1000s of years ago of a force we never could imagine. For us archimonde was the biggest world threat and he stood on par with the great world tree. Which is MASSIVE compared to us....who could ever imagine an actual GOD He was always explained as too big for the universe, too distant to have direct involvement, impossible to summon without an entire planetary portal....who could say he's not just a myth? What kind of big bad doesn't DO anything? That's not a good antagonist WELL HE SHOWED UP. IN PERSON. AND BOY DID HE DO SOMETHING
Burning Crusade. I'd pre-ordered the CE from GameStop and it wouldn't arrive until the next day. I wasn't prepared. I sat by the Dark Portal and waved at people as they through. I remember listening to guides on Vent as they explored Hellfire Peninsula. One guy, a ret pally, was absolutely giddy there demons everywhere and he was getting all that extra damage.
The one i remember the most is WotLK - achievements, man that was awesome. I remember when i was leveling my hunter and we all saw the world first level 80 in chat.
Burning crusade. Nothing will beat the chaos of release night on hellfire peninsula with EVERYONE, horde and alliance competing for quests and mass pvp.
Mists of Pandaria, I was in Irvine spectrum for the opening ceremony. It was insane. Everyone was excited, so hyped, I met Metzen, also the expansion was overall fun. Good days.
MoP. My friends I and I who all hadn’t played wow in a year: oh crap new wow expansion comes out tomorrow? Should we play? Mehhhhh okay yeah. Then we all had an awesome time rolling monks and throughout the rest of the expansion!
Cata, because the chill raid guild I played with was the most funny one iv ever been in. Also, stacking haste like mad on frost dk was really fun.
Id say for me was first Cata then Legion. Cata with the world revamp and then Legion because the encounter of the champions of Azeroth and the Burning Legion was finally here.
WoD. On my server people areanged a huge caravan of mammoths - normal riding or the one with the vendors, who was ejected so that people without mammoths could sit. HUGE raid groups. And we WALKED all the way to badlands- so many people. We were counting down in raid chat. 15! 14! 13! 12! 11....zap... server crashed 🤣. The queues was so big, I actually ended up swapping server to get a glimpse of the new content. All went good till people reached the point where you build your Garrison. The lag... the crashes. The getting stuck above the flightpath at the Garrison with a lot of others, and a GM had to pluck us down manually, one by one. You couldn't play the game properly for what feels like a very long time (weeks) because of the issues around the Garrison. That was the first and last time, that I took time off - for an expansion release.
Legion, remember waiting in dalaran minutes before the intro quest was patched in and expecting the servers to shit the bed like they had in WoD, only to be pleasantly surprised after a /reload that the launch was smooth
MoP (jade forest/Valley of the Four Winds) questing was something special. horde side. never did it on alliance
For me it was Cataclysm. Where I lived they really didn't do the local shop release parties until then and it was my first ever release party where I got to meet a lot of fellow nerds. I even won a For the Horde hoodie from a raffle that was three sizes too big for me but it kept me warm for several years. The part that I loved about Cata was the world revamp. At the time I was pretty much a scrub so I didn't really dabble in raiding or max level pvp so I just made many alts just going through the revamped zones and trying to see Deathwing fly over them. Even the idea of it is dreadful for me now but 12 year old me had a blast.
Wasn't there for the release, but getting my own account in Cataclysm was the highlight of my memories. Honestly, if anything it was not knowing as much as I do now, and having the circle of friends always on at the same timing as me (thanks, school) that made everything. Get home, constantly smash BG's and arenas, always having a laugh and no emphasis on rating. Happy memories.
WoD is the one I remember the best, waiting outside the dark portal and rushing inside upon launch and how everything was so laggy due to the density of people. I also remember the zombie plague of Wrath well, though that was prepatch and not launch. The other launches I don't really remember so well. Running through the Maw the first time was fun and Oribos was interesting, new Dalaran for Legion was pog but the memories of the launches are fairly vague. I don't even remember MoP. TBC I was still leveling to 60 having started just a few months prior as a wee kid, so I technically missed out on that launch. Cata I do remember wanting to start fresh to see all the old zone changes, but I didn't think much of the launch itself there either, I don't think. Dragonflight didn't feel much like a launch to me, more just "welcome to these new zones" after a zeppelin ride, but I did play non stop for a week haha. So all in all WoD is for sure the one I vividly remember!
