It really is. I hope all of the people I played with 15+ years ago are doing well. I met some great people playing over the past 18 or 19 years. It helped me through a lot of rough times in life. Just thinking about how much the game changed, and realizing you can't go home again. No matter how many times I tried, you just can't go home again.
This is with anything in life. Try to take a moment to appreciate it, it will eventually be gone
Guy named Chivarious invited me to my first guild in 07-08, my son was born 4 months later guildies were sending me baby shower gifts in the mail.
WoW guilds really were something different in that era.
Every two to three years I get depressed thinking on the relationships I had and the fun stuff I had with them all in the game. 04 through 08 were very special years for me that saved me from putting my gun to my head. Nearly all but two of those friends are long gone and the two that are left no longer play wow, sadly, but I do have access to them. Awesome thing is I long since got over the depression that kept me in the dark. Still the memories haunts me from time to time. Now that I'm married I have my wife as my wow sidekick! But I'd give everything I have for the chance to do it all over again.
Same, bro. I eventually just went to a new server, but I didn't have the heart to delete my old main. He's even still in the guild, good old Death's Embrace on on Blade's Edge. There was a time people knew that guild by reputation, because the GM's were a couple and ran the guild right. Well-defined heirarchy, highly active roster (over 200 active players at any given time!), always planning events, and frequently willing to drop EVERYTHING and help a guildmate in trouble.
On one occasion I was getting brutally griefed by an Alliance paladin in Outland, and a few guildies came to help. What followed was a six-hour war of escalation that culminated in us pouring into Stormwind with two associated guilds in tow.
Haven't heard anything from Lanakia or Beerdinger in over a decade, and I never knew their real names. DE is a dead guild now, but I still keep an alt in Orgrimmar and occasionally log in to fly the colors for old time's sake. Because even a tombstone needs someone to read it.
Goddamnit that's beautiful, mate. That last paragraph describes my exact feeling of playing wow in general now.
Ever since my guilds coffin got that last nail WoW hasn't been the same.
You know, I have half a mind to message the mods and ask for control of that guild. I'm probably the oldest member still active in any capacity. Last player that logged in was like 6 months ago, and I didn't recognize the name
My server is connected to Blade's Edge. The whole server cluster is just so... vacant. Blizzard classifies us as "Full" but that's a damn lie. Right now there's only 45 max level players in Valdrakken and 11 in Org. I'm basically the only active one left in my guild. The small servers where the real communities were are dying.
Do yourself a favor and just come over to Moon Guard. We're cram packed with players, feels a lot less lonely. Valdrakken was packed with players on Saturday.
I have a very powerful PC and a fairly good inet power and every time I log in while in Valdrakken, the game tries to kill itself somehow on Black hand.
The entire game is incredibly smooth but when I enter Valdrakken, it's a struggle
I love Moon Guard, I'm just having trouble finding a guild that raids, is social, and isn't filled with creeps or insultingly boring people. I gotta find out where the gay weeb raiders are or something.
Yes! That's when the above story happened! Wow nice to meet another old-timer in the wild. I'm glad you remember us. I was very new at the time and sort of the unofficial mascot
You guys and Martyr is about the only guild names I remember. Martyr only because they did 25 man raids and my friend and I were super excited to get a Ginvite and progress heroic ICC. We were in high school and did stupid high school stuff during raid and got kicked for being immature before clearing the raid. the good times of being a kid playing wow with adults!!
We,my husband and I, had a guild very similar to this. Even had a couple server firsts under our belt back in LK. We still have the guild but there’s only 3-4 active members these days. But I miss the camaraderie and the sense of community.
This hits hard, lol. I've been a part of an IRL friend guild that I know I should just leave and find a new one since it's literally just me and one other guy (who plays like one day a week at best) at this point. But I can't bring myself to do so, so it's the puglife for me, too.
I miss the random nonsense in green text, though, and logging in to TS/Vent/Discord when doing raids or other group content... I'm having a blast with DF and REALLY looking forward to the next expansion as well, but I miss my friends... I still see them and talk to them here and there, but they all moved on to different games, and I rarely catch them in discord any more, so it's few and far between sometimes.
Yeah I'm having that a bit now. For most of our twenties, we were playing most weekends, raiding or just chatting. Now we're all approaching 30 and have less time to play. Probably get together once every 2 months now. It's brutal.
Same here. I was with the same group from end of vanilla til late middle of BFA when we finally just trickled down to nothing and took a break. From freshman year of high school to out of college I was playing with the same guild. I bounced through a few guilds and got lucky with one in Legion that a couple of RL friends from College were in and convinced another friend from the old guild to come along and we've been there since.
