I was just waxing go’damned nostalgic…
The year was 2005, and I was completely immersed in a new game called World of Warcraft, to the extent that I quit smoking so as to afford the sub. It was massive, strange, and unknown, and terrifying and compelling. I knew nothing. I was broke, running around on my newbie Night Elf Hunter wearing utter garbage equipment, and having the time of my life. Seeing the price of a glass of milk from a drinks vendor was over one silver and thinking: “How the heck can anyone ever afford that?”
I used to move around and turn by using the up, down, left, right arrow keys. I didn’t know I could press both mouse buttons at once, and this was back in the days when quite a few PC gamers were still not using WASD to move around, and arrow key movement was very much the norm.
I didn’t know that I could change my view by holding down the left mouse button. I used to use the Home, End, PgUp, PgDown keys to orient myself and was constantly finding myself facing down at the floor and having to laboriously correct my position. It was only after I saw a screenshot on the forums of a Gnome pretending to be in prison by standing in front of the bars covering the portal in Stormwind and asking how that shot was achieved that I learned. Woah! You can actually view your char from the front!
I just equipped anything that had a higher armor rating to what I was wearing. I didn’t care about stats, had no understanding of what stats were needed for my class. I remember proudly equipping my +strength sword on my Hunter that I’d won from a quest in The Wetlands and feeling like the baddest bada$$ in the world. All Hunters needed strength? Right? Everyone knew that!
A while later I really wanted one of those glowing weapons, because they looked so cool. I’d joined a guild by this point, and one of my guildies said she could do a fiery enchant. I spent a fortune on the mats and finally was able to show off my awesome, completely useless fiery-enchanted +strength two hander - to the envy of everyone.
First run from Darnassus to Stormwind at L13 (I could write an essay about that trip) I encountered a Dwarf in Thelssamar, who challenged me to a duel. I had no idea about duels, didn’t even know they existed, but I must have unwittingly accepted. Seconds later he had me down to 1% health but didn’t land the killing blow. I imagined that this was done as an attempt to humiliate me. Leave me deliberately alive because I was ‘not worth killing.’
In a similar manner I once noticed the words ‘honourless target’ on my character after using a flight path. I assumed that this was some kind of flag or debuff put on you by other players - again as a type of humiliation to tell the world you were ‘too much of a noob to be worth killing.’
… and seeing that NPCs in my starting zone had ‘PvP’ on their portraits, I came very close to changing server. In panic I assumed that I’d accidently rolled on a PvP realm and was going to get ganked.
And finally, most embarrassing of all…
I had discovered the chat pane at around L6 and realised that people talking in it obviously had military ranks. Woah! This guy was an actual General! He must be super-important!
There he was in chat, typing: “[General] blah blah blah blah…”
I concluded that the game devs gave these special military titles to players who were especially knowledgeable and skilled, and they were there to help out newbies, and guide them through the game. I kept an eye out for lower ranks such as ‘Captain’ or ‘Corporal’ in chat, but was always disappointed.
- must have been awfull to level up a hunter that way.