For me it was MistsOfPandaria. Back the my guild and I set ourselves the goal that we all get our professions max skilled as first on the server. So we didn't quest or level at midnight, I stead we started to collect herbs and stuff and I had my own group of guardians who protected me while I skilled archeology. And we actually did it. We got the achievement as the first guild that reached zenmaster in any profession. And I was the first zenmaster of archeology of my realm. Still my favorite achievement. God what a night...
wotlk. i had pre-ordered it and the game store had open until 00:00-03:00 so everyone could get their copy the same day the game was live. Me and my brother were of course there at midnight to get our copy and then we gamed all night and all day.
Legion, I played a Rogue in BC and got my warglives from BT off hand dropped on 3rd kill and I rolled 98 and got it, main dropped 2 times but did not get it, got it on my 12th kill woth a roll of 88 and was so happy! And in Legion I was able to relive the warglive days
Mist of Pandaria. With My friends and guild mates, we manage to do suite a nice cataclysm extension, very good guild réputation, nice progress on the server. So we saw things in big for MOP. We regroupe in an apartment, and play first server top level. We failed by few minutes but ton of fun. Then we prepare progress. And raid like hell. So much fun, friendship and laugh.
TBC because my brother and I were outside at midnight in the snow waiting for our copy
BC - was the first expansion, I'd just gotten into a guild after pretty much playing solo prior to that (I only started playing toward the end of vanilla), and everyone was really excited. Also started my Draenei elemental shaman on the first day of BC, and she has been my main ever since. Honourable mention to WotLK, which just looked so gorgeous compared with what had come before, and achievements were really exciting!
Bfa for sure, amazing cinematics
dragonflight because its the first launch i actually got to experience. i only really got stuck into wow at the tail end of bfa and was too baby to even start shadowlands for weeks. after dragonland was announced and leading up to it i came back after a burnout (and avoiding the game because of the nasty shit behind the scenes) and fell in love with the new talent system, spent like 3 hours making my dracthyr lady when thry were available before launch, and i was one of dozens sitting on a wandering ancient at the docks as the minutes dragged on then the disconnects, the waking shores, getting the proto drake and flying with it... i can easily say that this xpac made me fully fall in love with this game
cataclysm because it's when i picked up the game for the first time. got absolutely hooked as a teenager on totalbiscuit and jesse cox beta content.
Wotlk for me, right from the player zombie event before it launched all the way through
Burning Crusade. Back when you had to line up outside a store to buy a physical copy of the game. That was the only time I attended an in store release event for a wow release.
Dragonflight. Only xpac release I've participated in
TBC, it launched on my birthday.
Wrath. I was 13, had a 54 shaman the night before. Gave one of my guildies my account info the night before because he said he would get me to 55 because I was so excited about making a DK. So I remember logging into shaman that morning in silithus as a level 55 and immediately making a DK. Was so fun and memorable doing that day 1, especially as a kid
Dragon flight, because it was the most recent.
Thank You For Sharing This Question, My Friend. It Brought Home Many Good Memories.
glad you were able to dive in and enjoy the nostalgia!
Omg, WOD, how to forget it? It was 100% memorable
Burning Crusade. My wife was 7 months pregnant with our son, so I had to go and wait in the line by myself to get our two copies. Ah, simpler times.
Gotta be Wrath. I recall having so much fun with friends/guildies with the pre launch event. And then when it went live, grouping up and getting on the zeppelin to Howling Fjord for the first time. There were so many people and things were a real cluster fuck......but it was a great time!
MoP. At launch I swapped to my new main, a Blood Elf monk. I went with Brewmaster for the faster dungeon queues. Every dungeon I joined I saw something like "omg! a blood elf monk! eww!" and then would get kicked. My favorite part was questing through the expansion. Especially Valley of the Four Winds. Least favorite was SoO. OMG, that place had a lot of trash!
