When I started Patch 1.11 had just been released bringing the original Naxxramas raid. The first expansion, The Burning Crusade, had been announced several months before on October 28, 2005 and the Beta for that hadn't started yet.
June 23, 2006 - My very first character. A Night Elf Hunter named Carabini on the Aerie Peak server. My friend Mike wasn't on at the time so I wasn't sure what server he played on. The next day I got in touch with him and created my main character on Destromath, a Human Warrior named Thandrenn. The name was made using the random name generator which gave me "Thandren", I believe. I added an extra N.
July 2, 2006 - My friend Mike. The first few nights I was kinda iffy about the game, mostly because of the 3rd person perspective. "Give it a few days. If you make it to level 15, I'll give you some gold." he told me. And he was right. Within a few days I had adjusted and was firmly addicted. In this shot I'm speaking to him about weapon trainers. You had to travel to different cities to learn certain weapon professions, like one-handed axes, two-handed axes, etc.
July 2, 2006 - I must be level 10 by now because I see the talent panel button on my bar. When I started playing the original Naxxramas launch event for Patch 1.11 was happening. There was a quest outside the gates that even lowbies could do to slay mobs for the event. I think all of the major cities had a Necropolis above it.
July 5, 2006 - Back then, I didn't really know any better so I often bought my gear upgrades straight from the vendors, going by armor value as a judge of what was better. More armor? Must be an upgrade!
July 5, 2006 - I often looked at the maps of WoW on Thottbot or other websites and would see areas I really wanted to explore. The Loch Modan area looked pretty awesome. I discovered the Deep Run Tram from Stormwind to Ironforge somewhat by accident. When the train started going deeper and deeper I thought I accidentally stepped into a dungeon by myself and would surely die. Instead I emerged in the dwarven city of Ironforge and then trudged through the miles of snow in Dun Morogh to get to Loch Modan. Back then all on foot of course, using only the ingame map as a guide. There was quite a feeling of adventure. This would be my last time on WoW for a few days. My trial account was ending. I'd ordered WoW from BestBuy.com, but due to a shipping error it never arrived. It took two weeks for my order to get refunded and get a replacement copy.
July 24, 2006 - One of WoW's selling points is its amazing visual style. As evidenced by the thousands of screenshots, I would often stop what I was doing in game, take a look around and admire the world. And snap a screenshot :)
July 27, 2006 - In Duskwood. A semi-secret hidden area just off the path leading out of Darkshire towards Deadwind Pass. It seemed kinda creepy and I never found out what exactly it was there for. I love this sort of thing :)
July 27, 2006 - My very first dungeon. While questing in Westfall I heard the call and got invited to a group. Half-way through I was talking in chat admiring how cool the place looked. Someone replied "Oh great, our Tank has never been here before.". "What's a tank I thought?". In Neocron, a Gen-Tank was the heavy armor wearing class. So I figured they meant me but I still didn't know what that meant. Mike later educated me.
July 30, 2006 - I had no idea what these guys were doing, but thought it cool to see so many level 60's in one place. Turns out they were getting a buff from slaying some Onyxia or Nefarian.
July 31, 2006 - I needed to get to Darnassus. It was either for a quest or to learn a weapon skill or just because I wanted to go there. To do that I had to brave the Wetlands with crocolisks, murlocs and oozes to get to Menethil Harbor and take the boat to Teldrassil.
August 2, 2006 - Looking at the maps of Duskwood, Ashenvale, The Hinterlands and Feralas, I had seen Stargate-looking icons a few times. Curious what they were I decided to go find out. And ran into level ?? super elite dragons who were not happy to see me. But ghost-me finally got to see what they were. I'm kinda sad they never did anything more with these, even though the portals at least are still in-game to this day.
August 4, 2006 - Oh man, look at that Stormwind Castle.
August 13, 2006 - A Random Act of Kindness. I don't remember how I encountered this person. Maybe it was while questing or a dungeon, but I logged in one day to find this note and a Combatant Claymore in my mail. It was my first blue-quality item. Remembering its story, I kept it in my bank probably until Cataclysm.
August 14, 2006 - I met my first guild in Wetlands, a guild called "Eternal Life". But there didn't seem to be much going on there so I left after a few days. A bit later I ran into Night Elf Priest during a Blackfathom Deeps run named Razahra. She was the guildmaster of "Tainted Bloodlines". This was my first real guild. They were nice people and I was with them for several months.
