What was it like 20 years ago? Was it really as magical as people claim? Did it deserve 12 million subscribers and being everywhere on pop culture? I can only somewhat imagine what it was like by watching 20 year old WoW videos on YouTube and ambiance videos

you had to be there

yes, what we experienced back then was the greatest achievement in the history of video games.

>>716359393 (OP)
keep in mind, ALL the players were white and spoke English as a first language.

it was good because quests would take you all over the place
it was bad because every other mmo dev destroyed themselves trying to copy it

>>716359620
>it was good because quests would take you all over the place
it wasn't like that with other mmos released before wow?

>>716359393 (OP)
nah, it was full of nerdy loser whitebois with tiny dicks. while they were playing their WoW and jerking their tiny white peckers, white bitches were getting plowed by hung brown athletes. now, you have these white pussies crying about SKG while their women get bred by refugees

https://youtu.be/xTPn_Nk_KrM?si=3Rv4oPoAvDQZtTMD&t=49

>>716359917
sarr

>>716359393 (OP)
most of the chat ingame back in 05+ era was just goldsellers and preteens doing typical kid shit while the adults that played it just used the game as a place to socialize and sell shit like weed or whatever.. You really aren't missing much besides the Barren Chat meme.

The barrens was the most toxic chat ingame because kids usually picked the Horde while most adults picked the Alliance and while yes, there were toxic alliance toons, it wasn't as bad as it was for the horde. Yes, Grouping for content was easier on the Alliance because the Horde just wanted to solo the game as much as possible.

The experience for how it was like can be roughly sum'ed up by this picture

>>716360387
This reads like a response from someone who is/was heavily invested in the game and has/had a weird emotional attachment to a particular faction in a video game.

Online gaming was a bit of a novelty back then. Being able to talk to and meet people online was this big, cool new thing, and it had a comfy fantasy world attached to it. The majority of my best memories in this game aren't even related to the gameplay. They're mostly just from when I was a teenager chatting and pissing around with random people I met who I would become good friends with later on. For me it was a social game first and foremost.
Unfortunately, internet culture has changed a hell of a lot since then, and with it, people's attitudes. Discord basically killed any kind of socialisation in gaming, and now every MMO is full of people just standing around awkwardly not talking to eachother like it's their first school disco.

>>716361450
The worst part of it is the feeling of being left behind. It was your culture, your everyday, your joy, but it was taken away and never returned. You are still the same person you were back then but your home is not your home anymore. Sometimes I wonder if this is how old people feel.

>>716362267
You hit the nail on the head

>>716359841
Most MMOs didn't even really have "quests." I loved FFXI, but there were no side quests worth doing aside from the ones needed to unlock new jobs. And the rewards for like 95% of them were garbage that didn't even give EXP. WoW really made questing tied to leveling a HUGE staple of the genre.

>>716359393 (OP)
it was incredible, since social media was still pretty primitive and the internet was mostly white at that time it was like having a comfy irc room in a video game

>WOTLK was 31 years ago