In Vanilla-WoW, we were all noobs. Cortyn looks back and reveals which “noob” actions have stuck in his memory.
In a few months, World of Warcraft: Classic will finally be officially playable again, as Blizzard plans to release the classic MMORPG in the summer of 2019. It’s time to indulge in some nostalgic memories and reflect on how we perceived our first “Classic” experiences many years ago.
As some may know, I played a human mage in Classic, and that’s pretty much the source of all my noob moments. I want to share three of those enlightening moments with you.
The Absurdity of the Spell Polymorph
I remember it like it was yesterday. I had just scraped together my last silver to buy all the new spells from my class teacher in the tavern in Goldshire (which seemed strange to me back then with the dancing night elf on the table). They had to be tried out immediately.
Polymorph seemed quite suspicious to me back then, and I couldn’t really figure it out from the description. It went something like this:
“Transforms an enemy into a sheep and forces it to wander aimlessly for 20 seconds. During this time, the target cannot attack or cast spells, but regenerates very quickly. Any damage taken transforms the target back. Only one target can be transformed at a time. Works only on beasts, humanoids, and critters.”
The last word stuck in my head, and my thought was: “So I can turn critters into sheep” – and I did so with delight on all the squirrels that ran in front of my character.
However, I did not really understand the purpose of it. I can turn an enemy into a sheep, but he heals himself super fast? How absurd is that? Why would I want to heal an enemy? And why does it work on critters that don’t do anything to you anyway?
I thought, “Well, it’s just because it’s funny that mages can turn someone into a sheep” – and I took the spell off my action bar.
The first time I used the spell “sensibly” was in Scholomance. I initially thought the warrior on Teamspeak was teasing me when he asked if I wanted to “sheep” a necromancer. It’s quite surprising that my raid group later formed from that and a friendship developed over the years. In the current WoW, you would probably be kicked for such ignorance.
Counterspell – What’s the Point?
That same Scholomance group taught me even more. Do you remember the second room in Scholomance where all the summoners were? As soon as you engaged them in battle, they began to summon endless amounts of bone warriors. If you weren’t careful, a never-ending stream of skeletons would pour over the group.
However, you could not fight these summoners in their own room because they would run to other groups and engage them in combat as well. This could quickly end in a wipe.
The idea was to pull a group and draw them back into a previous room. To make that work, you had to interrupt the necromancers while they were casting spells – and that’s where Counterspell came into play.
Similar to Polymorph, the spell’s description wasn’t very helpful to me back then:
“Counters the opponent’s spellcasting and prevents a spell of that type from being cast for 10 seconds. Generates high threat.”
Once again, the last sentence stuck with me. High threat? That was bad for mages! Threat was something for warriors, not mages. Mages shouldn’t generate threat. Whoosh, the spell flew off the list.
The more I write, the more surprising it is that our group and the raid later became the best on the server. I can’t thank the players of that time enough. During our first (of over 100) Scholomance runs, they must have bitten the keyboard so many times that there must have been significant material damage.
Spending Talent Points – That’s Something You Should Save
When I play games, I love to experience a big power surge in my character in a very short time. Usually, that meant that I farmed many hours of experience points in a game like “Final Fantasy X” and then spent them all at once to improve my character’s attributes.
It was incredibly satisfying when my main character grew from 500 health points to 1,000 health points in one go and dealt double damage.
I adopted this mentality in World of Warcraft as well. When I reached level 10 and had my first talent point to spend, I thought I was very clever: “If I just accumulate a lot of talent points and then spend them at level 60, my character will suddenly become really strong.”
This worked surprisingly well for a long time – more poorly than well. It only became tiring in Arathi Highlands (something with level 40+) when the ogres in the ruins of Stromgarde hit quite hard, and I couldn’t keep up with my damage. I didn’t see the connection between not distributing talent points and my problems back then.
My guild certainly had a great time when the topic came up. I decided to spend my talent points earlier – and was quite surprised at how much damage this new spell “Pyroblast” could cause and how quickly the enemies fell.
And what noob moments did you have?
Those were my three biggest “noob moments” from Classic, which belonged to a time when you couldn’t find everything on the Internet, the game mechanics of MMORPGs were still somewhat new, and people generally had a lot more time for such a game.
They are moments that can only be experienced in the first MMORPG before the basic mechanics and game ideas become second nature. That initial fascination also leads to such noob moments – and these or similar incidents probably won’t happen again.
Do you remember moments or views from your time in WoW that you would love to bury yourself for today? Or were you immediately “pro” and of course never made mistakes?
Feel free to let us know in the comments and share what funny beginner stories you’ve experienced. If enough comments come in, your stories might be immortalized in another article.