August 14, 2006 - Ah, the Wetlands Gauntlet. Back then questing in Darkshore was painful as you had to frequently walk up and down the entire zone. Questing in Ashenvale was painful as it was the first contested zone for Horde and Alliance so there was much ganking. Many Night Elves, myself included, decided to take the boat from Auberdine to Menethil Harbor early on. That meant running through the level 20-something Wetlands at level 5 with Crocolisks snapping at your heels the whole way. I ran into this other Night Elf while running the gauntlet with my rogue and we decided to run the way together.
August 15, 2006 - The guildmaster of Tainted Bloodlines (Razahra) and her real-life husband (Eldath) have a little ingame wedding.
August 15, 2006 - The party outside the ingame wedding. I never noticed until now, but Tinkerpriest is in this screenshot. I wonder if its the same Tinkerpriest that was later in Forged Alliance. Occasionally while sifting through these old screenshots, I come across someone I know now that I did not know back then.
August 18, 2006 - For those of us who turned the WorldDefense channel on, "Southshore is under attack." was fairly common. I used an Ornate Spyglass to take this one. Good times! Back in these days, players with high PvP ranks could talk on this channel. Presumably to coordinate defense or attacks. Never saw it actually used for that though.
August 19, 2006 - At first I thought it a graphical bug or anomaly, but once I got closer and asked about it, I learned this was where the magical city of Dalaran had once been. What's under the bubble I asked? Nobody knows! Some say the mages of the Kirin Tor are rebuilding the city!
August 20, 2006 - Running into these out in the world was kinda scary. I attacked one once out of curiosity. While in ghost form walking back to my body I had time to contemplate my folly.
August 22, 2006 - Patch 1.12 - "Drums of War" is released.
August 25, 2006 - After reading level 30, Warriors would pick up a quest that would eventually send them to Fray Island, off the coast of the Barrens. Here they would fight some NPCs to earn the Berzerker Stance.
September 10, 2006 - Uldaman. This run took forever and we died many, many times. During the run I learned that the guild I was running with was a family guild. I was running with a girl, her father and brother or some such. I thought it pretty cool that a family was playing WoW together. We wiped a bunch and probably spent a good 2 or 3 hours in there, but everyone stuck around till we were done.
September 20, 2006 - At some point while leveling in Arathi Highlands, I came across a Night Elf Hunter named Themornnstar. We were both trying to find a group to do the Elite quests in Stromgarde Keep. The next night we ran into each other again. All these years later we're still in contact. His guild, the Order of Odin, ran us through Zul'farrak. Bdragon there also ran with us a few times, then disappeared into the mists of time.
September 22, 2006 - In the days before flying, Looking for Raid, portals everywhere and Teleport: Theramore, guilds had to hoof it on the ground to get to raids. I ran into this guild at Menethil Harbor. They were probably headed for Onyxia, or maybe to raid Orgrimmar.
September 24, 2006 - As soon as I got a quest to go to the "Mirage Raceway", I hoofed over to Kalimdor and down the treacherous path through the Barrens and into Thousand Needles to find it. I was not disappointed.
September 25, 2006 - Sneaking about the mountains between Dun Morogh, Wetlands and Loch Modan. Thanks to a video online I found a way to jump up the mountain from Loch Modan and visited the Ironforge Airport and then found this valley. I eventually ended up at the Dwarven Farm overlooking Menethil Harbor.
October 3, 2006 - Guessing these guys were headed for Molten Core or Blackwing Lair.
October 15, 2006 - While leveling Thandrenn, at times I'd stop for a little bit and play around with other classes. At this point I had tried Mages, Priests, Rogues and now Hunters. I actually stopped playing my warrior and played this hunter for a week or two. It was a lot of fun.
October 25, 2006 - I'd run a bunch of dungeons on my warrior by now, but this was the first time I ran one on an alt. None of my alts were high enough. My first run and I got 3 out of the 5 Blackened Defias armor pieces. I also used to regularly take screenshots like this to use as wallpapers :)
October 30, 2006 - Happy Halloween (almost) at Nigel's Point, Desolace. At some point towards the end of September the guildmaster of Tainted Bloodlines and her husband stopped playing for a while as they were moving. By then most other players had left the guild and I was the only one on. I was still in touch with Themornnstar, so I sent Razahra a note saying I was leaving and wishing them well. A few hours later I was a member of the Order of Odin.
