Pig & Whistle Tales - A World of Warcraft Podcast

Nostalgic Journeys and New Adventures in World of Warcraft

• Gabriel • Season 4 • Episode 78

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This podcast episode reflects on a personal journey through World of Warcraft, exploring memories, gameplay, and the emotional connections formed within the game. It tackles themes of nostalgia, escapism, and the differing experiences between retail and classic gameplay.

• Discussion of current WoW events and updates
• Personal narrative of starting to play WoW and early characters
• First memories in the game and their lasting impact
• Experiences in PVP and why they matter
• Reflection on why players escape to games like WoW
• Analysis of preferences between retail and classic WoW

Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!

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Speaker 1:

The do. Hello and welcome to the Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth. As always here at the Pig and Whistle Inn in Stormwind, I go through a variety of subjects with regards to World of Warcraft. If you've got a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy. This episode will be going over a few questions that I've been asked about myself, my WoW history, kind of like a Q&A sort of thing. I've done a couple of these in the past but I thought, for those who are newer, these are obviously Q&As I did at the very start of uh, sort of um, the show, the episode, not the episodes, the start of the actual channel itself. So it's nice to revisit these and give those who are newer to the community and those listening a sort of idea of you know how I play well, how I interact with well, how good, how good, bad, indifferent, whatever questions are asked or I can think of, I will try to give out to you guys and you might pick up something that you might think yeah, I should do this more in WoW, I shouldn't, I should be more like this, etc. Etc. So we will start off with the weekly news, as always. We have for the world boss. We have Aggregation of Horror.

Speaker 1:

This is located within the Ringing Deeps and essentially it's very far south in the Ringing Deeps. You can get a piece of gear for it and you can do it for the weekly quest as well. World quests and classic time walking are your bonus events for the week. World quests just give you more reputation for doing them, and Classic Time Walking has been here for a while, but it ends this week. I believe this is the last week that Classic Time Walking will be in the game, at least for a couple more months, until it cycles back around. So if you are wanting to do any more of them at Classic Time Walking Dungeons, you should do so this week, as it is the final week of the anniversary event.

Speaker 1:

Classic Ashran is your bonus. No, is it no? Hold up Is your brawl for the week. That's the one. This is essentially Ashran, but it is when it was first implemented in Warlords of Draenor. This means that there is no reinforcement system implemented in warlords of draenor. This means that there is no, no reinforcement system. It is purely you have to beat the other factions, boss, before they kill yours, and if you don't, then it will simply go on forever. Okay, there is no stopping it. It will go on forever until servers reset. But yeah, that's it, um, and for the mythic affixes, you have void bound and fortified. So void bound, essentially, this spawns an ad and you kill this ad, you get a buff for it. If you do not kill the ad, it will slowly reduce the damage that other mobs take, uh by 10, stacking up to, I think, 10. Um, so you want to kill this relatively quickly and get that buff and then carry on with your dungeon run and fortified. The non-boss enemies will have increased damage and health. So make sure you bring a talent build that can accommodate for this.

Speaker 1:

So we will start off the sort of questions by going for a very simple one. When did I start playing? Well, by going for a very simple one, when did I start playing wow? Now, world of warcraft is obviously now 21 years old. Well, just over 20 actually. Oh, sorry, uh, just over 20 years old, because it doesn't turn 21 until like november time, uh, this year. So it's about 20 years old. Ok, I've been playing WoW for, oh my God, 75% of its lifespan, I believe Somewhere around there. Yeah, that's crazy. So back in 2004 is when it was released, 75% of the time that it has been out.

Speaker 1:

I have played World of Warcraft. Now, I can't give you an exact year I started playing, but I believe it was around 2007 slash 8. Okay, it was late TBC, early. Wrath of the Lich King, I believe, is when I started playing. Now, I don't have a lot of memories of this because obviously I was very young at the time when I started playing. All I remember is making my first character and naming it after myself a very intriguing name obviously to come up with, very, you know, mythical and out there. I still have that character to this day, which I'm really happy with.