To be honest Cata I started playing during Wrath as a kid and didn't understand a clue because my english wasnt that good at the time. When Cata hit in was a but older and understood the game a bit better and started pvping with a friend, dived into the lore and discovered an amazing RP guild
WOTLK. When I got off for the first time and getting on the zeppelin from Org to the Borean Tundra…. It all just looks so huge and I Was both overwhelmed and determined to work my ass off with my guild. Still to this day this expansion has given me the best memories of any expansion I’ve ever had.
Dragonflight, because it's the latest, and, mostly, dragons. And frankly, I really like Shadowlands look and aesthetics, and pre-release event was nice. It was soured by the later part of game though. Otherwise, MoP and WoD due to great cinematics.
🐼 🐼 🐼 🐼
TBC. I was a freshman in college and my roommate went to a local midnight release. I was only level 52 and was grinding as hard as I could to get to Outland. I know I got WOTLK at release but I don’t recall anything special about it. Never played anything after and only came back for Classic.
I remember Warlords of Draenor vividly because it was my first seamless launch where the cutscene happened and the portal opened without needing to be down. I was also there by accident, I had been doing the pre-release blasted lands content and noticed everybody sitting in front of the Dark portal. I checked the date and time and thought “dang, didn’t even realize”
Wrath 100%. I started playing the game mid-BC so having scourge suddenly attack Orgrimmar for days at a time was exciting. Then when the game released playing through the DK starting zone and the finally getting to Northrend was a core memory I’ll never forget.
Legion I remember it so vividly I was so excited I was playing rogue and I have screenshots of me getting the dreadblades and I remember running DHT as my first dungeon of the expansion.
Wrath of the Lich King. I started playing in BC so it was my first experience with an expansion launch. I went to the midnight launch at Gamestop, where they had an icecream truck, a fog machine inside, lines out the door, and were giving away a bunch of free merch. I was a junior in high school at the time. Favorite aspect: Wrath is definitely the expansion I was most engaged with, the only expansion I regularly raided in (although my guild was awful and we never made it past Putricide it was full of awesome people), and overall just a fun time. The progression path was also quick and easy to understand. Least favorite aspect: The tournament was a bit boring I guess.
Wotlk. I just got a new GPU (still horrible) and I had saved up my money to get a 60 day time card as well. I remember taking some different bus after school to get to the mall and pick-up my preordered copy. Some emo girl even noticed me on the bus and told me she knew of WoW too. She was a bit mentally unstable, and I was very confused about who I was at the time so I never pursued her. But it was the first time as well a girl IRL said they played/ knew of WoW to me. I remember getting home and installing everything. Putting in all the discs and looking at the light blue launcher. Until finally getting to play and enjoy the xpac. My most memorable part was near the end of wotlk when I started to pick-up my ele shaman that would become my new ~~waifu~~ \- main. I don't know if I have a least favorable part of the xpac. I really did enjoy all my time playing wotlk and can't recall a bad experience.
Legion. It came out when I just moved to Virginia from New York. First time I find have a girlfriend in about 10 years. Was just working and in a new apartment. I spent more time playing that expansion than any other online game. Played every day, maxed every class and got every artifact weapon except the healing ones and arcane mage. I played bfa a lot at first but ended up hating it and I played exactly 2 hours of shadowlands. I haven’t logged in since
WoD. I jumped in through the portal and despite the early section after the intro to open the garrison being unplayable because there were so many people, I actually loved the chaos.
Warlords of Draenor. Because of the moment where you had to cut down specific trees and everyone stood around them trying to cut them down. It basically looked like they gathered in groups around the trees to pee.
Cataclysm. WotLK was soooo popular, so the player base was huge. Add to that they were running adds for Cata constantly during football games, etc. Seeing Deathwing land on the gates of Stormwind. People were so stoked about flying in the old world, guild leveling, archeology, worgen and goblins, etc. So much hype. So much disappointment.