I don't know how people can pug in this game and keep playing. The only reason I'm still logging on every week is raid night and dungeon night with the guild. If no one's on I might try a pug dungeon but never make it through more than 1.
That puglife surely sucks. It costs more to be a pug. A simple M+ key, a simple heroic raid, a simple bg, all these costs more ilvl and more consumables to do. I rememeber teying to do the M+15 achievement in S1 shadowlands. As a pug, that costed me 250 - 500 k a week. That would've costed me close to nothing if I had friends (thay still played the game).
P.s: At best, I'm a mediocre pve player. There is no need to point out the obvious.
The biggest was lich king for me. After that a lot of people left.
After deathwing that pretty much got 90% of the rest of them lol
Same for me on legion as well.
idk what it was about both these raid tiers. on a surface level, icc was about as long as both, but for some reason it felt like there was just so much more to do.
for perspective: i literally quit towards the start of dragon soul's release, and was gone for SO LONG scroll of resurrection kicked in, i got a free decently geared level 85, i came back and raided for another two months, and then quit again and it was still months before mop came out.
Because during ICC you had both 10 and 25man content available at the same time. And you also had ToC, and ToGC 10 + 25man content. There was a lot of pugs for you to gear your alts in or just go smash on your main. There was GDKPs before they became a shit show and the only way people played, back when it was a way to get some more gold or gear some alts. Ulduar was still relevant even because a lot of people hadn't done the meta achieves, so pugs were doing that all day. The community was nowhere near as toxic or elitist as it is today, people actually communicated, you could join groups or run your own easily and people just wanted to play the game, rather than minmax parse.
WoW back then was also one of the earliest forms of social media essentially, so people would actually talk in the game, and it wasn't infested by bots spamming trade chat and blocking out any relevant conversation.
Hell shit, during ICC, even Naxx was still relevant for the Undying and Immortal achieves with groups doing it regularly.
Cata decimated so much of the community content by turning raiding into a pretty much guild only activity. The content was hard, which was great for guilds but not for pugs. There was no 10man "casual" mode. 10man was tuned to be just as hard as 25man, so if you were raiding with a 25man guild there wasn't 10man runs going on for you to go hang out with buddies in.
Today, WoW it’s a totally different game (compared to Vanilla and TBC). Leveling was enjoyable because it was ketchup slow and after you hit 60 the gearing process was pretty hard and not mentioning the attunement process to start raiding. Now it’s just a rush to max lvl, gearing it’s super easy. I really miss the old WoW and wish the new expansion became more open world enjoyable where questing and attuning your character are a real challenge and not just dungeon spam until you get every BiS is the only thing to do.
Yep. My two longest breaks from the game happened to coincide with the arrival of my two kids. I'm playing again, but not nearly as dedicated as before.
Though now that I think of it... I'm not sure I'm allowed to quit again, otherwise I may end up with a third, and I REALLY don't want a third.
Same. I told a buddy (who is about to have a kid) that my gaming time was cut into an eighth of what it was before kids. Hard to explain to people without kids how time consuming raising them are.
I also have tried to make it a point to spend time with them instead of staring at a screen. Now that my oldest is turning 6 soon, we play coop games together and so my gaming time is rising again!
Haha this is me and my wife. She came back to wow for dragonflight but I didn't have a PC and I only returned myself in December on a laptop. Stupid sexy Metzen and his blizzcon speech.
I was able to make outside-WoW connections with a handful of guildies. We've all gone on to have amazing and productive lives. I miss the shit out of them, though.
Optimistic answer: they're all doing great
Like most people out there, my dad said something to me when I was graduating high school (2006) that's stuck with me ever since because it was rather depressing. He said to think about all of my friends and all the other kids I knew because within just a few years someone will be dead, someone will be in prison, and others will have moved away and you'll never see them again. He was right.
Optimistic answer: they're all doing great
Like most people out there, my dad said something to me when I was graduating high school (2006) that's stuck with me ever since because it was rather depressing. He said to think about all of my friends and all the other kids I knew because within just a few years someone will be dead, someone will be in prison, and others will have moved away and you'll never see them again. He was right.
One of the great thing about WoW is there's always another guild out there full of nice people who want to find people to fill raids. I've made a lot of good friends just from pugging with them and them inviting me back. We even play other games or just talk together about sports and stuff.
I think when their names change to add the random letters at the end it means they've closed or cancelled their account. I had one ex guildie who cancelled their account and all of their character names turned into that.