Speaker 1:

And my very first ever character that I made purely by myself, because I shared an account with my dad and my sister when we first started playing. The very first character I made for myself was a nice elf druid, and this druid I have to this day is currently my main on the game um, which I'm really happy with. To be honest, I I cannot believe that as an actual fact that I have with the game. But, yeah, my very first character that I made by myself, just a character for myself, because obviously when you're introduced to the game, uh, at a very young age, it's very much. Oh, do you want to make this character and you play it through with your dad, your sister or whoever might be playing at the time, especially with pcs being a little bit more obsolete back in the day, um, not as easily, um, acquired, we'll say. But yeah, the very first character was a druid and, uh, it was named perfecto, which has been changed since then, thank god, because the name was absolutely horrendous. Um, but yeah, I, that is my current main in world of warcraft and I couldn't be happier that it is my main, because I love the spec, I love the whole class fantasy and still the same race as well Night Elf, to this day. Don't think that will ever change, which is really good and I'm really happy with that. But I started back in 2000. We'll say late 2007.

Speaker 1:

Burning Crusade, slash Wrath of the Lich King time Anywhere around there, I would say. This leads on to the second question what was your first memory in wow? Now, my very first memory. I don't remember a lot. Obviously, like I said, I was very young when starting to play world of warcraft, but my very first memory was killing the lich king and this among with, like other bits and pieces and scraps of my memory that can think back to that time. But the Lich King kill was one of those really sort of standout memories that I have of playing in the early years of my World of Warcraft career and this was a normal Lich King raid back in Wrath and essentially I was doing the dungeon with my sister and this was a pug group and we were kind of going through it all and when we killed it I ran up to her room and sort of watched the cinematic like the ending cinematic with it and sort of you know, we were just kind of happy with it. That's my earliest memory I have of World of Warcraft. The other memories are bits and pieces, sort of you know, glued together and stuff, but the only other these aren't. This isn't a memory, but we played a lot of Arena back in Wrath of the Lich King Cataclysm whenever we did them and we were awful, we were absolutely awful.

Speaker 1:

We were very young playing World of Warcraft and PvP and WoW is very complex. When it goes through the expansions it gets more and more complex. People get better, the systems that people play on get better. So therefore they're out outranking us in that sort of era as well, but we are, I think, around 12 to 10 years old, and essentially our strat was we send my sister in. She has to live long enough for me to kill something. If she dies and nothing's dead, that's, that's a real shame. Then we just lose. If it's a 1v1, perfect, that's exactly what we want. And if she survives and we've killed something and it's a 2v1, even better. You know, that's just bonus points, really.

Speaker 1:

Um, this strap, surprisingly enough, didn't work. Um, it worked every now and again. I remember one game, though and this is obviously gonna put a date on it, but it was in wrath of the lich king. It was trial of valor. Okay, if, for those of you that don't know, there was a battleground or a arena in wrath of the lich king that was called trial of valor, it only in during Wrath of the Lich King, and it was essentially in Orgrimmar. Now, it was these two platforms that rose up from the middle of the arena, and you have moving platforms that gave you a y-axis. So every sort of 15 seconds, these platforms will go up and down, depending on if they were already up or already down, and we were playing an arena on this map one day, and this is like early wrath of the lich king. By the way, this is early wrath of the lich king. I remember it went down to a 1v1 and uh, being a rest or not a rest, I drew it.

Speaker 1:

I was a feral druid at the time. I had decent sustain, sustain. You know, you just run away, regrowth, run away, regrowth. And people weren't great, let's face it. People who we were playing were not going to be good at the game because our rating was probably in the I don't even know a metaphor to give this. It was so low down you probably couldn't see it at the bottom of the ocean, kind of deal. But yeah, it was against a DK and it was a blood DK.

Speaker 1:

Now, dks Death Knights for those of you that don't know the abbreviation are very notorious for being the most broken hero or broken class on release, okay. So dks were completely busted and they were just out healing everything that was being done to them. Now, admittedly, I just ran and sort of slowly whittled him down. I believe we won that arena, but it went on for about half an hour. Okay, it was about half an hour arena and these weren't uncommon because there was no dampening, there was no timer in arenas, so these went on for about half an hour and it's absolutely crazy to think that, to be honest with you.