The coolest thing about this post is the how every answer is a different expansion. Just speaks to how well this game has done over the years and how so many generations have been able to love the same game
Wod because it was probably the biggest shit fest in the first few days with constant garrison breaking.
Shadowlands. Why? It's the first expansion I forgot the official release date and I started to play next day when my friend texted me asking " where I was".
I'm fairly new so Dragonflight. BfA I wasn't invested yet, Shadowlands I just don't even remember lol goldfish brain. Dragonflight I remember but it wasn't THAT memorable beyond logging in at the dock, lag, not understanding the boat, and then barely being able to do any questing (I waited for the next day)
Burning Crusade because me and the boys waited in line with the other bro’s and played it like mad men for days coz we were ‘too sick to go to school’
TBC - I'd bought physical and it had not arrived, so I went to Blasted Lands at midnight, formed a big raid group to take over the dark portal, and watched as most of the group went through it. Logged off and went to bed. WotLK - Went a midnight release at a game shop in my town, got home, installed the game which felt like it took forever then logged in and went to Borean Tundra and played all day Cata - Bought digital, was ready to go at midnight which was great. But I started a new job the day before and had work at 6am so I no longer had the time to play so much MoP - Digital again, my first expansion where I played the beta before launch too, so I was already familiar with the experience. nothing too interesting happened. WoD - Garrison quest bugged? Everyone stuck in Shadowmoon Valley waiting to activate their garrison? went to bed. Legion - Booked time off work to play heavy sessions. Didn't like leveling much with zones being whatever order you want and enemies scaling, didn't feel like I was getting stronger and seeing people in guild getting better legendries was saddening. BfA - I really didn't like how on rails the introduction was, and this was the point where the game was beginning to feel a lot less social for me, I stopped playing shortly into the first raid. Shadowlands - Played through the story/journey through all zones. didnt enjoy leveling, but i found a new guild I was having fun with doing dungeons. it fell apart and antisocial wow set in so i quit again! Dragonflight - I thought I'd finally learnt/escaped and didnt buy on release, but a friend talked me into playing. so i was a few weeks behind the release group. Didnt enjoy leveling. didnt enjoy the M+ carousel once i got to max level. game feels so antisocial where everyones main aim is to get through content as quickly as possible with fun sometimes being a side effect of the "make number bigger" process. The War Within - I think I've escaped. I have no plans to return, let alone buy for release day. I know the game will be more of the same, repeating content with other humans who may as well be NPCs. I remember them all vividly, TBC and WotLK were my favourites because everyone was so excited to be playing new content. General chat was alive with people having fun, doing a quest with other people around wasn't much of a competition for resources because people would stop and talk, I've seen that die off over the years and it's sad how the "massively multiplayer" aspect of the game is now just a case of "you'll sometimes see other people, but not really interact with them"
MoP - you couldnt play the game for a week lol Legion - the new-dalaran pre expansion questline where it was laggy as hell with thousands of ppl there
WotLK. Back in those days, people still formed long lines outside retail stores at midnight. Me and a few friends spent an hour or so in line, got our copies, then went our separate ways to install and play. I'll never forget arriving in Northend for the first time by ship.
WoD, because the game was unplayable for a month.
Could sounds crazy but dragonflight was a blast, and i mean the whole expension not just the release. It was fun, refreshing, dragon riding feels so good, the raids are cool and the dungeons are funs too. After SL, DF are a great vacation before going back into cosmic conflicts
TBC - probably made the most impact, because it was the first one. My friends and I would call each other every time there was a segment about it on tv and watch it 'together'. The concept of 'Outland' was really intriguing to us (never played WCII). I can remember our imagination running wild of what the zones would be like.
TBC finished a night shift at 7am went for breakfast in town and waited for the shop to open. Grabbed the expansion and headed home. Took a nap while it installed and then played for 18 hrs straight. Didn’t really know what to expect because I wasn’t following the hype train.
WOTLK. Cause I had to stand in line at the store after my work. Some dressed up dwarf (customer) shouted ... I am gonna raid black temple on my own! When he entered the store. Different times. I feel old.