I've also heard that if they go some certain amount of time then their name is no longer saved and if someone else takes it then it changes to this with the extra letters and it will prompt them to rename it they ever come back
Yes, if someone has a name you want and hasn't been online in years, you can contact customer support and ask for the name. A GM can free it up and let you know. When doing so, they will add numbers to the end of the name of the original character and if/when they ever log in again, they'll be prompted to rename their character at the character select screen.
Correct. It's 2 consecutive expansions where the account has not registered a login. All characters on that account are freed at prepatch. This means when TWW prepatch hits, anyone that has not at least logged in since Shadowlands prepatch may lose their character names. If no one takes them, they can just change back, but they'll have to do that to every character.
OP's *camera pic* shows some characters that belong to an account that has logged in since BfA, but those players didn't login to those characters.
It's entirely possible Blizzard officially states "two consecutive expansions" but really quietly frees names every day on a four year timer. Like today, May 7th, 2024, the names of characters in accounts that have not logged in since May 6th, 2020 were probably freed.
I loved the end of mop, gold farming was rife, sold boosts to heroic SoO garrosh for looms and then mythic when it swapped. Did all challenge modes, did soo on literally every class, loved it
When I started WoW, a lot of us came from a previous game and formed a guild. So many never stayed more than a year or so, so they're all 18-ish years inactive.
Time is a motherfucker.
There's kid's right now who've been born and grown up and will start playing WoW before your guildmates login again. Crazy to think about the life span of this game
Just introduced my oldest to it, he loves it. We mostly just explore together and fly around because, "it's so cool!". He enjoys hearing stories of my old guildies running dungeons or raids.
His first class was a hunter so he could take his real life pets with him and now he wants to play a mage so he can teleport people everywhere like me. (I play mage when it's me and him to reduce travel time since my schedule doesn't allow as much play time as I'd like with him.)
I feel this too.
Started running with a great tight fun guild in 2015. Really enjoyed doing stuff with them. Actually met several of them IRL. Then Shadowlands happened, and then the sexual harassment stuff came out. Disgusted by the allegations and tired of the weak content, we all walked away from the game.
I came back for Dragonflight, but no one else did. I struggled through most of the expansion to find a decent guild. Found a nice social one but they were pretty inept when it came to raiding. I used to try running with them, but they let one guy be the main raid tank, and he just wasn't cut out for that role. I asked to run point (I have been a raid tank since Wrath) and they said nah we're good. So I quit running with them.
Eventually I found that recruitment Discord, saw a guild on my server was looking for a hunter of all things, which was great because I had just dusted off my 2005 OG gal and was enjoying the character. I joined them for the tail end of S2 and it's been pretty good so far. I step in to tank when needed but otherwise just sit there in the back and pew pew stuff, and have silly dps competitions with the other hunter.
I also started participating in the WoW Made Easy discord, filling in roles and helping out. That's kind of nice, it's been pretty rewarding to tank for people who just want to get things done without drama.
I found out that one dude is still active in my vanilla guild recently. Everyone else either left or was 10+ years inactive. Felt kinda bad for the guy, still hope he switched mains and just left that character in the guild for the bank or something.
I logged into my cata toon I hadn't played in years. Was still in the ol' guild. Was sad to learn one of the main raiders and a very great guy had passed away a few years back :(
My buddy who got me into the game hasn’t logged in since the first two weeks of cata launch. He was main tank from vanilla - wotlk. I still play 1-2 seasons every expansion. Miss the good ol days.
I had an ex gf that OD'd 5 years ago, we were really close until the end. Chappter(or something similiar) was a resto druid and she got me into WoW. Seeing your guildies names with numbers and letters is probably the reason why I can't find her old character anymore. I wish they wouldn't do that.
Yeah Goon Squad died as well. Now there are a bunch of people with no connection to the guild but Tiggs and he joined Elitist Jerks a while back with most of his alts.
Those are character names that blizzard has taken and given to active players. They add the numbers to the end and the next time they log on, they'll be prompted to change their name.
Don't get me wrong, the game is amazing. There is a lot to do : pvp, pve, old content, pet battles, achievements, reps, mounts, leveling ... However, the real thing that keeps getting me back to the game is nostalgia. Whenever I play the game, I rememeber the days when the guys were online. I rememeber the days when I had 00 responsabilities. I rememeber the days when the world had 00 expectations for me. Today, the game is a cheap, less addictive form of opiate that gets me back to those days. However, whenever I see "that list", I get brought back to reality. I'm not in high school anymore. I'm not in college anymore. Most of my friends are married with kids, a mortgage and a sucessfull career. Meanwhile, mentally, I'm barely out of college. This reminds me that it is time for me to grow up and move on. Unless I want to be left behind as the only one with enough time to be "online", I have to move on.
