my introduction to world of warcraft

I was in a college dorm when the World of Warcraft open-beta started up. It was an interesting experience since about half the people on my floor and the one below had all decided to roll up on the same server and it looked kind of interesting. I didn't really feel like signing up as my laptop could barely handle Warcraft 3, and the game looked like it needed a bit more horsepower.

My roommate was hooked. From what I remember looking over his shoulder at, he was in one of the first endgame raiding groups. Playing the game through headphones on a laptop crappier than mine (how you tank with only 4 fps I'll never know). Regardless he seemed to enjoy himself.


A little too much.

As finals approached, he spent one of his last days up all night playing WoW and "studying" at the same time. His final was at 8am, and I think he eventually fell asleep at 7am for a "quick nap". I eventually woke up at 9am, and remember distinctly saying out lout "*yawn* it is 9 o clock". Prompting an "oh shit" moment from him, where he had an hour left to get to and do his final.


I didn't really have anything urgent to do that day, so I left the dorm room for a while, and when I came back at 10:30, he was right back on there, playing WoW, talking to his mom on the phone explaining how missing half his final wasnt a big deal at all and everything was fine. It was like he had no remorse for his actions at ALL. The following semester he was still playing WoW, but I didnt notice as that semester was a huge blur for me as I was basically staying up every night til 1-4 am working on various math homework in a study room. Theres a huge gap in my memory of anything happening then between midterms and finals.

This basically killed any desire I had for playing the game. Any time I saw a picture of it, heard of anyone playing it, my mind instantly conjured up that scene. However, eventually I stumbled onto the lore behind origin of Azeroth and the Burning Legion, and became fixated on it. This eventually led up to the discovery of things like the Old Gods and C'Thun, and then other raids entirely. Finally I decided it was worthwhile to

Originally I was only interested in playing only a Blood Elf, as they had the coolest lore backstory. So by the time the expansion pack was announced, with Blood Elves as one of the new races, I decided to take a plunge and see what the game was all about. Thats when I borrowed a friends laptop with the game and tried it out a bit, and got instantly hooked after killing a few kobolds.

Why I play a Human on Alliance is a different story for another time.