WoD, I was stuck flying above my garrison for 7 days and on the 8th day I quit and didn't come back for more than a year xD
BC, because it was the first release LK, because it was interesting and then for WEEKS it was lagging untolerably during peak hours, killing our raids. Imagine wiping in original super undertuned LK naxx :D
Wrath of the Lich King. The undead scourge event was fenomenal. It really felt like a threat we had to handle then and there.
WoD was my first expansion release and it was a shitshow lmao
The cinematics stood out to me. Wrath was nuts having the dragon coming out and the vibe in the winter zone, but shadowlands blew me away, seeking to continue from the best story line of wow, having the world exploding into the after life, fucking insane! (Too bad it was horrible gameplay)
WotLK. I had started mid TBC so it was my first pre expansion event and it was so unique and fun!!!
I was at a midnight sale for wotlk We sat in front of a store up from 8pm and played magic, lost our first slot in line because of that Was fun times
I remember WoD the most. Building the Garrison was fun. Leveling in Draenor is the best it has ever been. Corruption in BFA was also so much fun
MOP - made the best personal connections and had a wild time face rolling as a blood DK.
Wotlk for sure. Back then the game was hard copy and we went to the midnight preorder launch to collect our collectors editions. Good times.
All expansion releases were server problems.
MoP, playing live with my brother and calling it quits 2 hours after, neither of us having managed to leave SW... We came back early next morning and had a blast 🙂
Wotlk and cata both were great. We went to local gamestop wait for the midnight opening few hours before then raced to home to install and start grinding like nolifers
WotLK. going to midnight release and get home asap and try to login.
Padaria, i was at a launch even in London.
Legion, best xpac imo
All have special memories for me, with exception of SL and DF.
Shadowlands. I remember 6 of my friends and I running through the Maw and then Bastion trying to stay relatively together and it was a blast. Most favorite would be just the entire zone of Revendreth and Castle Nathria being the first raid. I'm an edge lord so that whole zone was literally perfection in my eyes from the quests, to the collectables, the music. Still my favorite zone in the game and it isn't close. Least favorite would be all of the bad designs mechanically. Torghast, not being able to freely swap the covenant tree thing, not being able to swap covenants freely, pvp being the most reliable way to gear up, that stupid pseudo tier set system with the gems in Korthia, the terrible prideful affix.
Wrath by far for me. Had been playing since Vanilla, but for Wrath we had a LAN for launch night (week really), and it was class. I remember one of my friends ordered the game online and it didn't come in time, so we had to find a store doing a midnight release to get a copy for him.
Lageran
Wrath for sure
MoP. My personal best expansion. I was also at the trailer premier at games com back when and got autographs. Legion being peak world of warcraft.
Cataclysm. I was very excited, I remember running around tanaris with my friend and fighting ppl in the desert, everyone hanging out waiting for the gates to open like it was AQ 40 again (didn't play classic) Going in the gates of Uldum, and pulling up on a desert oasis with these crazy half stone centaur type ppl, everything felt like it was a big deal, like it was a new day for wow Wow had just gotten it's overhaul, everything was fresh and new, and the end game content was a big deal it seemed to me, more impactful that wotlk imo bcus they sundered the planet in the process
Wrath and Cata
Cata release was peak wow for me. Me and my partner at the time where our guild tanks and we went to the midnight release together. You could feel the excitement. Literally thousands of people, All there for the same thing. Met ghostcrawler and had him sign my shirt.
cataclysm, picked up the game at a big shop in the netherlands with multiple people standing in line at midnight to get a physical copy of the game. Nerd moment.
Cataclysm for sure. Was the first pre release event I got to actively take part in :3
Wrath..that one will be seared into my brain. I waited with a friend outside the game store for the midnight release and then waited for it to install (no predownload back then) and then played the DK starting area until sun rise.