November 6, 2006 - I finally get to see the Dark Portal in game. Notice that it's blue, signifying that it is closed. It turned green in one month :)
November 6, 2006 - Skull Level ?? dragons have the right of way.
November 6, 2006 - A horde attacked me just as I got on the Taxi Gryphon to fly from Gadgetzan, Tanaris to Feathermoon Stronghold in Feralas. It bugged out and I was able to move around - but not fly - while still on the gryphon. In fact I was stuck. I wasn't able to get off this gryphon or be attacked. I ran to the edge of Un'goro Crater and jumped down, dying. It bugged out again and my corpse appeared in Feralas while my ghost was in Un'goro. Faced the longest corpse-run ever I decided to resurrect at the Spirit Healer instead.
November 11, 2006 - My first rich Thorium vein. Slash Drool.
November 13, 2006 - Posing at the Lumbermill at Arathi Basin.
November 14, 2006 - Posing outside Ironforge in Dun Morogh.
December 2, 2006 - Level 60! Once I got pretty close I decided I wanted to hit level 60 somewhere scenic so I could take an epic screenshot. Winterspring was my favorite zone at the time, so I found this spot to kill the final mob. To this day I still try to find scenic places to hit max level at on toons :)
December 3, 2006 - Order of Odin runs Zul'Gurub. We didn't kill any bosses and we died a lot, but we had fun!
December 5, 2006 - Patch night. The servers would be going down soon so they could apply Patch 2.0.1, which would herald in the Burning Crusade era. Instead of doing anything serious, I started a new Night Elf Druid. In preparation of the patch, people were jumping off Aldrassil with newbie characters. There were bodies everywhere.
December 5, 2006 - Patch 2.0.1 - "Before the Storm" is released.
December 14, 2006 - A few days prior my friend Nathan started playing WoW. Already having a max level toon, I decided to start a new one to level with him. Behold Emilie the Destroyer.
December 19, 2006 - Posing at the Dark portal. Technically Burning Crusade wasn't out yet (delayed I think), but the portal was still open/green - you just couldn't go through yet.
December 19, 2006 - There used to be a series of elite/group quests in the Western Plaguelands at the Ruins of Andorhal. A few of us weren't having any luck downing the waves of elites so we called for help. Pretty much everyone that was one came out to help.
December 20, 2006 - "YO HOLMES TO BEL AIRE". I love when I see funny guild names.
December 20, 2006 - At the time I had no idea what these people were up to. Naxxramas what?
December 20, 2006 - Soooo much red. Guild names you don't see anymore on Destromath. Reading is Fundamental. Colonial Space Marines. Get of Fenris. The Colonial Space Marines were at one point in the Top 50ish guilds in the United States.
December 20, 2006 - Having a blast leveling that Warlock. Good ol' Loch Modan.
December 20, 2006 - I kept a lot of junk in my bank. Still do.
December 22, 2006 - While leveling my warlock with Nathan's mage, we met up with another mage named Kaidn who we ran with for a long time. I recall being at Lakeshire with them when I saw a Stormwind Guard start acting funny and walk back across the bridge. Curiously I followed him and found a Horde Priest mind controlling him. I was quickly dispatched by the group of level 60s. My friend Mike was on, so I asked him for help. He brought some more friends. There was a skirmish and we were wiped out. Then he says "I have several more people flying in with Tier 3 gear". While the Horde and Alliance level 60s battled it out, Nathan, Kaidn and I popped Underwater Breathing and hid and killed murlocs under the surface of the lake for probably a half hour or so till everyone left. Being a warlock I was able to keep us from needing to surface for a while.
December 29, 2006 - A screenshot of my character selection screen at the time. Most of those toons still exist. Thandrenn is now Thyrra and is on Thunderlord. Lindze and Carabini were moved to Echo Isles. Fraevin was deleted. Feaven, Lenaya, Rebecka and Emilie are still around on Destromath. Tiemet was a bank toon that was deleted and re-created under a different name.
There's a glimpse into my first months of World of Warcraft. Out of about 1100 screenshots, I tried to limit myself to around 50 or so. No easy task.
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