I’ve been playing World of Warcraft for quite a long time. I began playing the beta around late August or early September 2004. We’re talking the time before hunters were in the game, and when you paid for skills with skill points rather than gold.  I don’t even want to mention my /played time!

Anyhow, to have lasted close to 4 years playing one game, there must have been some quite memorable moments. I thought it would be interesting to look at my Top 5 Unforgettable WoW Moments. Perhaps some other bloggers will share theirs! Without further adieu, here they are, from leastest to mostest.

5. Karazhan

Kara is one heck of an instance. It’s the kind of place that people have run many, many times and intend to keep running. In my opinion, Kara has EVERY element that makes a great instance. It has a great, cohesive feel, and it’s actually believable as a single, massive tower of fun. It has many boss fights of varying degrees of difficulty, and a great collection of loot for literally every class. It’s also still the single best source for heroic badges in the game.

If I had a single complaint about Kara, it would be that there is too much trash. The trash in and around Moroes, Maiden and Opera is really a bit out of hand. Take out half of those mob groups, and the instance would flow much more smoothly.

Still, I would call Kara one of the best instances in the game.

4. My First Ramparts Run

This one is a little different. There isn’t anything particularly interesting about Ramparts. It’s kind of vanilla, some ok boss fights, and decent loot for the appropriate level group. The reason this ranks so high with me is based solely on my first run in here with my Druid. It was really the first instance I had run with the druid that I didn’t seriously out level.

It’s also the first time I really, REALLY fell in love with my druid. It happened during the the Omor the Unscarred fight. I was a feral druid at the time, and was there for DPS. During the course of the encounter, the healer got taken down by one of the loose hounds. It looked like it may be a wipe, but it wasn’t. I switched to caster, got off a Battle Rez and a couple of heals. Sadly, the tank went down during the course of this, so I switched to Bear form and picked up aggro on Omor before he could wipe the group. I managed to get us through this fight – just barely. It was the first real example, for me, of just how flexible and valuable a well-played druid could be. I’ll never forget that fight.

3. Ragnaros

This one had a real “wow” factor. If you haven’t played WoW for very long, there’s a good chance you never participated in this fight. Heck, there are many people who have been in from the beginning who might not have seen it.

Molten Core was the only real end game for a long time, and it was quite a challenging instance for its day. I mean come on, you needed 40 people to run it! I start to twitch if I even THINK about attempting to take charge of organizing an MC run. Ouch!

Anyhow, the Ragnaros fight was truly epic. When he first came out of the lava, I was in total awe. It was one of those moments where I had to stop and say, “Man, this game is so fricking good!” Ragnaros is enormous, he looks awesome (if you haven’t seen it, he looks a bit like Murmur, though fiery!), and it was one tough fight. It was great to see that mace fall to the ground when we took his flaming butt down. And it was always exciting to wonder just what he just dropped.

2. VanCleef’s Boat

I mentioned this in my Top 5 5-mans post. The Deadmines was my very first instance, and though I was hooked on WoW from the start, this place sealed the deal. The Deadmines just seemed to keep going and going, while getting better and better. When you ended up in the giant cave with the boat, it was a spectacular sight. This was the first time in an MMO for me (and I had played a LOT of MMOs) where something felt truly cinematic, truly epic. It was like I finally understood just how BIG and DETAILED this game was compared to the ones I had played in the past.  After this, I quite buying other games.

1. Hitting 60

Once a true benchmark, this has largely been watered down. To be sure, leveling in WoW was never as difficult as in games like EQ and DAoC (and thank god for that!) but it’s not nearly as easy as it is today either. When 60 was the end game, it really meant something. It meant you could start shooting for purples in MC. It meant people had automatic respect for you. It meant you were a dedicated player.

My first 60 was my hunter, Feroz. I was in the Western Plaguelands at the time, finishing a quest for Kirsta Deepshadow. The mob was a Scarlet Spellbinder, if I remember correctly – some scarlet something or other, at any rate. It was my single most thrilling moment to date, better than either time I dinged 70. After playing for over a year, I finally had a level 60 character. I could finally participate in ANYTHING the game had to offer.

There you have it. My top 5. I’ll surely remember some other great moment I left off the list, but for now it’s a good list. It sort of encapsulates my whole WoW career, touching things both old and new. So what are your Top 5 Unforgettable WoW Moments?

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Top 5. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.