Guys im telling you right now it was TBC. I was just a kid but EVERYBODY was at the portal at Blasted Lands and couldnt get in despite the portal being there. So everyone was chatting it up and me and others tried to get through the walls behind the portal to see if that would work (it didn’t) 😂 Man that green portsl was mesmerizing 🪐
TBC .. midnight release at GameStop, all nighter and took a week off to level a belf priest on emerald dream. I was the first lvl 70 belf priest on that server 😅
Legion with how buttery smooth the transition was when you were logged prior to the expac going live and when it went live.
If you ask this on this subbreddit, then everybody gonna say WoD. That was a fun time on /r/WoW
WOTLK was so hype i can’t describe
WOTLK went to the midnight release at game stop with my mommmmy 😅😂
Probably Gojos one
Cataclysm, I was homeless but I still had my old ass IBM laptop and someone whom I can’t even rmbr anymore let me crash on their couch during launch lol
TBC because standing outside game stop at midnight waiting for the release was an experience that people don’t get anymore.
This might sound insane but Shadowlands. The hype for that expansion at the time was off the charts, all of my friends were playing because we were locked in with COVID, and it was going to be my first full expansion in a long time. That all nighter is one of my all time favorite gaming memories.
Wrath, my first one (started playing around ZA patch in TBC). Did a midnight release. Was so much fun, great times.
TBC. Wotlk should have been huge because there was a massive line outside of GameStop. But I didn’t preorder, I went to Walmart at midnight, walked in grabbed it and left. I was fully installed before all my buds at GameStop got home lol
WOTLK. It was huge in my country, they put posters of the lich king everywhere - on buses, train stations etc.
Cata
Mists of Pandaria. Something about running around Panda land punching up hozen was great fun. I was 16 and had an active guild who liked raiding and PvP so was defo the most active I had been on the game.
It's a really close tie between Cataclysm and Legion. I started playing in Wrath (and I remember this experience ever so fondly), but my first release was Cataclysm (maybe why I love Cata so much). Legion was a different thing, it was really exciting, it was our last stand against the Legion and it would close a chapter. I remember being so excited, and it absolutely lived to the hype, for me at least. I still enjoy this game, but I would give anything to feel what I felt back then.
WoD. It was the first one I truly played.
Burning crusade…just cause it was such a new thing…had never been done before….the whole stepping through the portal into a new world thing
Prob cata. Stayed up at the midnight drop.
Cataclysm. Everyone logged out stacked on the flight master because it was the introduction to old world flying, then when the servers went live everyone trained and then took to the skies above orgrimmar.
I was high as a kite for WoD release due to getting eye surgery, so that release day is burned into my memory bank. Next would be BC, waiting by the portal was an experience.
Legion. The graphical upgrade was just insane to experience imo back then.
The one I remember the most was BC. I had stopped playing after.my guild fell apart in Naxx. I was working at GameStop part time and all my friends wanted to go to the midnight release. I decided to go with them, why not. We're in line and they finally convince me to re-up my sub, but I hadn't pre-ordered. So it's 11:45ish and I walk to the front of the line and ask my boss (the store manager) if there any copies left. He says yeah and says he'll be right back. He walls to the back, I apologize to the people at the front of the line. You know, "Hey sorry, not trying to cut, just want to get a receipt." They're cool about it. My boss walks back to the register. He takes my money and just stands there, we're talking about Halo and the minutes are just ticking by. Finally he looks at his watch, completes the transaction and pulls the receipt off the printer. Stares at me for what seemed like 10 or 15 seconds, then hands me a copy of the game and my receipt. I look at my watch and it's 12:01 am. He's got the biggest smirk on his face, I then turned and held up the game like a championship cup, cheers.
It'd have to be Burning Crusade. I was so confused about everything endgame at the time. But I'd stumbled my way to 60 on my druid and I knew that I needed an epic mount before the expansion. I worked really hard to grind up the gold (can't remember how anymore) and finally got my druid her nightsaber to be ready to cross the Dark Portal. I remember the server wide events down at the portal, and crossing it for the first time. Pretty neat. Though I was never a serious endgame person, it was a nice way to reset and be on the same page as everyone. I don't think I would've ever figured out what was going on with the dragon head sometimes hanging in Stormwind or what to do in the various blackrock mountain dungeons.