Speaker 1:

Um, but yeah, they're sort of the earliest memories that I have of world of warcraft. I think if I really go through and like rack through my brain a bit, I can remember walking into Dolinar on my very first druid. Okay, now, this is a real stretch and this is going to be bits and pieces being pulled from the ether of my brain, but I remember walking into Dolinar and seeing this giant tree walking. Okay, and being the age that I was which was very young, probably like eight years old, eight, nine years old at the time I was fascinated with it. It was one of the sentinel protectors, these giant treants that just wander the roads between Dolinar and Teldrassil and, yeah, essentially I was fascinated by it. I thought it was so cool and I absolutely adored it. I really, really did. And that's probably where I was like, yeah, this is a cool game and this is something that I want to play. Seeing this giant walking tree, yeah, just that was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. All right, um, that's probably, yeah, honestly, one of the earliest memories now that I think about it, but the clearest one is that wrath of the lich king or the lich king kill um the other two. Obviously they, these memories happened, but they might be a little bit sort of pieced together from the information that I can get out of my brain, so I take it with a very small pinch of salt, but I remember them clearly or as clearly as I think I do. They were very fun memories.

Speaker 1:

I think that everyone kind of remembers, you know, walking into their first like small town or major city. Walking into Stormwind if you've made a human, or walking into Ironforge if you made a gnome or dwarf. You know anything like that. These are really cool sort of memories and core memories that people probably have with World of Warcraft. You don't really take it into account now. Have with World of Warcraft you don't really take it into account now. That's why I think classic was so good, um, when it was released back in 2019, because it unlocked these memories for people that that you don't tend to think about for a very long time, and I think it's very cool. I just genuinely think it's very cool to have these sort of memories with you and for them to be relived back in classic.

Speaker 1:

Now, what do I usually do in WoW is a question that I get asked, and what I usually do is arenas. So arenas are my go to for any sort of end game content. I do play all of the World of Warcrafts. I play Season of Discovery. I play WoW Hardcore Well did, but I feel like I completed that. I play Cataclysm. I play Retail. I play Classic Classic to a very slim extent, but, yeah, I play all of the world of warcrafts and the main one I play is retail. I do arenas and cataclysm classic is my second one and that I raid with the guild. And these are the two sort of content, two biggest pieces of content that I do. The raiding I do weekly and I don't do raiding for the raiding sake of it. I do raiding to enjoy the time with the people that I play with, because very much so, I don't enjoy games where I can't interact with people.

Speaker 1:

Solo games are amazing stuff, like you know PS4, god of War, you know all of them story sort of games. They are amazing, but it doesn't quite itch my brain the way that playing an arena does with two other people that you're in comms with, or the way that sort of overwatch does. If you're in comms with, like, your team, you know it needs that sort of stimulation and I feel like arenas do that for me. Like mythic plus is great I've been doing a bit of Mythic Plus as well lately, but there isn't as much communication to it. There really, really isn't. The biggest communication is I'll kick next, I'll CC, I'll dispel. You know that sort of thing, whereas in arenas it's a lot more hectic and it does scratch my brain a lot more.

Speaker 1:

I don't know how to describe it, but essentially arenas are my go-to for world of warcraft. I've been doing them since I very first started playing wow. I've been um sort of pushing them since, probably around, uh, I would say shadowlands, shadowlands. When I started pushing threes, I usually did twos, um, like just did twos, with my sister healing me and you know, as we uh grew up, obviously she met um her other half and uh, she got her other half to get into wow. So when he started playing, we obviously started to do threes and stuff. So that's when I started to take it seriously, um, in terms of th, and it's been very enjoyable. I really, really enjoy that within WoW and since then I've got more and more people to do arenas with. So you know it's always great fun to do and that's why sort of or that's what I usually do in WoW.

Speaker 1:

Now I do other bits and bobs. I do have multiple level or max levels. I do every now and again, log on to Season of Discovery. If I want to chill out a bit more, if I want to sort of mindlessly level, I'll go on to like Classic Season of Discovery stuff like that. But honestly, if you're looking at the breakdown of what I do, arena is about 80% of it. Mythic Plus at the moment is probably 10, and then the raiding in kata is another 10. That kind of deal, um, yeah, that's that's my breakdown. I love arenas. I understand why people do mythics, um, but arenas are my go-to, my bread and butter. I've been doing it for years now and I find it very enjoyable and I implore people to try it out. Um, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. The rating system isn't great at the moment, but I think a lot of people are getting on blizzard's back to change the rating system. So I imagine in the next expansion which is midnight, which should come out maybe this year potentially um, it should change and we're hoping that it changes. To be honest, but who knows, only time will tell.

