Memoires (Part 1 - Humble Beginnings)

February 12th, 2005, one day after the official release of the game, it began...



As someone who had played other Warcraft games before, I was familiar with the fantasy world which Blizzard had created, and the thought of being able to participate actively in it was an exciting one indeed. If you've ever read a good book or saw a movie and thought to yourself: "Damn, wish I could spend some time in that world." then you know the sort of feeling I had, and so you can imagine the gleeful anticipation that came with the granting of said wish.

Are you ever going to introduce me?!

Shh...hey...I was getting around to it.

No you weren't, you were just rambling as always, and what is it with you and all the dramatic tendancies; I mean, "Gaping maws of blackness..." really? If you could see me, I'd be rolling my eyes and flicking my hair in a disdainful fashion.

Er...

Oh, for Elune's sake, I'll introduce myself then. I'm Lyara, the Night Elf Priestess that this here person/douchefag created on the Dragonblight server.

Name calling already? You've only been on this blog for 6 lines!

Well, you're the guy who gave me a name which translates into Gnomish as "Weird", so suck it. Also, why is my text in this stupid red colour? I don't like it.

...pick a colour then, and we'll carry on with the story.

Yay! 

Really?

Kidding! I'll go with this one, it's the colour of my hair. ^^

I had to put up with this for two years...

Go on then, take it away.

Teldrassil, the home of the few remaining Night Elves. 

Up until that point, a sheltered life amidst the eternal dusk of the forest floor was all I had known, but when I enrolled as a Priestess of Elune, my life changed. The tasks I was given were simple at first - culling the local wildlife to preserve the balance of the ecosystem, investigating taints, collecting herbs and so forth. However, I progressed quickly in strength and magical aptitude through devoting my spare time to the study of spells from all the disciplines of priesthood and the training of my body and mind.

It wasn't long before the serving Priestess at Aldrassil recognised my talents, and sent me onwards towards the town of Dolanaar, where it seemed my services were more required than ever. It seemed that the fel taint had suddenly sprung up in all sorts of places, and the Furbolgs were driven mad by it. 

I remember being sent to the village of Starbreeze to investigate - what seemed to be a simple task turned into carnage as the Furbolgs attacked. The guardian Sentinels were too far away to lend aid in time, and I...arrived to see innocents being cut down and the village pillaged and torched for all it was worth. Compared to the trials I have been through since, perhaps this is small, but this was the first time I had witnessed such devastation, and forever this will be etched into my memory.

So, it turned out that after some investigation, the Chieftan of their tribe had been corrupted by some Fel Moss. He was beyond saving, unfortunately, so I was sent to dispatch him. He came at me, a flailing, insane mass of limbs and fur, and I, no longer a stranger to combat at the point, sidestepped his attacks with ease and put him down in as humane a fashion as I could.

After that, I was sent to Darnassus, the capital, where I was received in the Temple of Elune and commended on my achievements. I was even allowed to pray beneath the statue of Elune, albeit briefly. The senior Priestesses told me that I had potential, and to further my training, I would be sent away from Teldrassil, onto the continent of Kalimdor.

I had come of age in the Night Elf hierarchy, and thus, travel was to be expected. However, the thought of leaving all I had known behind weighed heavy on my mind. I stood for an age at the docks of Rut'Theran village - the port town of Teldrassil, and stared across the grey seas. The waves crashed without purpose against the roots of our great tree, the deep rhythmic booms interrupted by the chittering of the hippogryphs in their stables. A sudden determination gripped me; I wouldn't be like those waves, breaking fruitlessly against an unyielding shore. I felt a calling, a drive, something...urging me forward to a destiny as yet unknown to me, but it was a good feeling, to have a sense of purpose in one's life.

Hey, that was surprisingly good. I was expecting snarky comments and an exceedingly blunt account of things.

Not bad for being a bunch of pixels, a few kilobytes of data and a figment of your imagination, right?

To be honest though, after all that, you can hardly criticise me for my dramatic tendancies.

I can be a hypocrite, I don't care...you whiny girl.

...

So anyway, this was pretty much the first ten or so levels of my time in WoW, which were spent questing around the Teldrassil area. It was a really exciting time of the game, when everything was new and fresh - there was a feeling of limitless possibility.

Because I'd started a day later than everyone else who had bought the game on launch day, the starter areas wasn't too cramped, but there were still enough people around so that the area-wide chat was lively and populated. The general atmosphere was one of marvel, as people communicated their delight at discovering new things as they progressed through the first few levels of their characters.

The art direction was great - even though the graphics weren't cutting edge at the time, there was a cohesiveness and a certain stylism to the look they had gone for, and everything fitted together well - Darnassus especially was a memorable place, with it's graceful marbled architecture, intertwined, as most elvish dwellings are, with nature. Slender bridges connected the various sections of the city together, spanning over a central lake. The ambient sound of water was everpresent, as were the quiet jinglings of the wisps (elvish spirits) which populated the place.

God those wisps were annoying. They'd never move out of the way and if you tried to walk through one you'd never hear the end of it...they'd just follow you around and jingle at you. Blasted things.

Darnassus

The core gameplay mechanics were simple to learn, and everything was well explained. The quests were also well constructed and had an overall narrative, which made the various tasks such as collecting x number of plants seem meaningful. To be honest though, this was all within expectations.

The point at which this game really grabbed my attention though, was the first hippogryph ride away from Teldrassil. Normally, when you take a form of transportation within a game, it goes to a loading screen and then you arrive at your destination (unless you're playing a game like Gran Turismo, where it would then probably defeat the purpose of it...but I digress).

Not so here.

I clicked on the hippogryph, and what happened next literally took my breath away, as Lyara mounted the beast and it proceeded to take off, flying over the sea towards the continent of Kalimdor. Perhaps it just because it was in absolute defiance of my expectations, but that moment really opened my eyes to the fact that there was a world there. I mean, it was virtual, but at the same time, it felt real...if you know what I mean.

That was cool.

I looked around one last time before taking the last of my silvers and giving it to the hippogryph master. He directed me to one of his steeds. It croaked and bore me upwards with great thrusts of green feathered wings. Soon I was high aloft and over nothing but sea. The cold wind bit into my face, and I grasped the hippogryph tightly, not wanting to be thrown off. 

Behind me, all that I had ever known receded slowly into the greyness of a clouded day, and in front, lay my future, whatever that was to be.