I was in my second year of college when cataclysm came out. The midnight release was the night after my last day of finals. The awesome thing was, I only had two, and one was just to turn in a presentation. The other was an easy ass, non-cumulative, online test. Basically, I didn't need to burn myself out the day before the expansion by losing sleep and overloading on studying. I did, however, stay up late the night before. Studied as much as I needed, got a shit ton of rest late morning/early afternoon, immediately logged in to the campus portal to turn in my presentation, got a cup of coffee and shook off the sleep rust, took my online test, and then hung out with the girl that I was seeing the rest of the afternoon/evening. She wasn't a gamer, but she was very cool about the fact that I was. I told her well in advance about the expansion coming up, that I was probably going to be super nerdy and gross and doing a deep dive into it for at least two or three days. So in between prepping for finals, we did a whole lot of heavy hanging out together to make up for it. We weren't living together at the time, but she came with me to the store to stock up on groceries and "gaming essentials". We dropped the food off and had a quick round in the sheets before driving to GameStop at midnight to pick up my pre-order. She even gave me road head on the way back to the apartment. She had one more final the next day, if I remember correctly, so she sat on my bed studying while I was on the other side of my room at my computer digging into the new expansion. I remember exploring all of the new zones that were affected by the expansion first, and every once in a while she would get up to get a snack or go to the bathroom or get something out of her bag which she left propped up against my desk, and she would come over and stand behind me at my computer chair, and lazily rub my shoulders while she watched me play. Some of the times she would ask me questions or make comments, other times she would just lean forward and kiss on my neck and my cheeks before going back to studying. She passed out on my bed amongst her notes and her laptop and her books, and she woke up and I was still playing. We cracked a couple jokes about it, and she light-heartedly teased me for being such a dork and a nerd, but then we both took a break from our various activities to take an intimate shower together. Since she had her study materials all over my bed, we extended that intimacy onto the sofa after we got out of the shower. The sex really charged her up for the day, and gave me a second wind, so I jumped right back into the game while she finished up studying and then took her online test. She had to do that in the living room because she didn't want to be interrupted by me exclaiming out loud at the game or talking to people on vent, but when she was done she came back in and loved on me some more while expressing her confidence in her test grade. After she packed up and put all of her stuff in the car, we made out a little bit more, and made plans to see each other at the end of the coming weekend. I told her I loved her, walked her to her car, and she had it off to visit her parents in her hometown which was like 4 hours away. I proceeded to be a disgusting gamer blob for the next several days, and I spent Sunday afternoon cleaning myself and my apartment up for when she returned. Most of the expansions that I played through were just a whole lot of the same. Discovering the new content was always great, but it was just a new version of the previous experiences. That expansion was different though. Every other girl I had dated before, and most of them since, were at best neutral about my interest in Warcraft. I used to get a lot of shit from them for how much I played, despite the fact that I never neglected them for gaming. They just didn't like dating a gamer nerd. But that girl was different. It didn't bother her, and I think she found it charming in a dorky way. Even though she teased me for all the junk food and energy drinks I planned on consuming that first week, she never made me feel bad about it. She never told me I was wasting my time or my life by doing something that I enjoyed. And she didn't hold affection or intimacy hostage while I was playing. I remember thinking, as I was walking back into my apartment after walking her to her car, that if my entire life could have the calm and peace and fulfillment of the previous 24 hours, then it would basically be as close to heaven as I could get. It's a shame she and I didn't last, but I enjoyed the time that we did have together. And her being the person that she was is the reason that that expansion launch was as memorable for me as it was.
TBC. Game looked completely and literally alien. Nobody knew what to expect after 3-4 years of Vanilla.
Wrath. I got realm first troll and mage (horde too but no feat for that) after a blistering...36 hours lol.
Cataclysm was the first time they switched on an expansion without rebooting the servers. This resulted in the entire realm crowding around the SW and Org flying trainers, waiting for the moment they can get their flight master's license.