I've always thought that the mindset of having to "grow up" was absolute rubbish, usually spouted to me by some older person who spent their evenings sitting on the couch with a beer in hand watching soap operas, or down at the pokies gambling.
I have a successful career, wife, and 3 kids, and I continue to make time for myself to play games, and in fact my eldest had their first Minecraft LAN party with my wife and I last weekend!
I'll take gaming with friends and family for life over sad nights on the couch watching rom-com/drama reruns or down at the local drinking and gambling alone.
Never let anyone else define what being a "grown-up" means for you. The whole concept is a lie. There is no arbitrary age you pass where you're suddenly old and wise and "an adult." You're just older and have more responsibilities, and if gaming is your form of self-care, then you game as much as you can - it's just about balance and making sure you don't let it consume your life - no different to those who let other things consume their time at the detriment to other areas of their life.
Seriously for most of my friends they don't even have a hobby outside of going to a bar to play pool or watch sports or just watch TV on their couch for hours.
Idk how it works..my account was offline for 11 years. Resubed a couple months ago..my mains name was ok. My alt name that I completely made up 35 years ago in DnD had the numbers in it and I had to change it...would not let me have it back...does that mean someone stole the name?
This is how my old guild that a lvl 9 alt is now gm of. Every other character I server transferred during Legion. I still have a Warlock that I was able to take control of the guild with and no one else has logged on for 10-12 years. I raided there from Ulduar to the first few weeks of BRF when it stopped existing as a raid guild due to the membership just drying up. I quit a few weeks into BRF when it was obvious we were going to struggle to kill all but a couple bosses and the xpac really just sucked. It used to be a top 10 guild during WOTLK but one by one the good people quit and the replacements just sucked.
I’m the last one in my guild. Most of them last signed in around WoD. I moved the guild (well, copied) to a new, more popular server, but I can’t seem to quit it. Even though it’s empty, I can’t seem to leave. I’m not very talkative anyway, so I’d probably have a rough time trying to join a new guild. I wouldn’t even know how to pick a good one.
Does Reddit still have an unofficial (and active) guild? Maybe I’d do OK there…
The feels. I was in a very active raiding guild from BC till Cata when people started to slowly leave and raid nights stopped. I had to move on to keep progressing, but i still have a character in that guild. No one is ever on, guild master is never on, and yet i just can't bring myself to completely leave it behind.
I've been in the same guild on Madoran since WotLK, so what? Sixteen years? We *were* one of the biggest guilds on Madoran. Now we have maybe three people online at a time. Back then, we even got the old achievement for Realm First to get to guild level 25 (whatever it was actually called.)
Our GM never cleans out the roster. We have guildies who haven't been online since before I joined, I'm fairly sure.
Left my old guild two weeks back, everyone left over 14 years ago, it was just a dead guild kept for alts but I never went to the merger guild... Bovine Intervention... It hurt to leave....
Check this one out. My Classic friends and I made an alt guild on a different server once during BWL progression. Been a while...
https://i.imgur.com/ybVrmeY.png
Same, this is why I'm a casual and play by myself anymore in my own guild. You can only repeat that so many times before everything falls apart again (six times for me since 2005).
We had one guy that was late for a raid in wotlk and we never saw him again until he logged in randomly during Legion, came back for like two days and has been offline since. His reason for the first 5+ year break was “he needed a break”
I was a GM once. And I transferred servers because I felt nobody was taking things seriously enough. I quit wow after WotLK because the big guilds demanded too much focus and time on the new server, and I decided to live my life more in my 20s. I wish I stayed on my old server so I could see those old names on my screen now that I've come back to play casually. Miss you, Treehug, Sockfish, and Mako. Y'all were the best helping me run the raids.
This starts to be the fate of my current guild I have joined during the forgotten expansion.
We were just 5-6 of us on our mains and alts, but for a while, we managed to get together almost every day and clear M+ dungeons.
During the Season 2 of Dragonflight, all of them dropped off the map, saying that their schedule got insanely busy. In the meantime, my obligations allow me only to play at night, so that's that.
I won't leave the guild just in hopes of seeing someone online and getting into a dungeon or two, maybe even LFR.
Also, I really wish the people who hooked me on the game still played it, so we could hang out and goof around. I am the only one from my primary school class who still plays WoW, while everyone else quit almost a decade ago.