Speaker 1:

With that um, do I play other games? So? Um, yes, every now and again. So other games that I play include something like Civ 6, civilization 6. You have Overwatch every now and again, but, like, hearthstone is a very much go-to option for me to just chill out and turn my brain off. You have other things like older games Heroes of Might and Magic 3, stronghold Crusader. These are very old, nostalgic games that I like to play.

Speaker 1:

Um freelancer is a absolute quality game. This was released back in 20. No, um, 2004, it's not even 20. You can't even say that. That doesn't sound right when you say it. I think around 2004. Um, quality game for its time, genuinely um, I think an absolute stunning game still holds up to this day in terms of how it plays and stuff, and I don't think I've found a game like it since. In all honesty, I don't think I have um. I think it's amazing. But these are the sort of games that I play very nostalgic ones.

Speaker 1:

But wow is probably the one that I play the most. Um, because there's a lot of world of warcrafts now. I obviously sink time into all of them. Therefore, I don't really have a lot of time to play other things, but throughout the evening, if I'm not feeling world of warcraft or when people are offline, I'll tend to go to these sort of games and hop on one of them for the evening Heroes of Might and Magic 3, stronghold Crusader, just while I do sort of other things, because these are simple games that I really do enjoy and have sort of memories of, very fond memories of why do I play WoW, fond memories of, um, why do I play wow.

Speaker 1:

Now, a lot of people have their own reason for playing wow. Okay, my personal opinion is firstly, I enjoy it. I find it to be a very entertaining game, no matter what I'm doing, whether it be doing my auctions, uh, just running around doing certain like world quests to get gold, uh, arenas, mythic, plus leveling, battle, pets even. There's so many things that you can do. Therefore, like you're never out of options or short of options, which is great, I absolutely love it. But the main reason is to escape. You escape the world that we are in and you jump into this make-believe fantasy world, this world of Azeroth, and your brain turns off when you do this.

Speaker 1:

Now, some people might find it a bit more difficult to do so, but when you load up any sort of game, it can be wow, it can be anything solo, player, multiplayer, whatever it might be when you load up a game and you get into a game if, after like queuing, say, it's like overwatch and you're in a queue and you get into the queue, um, for the time that you're in the game, your brain switches. It switches modes, um, and it gives you a sense of clarity and calmness and my brain is constantly, constantly, um, speaking to itself. It is a mess up there in terms of you just hear so many voices and it's so cluttered and everything. When I play WoW and I do something like arenas or mythics less so mythics, actually but when I do arenas, I have nothing else on my mind. My mind is completely blank unless I'm calling for something. It is completely, 100% focused on that game. Okay, and this is almost a relief. It is a relief for me and my brain to just be calm in that sort of five minute game. And yes, obviously, when you finish the game, you leave the arena, you go into queue and then you sort of five minute game and yes, obviously, when you finish the game you leave the arena, you go into queue and then you sort of um go back to that. But in in the games itself, my brain is just quiet and it's such a relief that I play it for the enjoyment, but also it's going to sound completely weird, but the calm it gives me, even though I'm shouting and like saying stuff like a maniac, I'm very calm. In that instance my brain is anyway like I could be shouting like so many different comms in terms of like I'm going to clone this guy, I'm going to cc off, do you have any cc? I have damage, you know anything like that. But my brain is very calm at the same time. It's such a weird thing to like try and describe, but that's the reason I play well, because it helps with that. That's it really. Many people will have their own different versions of that, that sort of idea that they have in their head. Other people might just play it because they don't have anything else to play.

Speaker 1:

The reason you play WoW is special to everyone, and or any game for that matter. The reason you play any game is because it's special and that's why I think a lot of people do play games, because they hold a special place in someone's heart, whether it be a nostalgic game like myself with Heroes of Might and Magic, stronghold I always have a special place in my heart for them, even though they're very outdated now. But these are the games that started to get you into gaming and you don't really forget about them. Everyone's got that one game that kind of gets you into it, and for me these are the sort of starting ones that get me into gaming as a whole. But that's the reason I play WoW, or any game for that matter, because the enjoyment and almost the wave of calm that, you know, floods my brain, floods my brain.

