World of Warcraft Turns 5, Warcraft Turns 15

[Asur]

"and set sail for Northrend to battle the facerolled Lich King"

Fix'd

Your elitist attitude has no place here, go troll somewhere else.

[Pumps]

Yeah see you in five years - if I'm not dead by then.

[Deathcold]

Gratz WoW!!!

[Dace]

Great developer comments! I just watched the whole thing :P

[Tribalwar]

GRATZ!!!! I now know i have been playing for to long.... 5 years of WoW...... But can't say i didn't enjoy it though =D!!!

Keep up the goodness!

[bigjenk]

Gratz to what has been the most successful gaming company so far.

[Ryme]

I just wish there were something epic feeling I could experience first hand.

Yogg+0 will still feel pretty epic, I'm sure

[G_PoWeR]

Happy Birthday to You!
Happy Birthday to You!
Happy Birthday Dear Warcraft!
Happy Birthday to You!

;D

[myak]

I will never have the feeling of pride they received from downing Onyxia, or banging their heads against Molten Core only to finally defeat Ragnaros and the feelings of pride and camaraderie amongst Guild Mates.

Having raided in vanilla, it really was epic compared to today. But there was a huge downside to this - you had to commit, and you had to do it for real. Raiding was something you either dedicated to or didn't do at all back then. Getting into a raiding guild was an epic achievement itself, not to mention that first time you joined the raid to MC or Onyxia or later BWL, seeing gear people had that once you could only dream of. And then you raided every day, of every week, of every month. If you weren't there for a couple times in a row, gkick and fuck you. There was no room for excuses, you got to respect the rules and respect the guild mates as there was 39 other people there. Not many more as it's extremely hard to gear up for encounters like that when only two were available. Then came BWL, ZG, then AQ, it got easier but still was epic. You were raiding with same people every day and true friendships were built. You learned to recognize people and people learned to recognize you for your dedication and skill.

Epic gear back then was epic and either you grinded PvP for 18h a day, 7 days a week for a couple of months or you raided, every day, getting tiny amounts of DKP for each raid and when an item for you dropped, once in a month or two, or three, someone else got it because they had more DKP than you did. I yelled so hard when I finally got my Halo of Transcendence, thus completing T2 set, half of the dorm I used to live in heard me. There were like 50 people on my server who had full T2 and I became one of them.

Now, everyone has epics. If you're 80 and you got a blue item, you either play once a week for an hour or something's really wrong with you. Everyone raids like there's no tomorrow. Raiding guilds are overcrowded with people. And although I miss the vanilla times, I think it's better now. Back then, only a small percentage of players, with no life at all (I was one of them), had access to some of the content that everyone paid equally for.

Having said all that, it's hard to not miss those times but it's also hard not to miss the wasted time, for a God damned game. We all (well, most of us) learned to enjoy the game but the price for that epic feeling you describe was huge back then and a lot of us paid for it. Lots of people became addicted, lots of people's lives were ruined. I for one almost got kicked out of university and would probably ruin my life if I haven't gotten a job I enjoyed so much and still do.

And, more on topic - damn, I feel old. 15 years of Warcraft, I remember playing Warcraft 1 and then Warcraft 2 over serial cable with my neighbor. Damn. Oh, and wall of text crits you

[Falcio]

"and set sail for Northrend to battle the facerolled Lich King"

Fix'd

Oh, you already have the Lich King achievement? Gratz.

[Gambyt]

Happy Birthday Warcraft!!
Keep up the good work. The interviews were excellent. To see the guys behind a great history and to learn more about the stuff you encounter in the game is unique.

I bow down before "Blizzard" .

[LemonJuice]

I hacked the site :O Not really, but if you give "View background image" you can see that not only Varian and Thrall are there, but also Velen, Tyrande, Magni, Sylvanas, Cairne and i guess Vol'jin too.

[gilfanon]

I never really understood what that Crusader Bridenbrad questline was about- it seemed so involved but so unconnected to any of the other lore in WOTLK. What an amazingly tender gesture from Metzen- I always thought he came across as a bit of an arrogant prick, seems he's capable of real decency and honour. Respect to him, and to Rob Bridenbecker.

Interviews are really fantastic, brings back loads of great memories from all these years of playing WOW.

[anaalius]

sweet videos on this site

[Maoismo]

Still remember my first exposure to Warcraft...WC2 on LAN with a couple of friends after I got done with my work in computer class in 6th(7th maybe?)grade. I asked my mom for the Battle.net edition that Christmas and had some fun with it that winter break

Been playing WoW since July 2006. It was an impulse buy when I was at a Wal-Mart late one night. I knew a friend that played and had heard good things so I decided to give it a shot. I logged about 13 days /played in the next 30 days and I've been hooked every since.

[Onisuofdreams]

Hearing the stories in the interviews is very exciting for me and I just wanna tell about my favorite Warcraft experience as well.

I had played each Warcraft game before it came out, but my moments were actually in Burning Crusade. I had two that stuck out in my mind. They were in the guild "Depth". We basically were a large group that had split from another guild and slowly worked our way through the tiers. We were a pretty tight knit group and that stands out to me more than ever when we defeated Vashj, which we had done before, but the healing mace finally dropped. I was still using the epic BoE world drop, so my weapon was way behind, but my DKP was also behind many other healers. It would have been an upgrade for everyone, but they all passed to me because I had been so unlucky with drops. It really made me feel like I could call these people, who I had never seen the faces of, good friends.

My most epic feeling came from fighting Kael'thas at the end of Tempest Keep. We had been trying to beat him for weeks and we just couldn't get past phase 4. Our coordination was off and all sorts of problems came up. Finally, one night close to when Black Temple and Hyjal attunements were removed, we were doing I think one more night of attempts before we were going to leave it behind us. During one of the attempts, we got to phase 4, and once again, things started to go wrong. The main tank died early on that phase and the off-tank took his place. We battle rezzed the main tank, but he died again, soon after the off-tank. Then a druid in DPS gear popped into Bear form and started tanking Kael just for the heck of it and we were somehow able to keep him alive. Finally we hit phase 5, with this dps druid tanking and the healers, (including myself) were just pouring everything we could to keep him alive. I remember the screaming on vent and how intense it was. It was the furthest we had ever gotten and both our tanks were dead.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

5(0) MORE YEARS TO COME!

[Aberration]

Excellent, Happy Birthday indeed!

[OlSom]

I hacked the site :O Not really, but if you give "View background image" you can see that not only Varian and Thrall are there, but also Velen, Tyrande, Magni, Sylvanas, Cairne and i guess Vol'jin too.

HUGE IMG

Here is the middle section, you can even see GNOME on this one :O, on the right!

[LemonJuice]

These interviews are really good, they say just what i am feeling about this game. It's not just a game, it's part of my life, of my childhood. I've been playing warcraft games for over 8 years and before that i was playing other Blizzard games. I started to draw, because i was inspired by all the artworks, ingame, on the site, the trading card games. I wasn't interested in fantasy before warcraft, now im reading a lot of different books, not only fantasy ones. This franchise really influenced my whole life. If i didn't start to play warcraft, maybe now i would be completely different person. Maybe better, maybe worst, this is something i don't know, but i don't regret for any second spend in the game.

@OlSom lol i really forgot about him ;D Too short for the banner it seems :P