Speaker 1:

Um, when I play these games, that's it really, nothing more to it. Um, which, wow, do you prefer? This is the last question that I will end on Now. The whale that I prefer is retail. Okay, now, there are many different reasons for this, but I also fluctuate between whales. Quite often, if there is nothing happening within retail, I will go to Cataclysm. I will go to Season of Discovery classic, like hardcore, classic, classic, you know. Whatever I might go to Cataclysm, I will go to Season of Discovery classic, like hardcore, classic, classic, you know, whatever I might go on, there are reasons that I fluctuate, but World of Warcraft retail is original World of Warcraft, it is the original WoW and it always will be.

Speaker 1:

Okay WoW Classic for its amazing release back in 2019. I was hooked, I loved it. But the later on and the more time goes by, I look back on it and there are decisions I made that I regret and I wish that I did Classic differently. And the thing is, that's probably what a lot of people who played it back in 2004 thought when they stopped playing classic and they got the chance to revisit that back in 2019. But the difference with this classic classic release is it's too close. It's too close to the classic release, I'm afraid, and you don't have that same nostalgic sort of feel to it. It's like oh yeah, I really wanted to go and do jailbreak again to get an onyxia attunement and that long ass quest chain. I really liked following marshall windsor for about 30 minutes whilst he waltzes around a prison not trying to get himself out of there quick enough. You know it's that sort of thing, don't get me wrong. Classic is amazing. I think that in a product in itself absolutely quality.

Speaker 1:

But I like retail because of the complexities of it. Simply putting, classic does not stimulate my brain like retail does, and I need that stimulation. Does not stimulate my brain like retail does and I need that stimulation. Um, otherwise it will not. It won't scratch that itch that my brain needs. Okay, um, it did back in 2019 because I didn't understand it or I wasn't as well adept in it, as you know, when I first started back in 2019.

Speaker 1:

Because since I've done that, I have mage leveled, mage, aoe leveled. I've done, uh, dungeon one pulls with scarlet, monastery, maraudon. I even did a raid pull with zg on a mage. I've leveled a druid notoriously one of the worst classes to level as I've raided every single bit of content Molten Core, onyxia, blackwing, lair, aqs, naxxramas, completed it all. I got very well geared and you know there's not really much else for me to discover in classic. There really really isn't. That's why my thought process with classic classic is, yeah, I'm really not too bothered like, if people want to, fair enough, enjoy it, but not my cup of tea, I'm afraid. And that's why I think retail will be my go-to, because the stuff that they have planned coming up as well is very good. It looks very good at the end of the year. We have player housing. We have midnight as well, at the end of the year, legion time walking or legion remix, I should say. And then you have obviously patch 11.1, the undermined. You have multiple bits and bobs that are releasing throughout the year and classic classic. It's just releasing Molten Core, again Just releasing Blackwing Lair again Nothing too insane, to be honest with you. But yeah, that's my WoW that I would prefer.

Speaker 1:

If I had to put it in an order, I would say it's retail first. It's very tough. I don't like cataclysm because of the way that it plays, but I do enjoy cataclysm because of the raiding that we do on it. So I'm going to put cat a second and then I'm going to put season of discovery slash classic classic third and fourth. They're kind of joint for me, as I'm not too bothered. I would probably put season of discovery above classic classic. In my honest opinion. I genuinely think I would. Um, that would be my ranking. I know some people would completely flip that upside down and have retail at the bottom, but that is my own personal opinion. And again, I think that classic, in terms of classes and how it feels, is better than Cataclysm. But I have better, fonder memories in Cataclysm right now than I do of classic classic or classic as a whole. That's why classic Cataclysm is second for me. But that is it for this episode.

Speaker 1:

Thank you all very much for listening. Do check out all of the socials down below constant stuff happening over there, as well as more stuff being put up on etsy um, so many different bits and bobs. A frostmourne has just gone up on there, so please do check it out if you want um full-size frostmourne. I'm so happy with how it came out. Um, do check out. It's amazing. Even if you don't get one, just really would appreciate you checking it out and seeing the work that went into it. But thank you all very much once again and go with Valor friend. Goodbye all. Thank you.