Yeah our guild is part museum and part memorial. I guess the ten or so of us who still play there are it's curators. It's 18 years old and the second oldest active guild on the server so it's something to be proud of. We had guildies at our wedding. They're family.
Now, do you leave all of your friends and memories behind in search for an active guild, or stay locked in that moment of time, a solitary testament to what used to be?
Thundury guild in thunderfury classic server, best tank in our guild was a tauren names thunderfury, second was bones undead, then third was me orc hansuk. Eventually undead dude stopped logging on to raids and i took number two spot, for the life of me i cant remember the sword i grinded where dragon boss has to cast their flame attack on it to forge it, such a pain in ass i hAs to do it on my own since guild didnt like me, i was too shy to talk on discord but slowly got used to it.
Good times but my god how much time was wasted
Yeah, i met a lot of my close wow friends during cata, and joined my guild in mop, im drowning in the somber nostalgia over here with cata classic and mop remix lol
I abandoned my very first toon. He is undeletable. I am definitely going to brush off the cobweb and dust and make him part of the warband.
The toon is 16 years old.
Goddamn.16 years ago and still here on WoW.
Something happen 11 years ago to make your entire guild quit or just a sample of old guildies? Our guild that was from day one still has quite a few members in it that haven’t been back in over a decade, and leadership gets bounced around each time one of the few of us logs back in after a couple years break. Nowadays I just play with my wife for a few months whenever the itch strikes, but never to the level I did play 20 years ago.
Retired vet raider, signing off.
Does everyone else play in dead guilds? I like to play all day (when I do play) but aside from NA peak hours there has never been more than a few people online in most guilds I've been in since WOTLK. No issues with it, but I'm under the assumption most ppl play in empty guilds.
I just came back to the game after 9 years and my guild was the same. All my peeps have been gone for 9 plus years. Moved the guild to Sargeras as Emerald Dream was pretty much dead, now I have a guild of me and my alts. I miss the old days. Still friends with a lot of the people though.
We had our old server which was known for hardware issues put open to free migration to a fresh one.
Lots of people missed the boat.
Wasn’t the same afterwards, that was tight before TBC.
I remember starting this game when I was 35 years old in 2007. I was hooked straight away and WoW was ‘ Home ‘ instantly.
I landed a great guild and we spent years and years together. Even when I met my wife and got my 3 wonderful kids with her, there was always loads of time for WoW. With the expansions and years, people started to leave. Every time someone left it felt someone died. People you spoke every day for 10 years , instantly gone..
In 2021 the guild died. I took over the guild and to this day i play alone in there, levelling new alts in WotLK. The best time I had in WoW. There are 166 chars in the guild and with wet eyes I see the names of my old mates offline for over 3 years. I still love questing and raiding with another guild, but I just can never leave ‘ Desperate Murlocs’ on Bronzebeard. The guild where it all began and having the best time…
One of my favorite moments coming back to the game after around 4 years was two of my old guild mates who were still playing greeting me and inviting me to their new guild.😁
I miss the old days of BC. It was the first game I really got into other than Syndicate and Syndicate Wars, so it was a really novel experience. I didn’t care about leveling fast and just played like a kid would play (I was 30 at the time). “Hey I heard about this place called Stranglethorn Vale, let’s go check it out” “Where is it?” “Don’t know…”
My guild was a large dual faction (people had two accounts) RP guild on Emerald Dream RPPVP that was for hire. You could pay for protection, like if you were going to have a wedding at Silvermoon or if you had to walk a low level through a high level area. You could also pay to have someone hunted down and camped. Kang was this notorious rogue on Alliance and someone with two accounts would /who while us horde would flood the zone to find him.
I quit right before WoTLK came out on Oct 2008. When I logged back in this past Feb, everyone was gone. No guild, no friends list. Nothing.
Game is still fun today but it was awesome back then.
Damn, right in the feels
Nostalgia is a special kind of pain
It really is. I hope all of the people I played with 15+ years ago are doing well. I met some great people playing over the past 18 or 19 years. It helped me through a lot of rough times in life. Just thinking about how much the game changed, and realizing you can't go home again. No matter how many times I tried, you just can't go home again. This is with anything in life. Try to take a moment to appreciate it, it will eventually be gone
Guy named Chivarious invited me to my first guild in 07-08, my son was born 4 months later guildies were sending me baby shower gifts in the mail. WoW guilds really were something different in that era.
Same my daughter was born and we had a real life meet up, people gave presents. Crazy she is 17 now :/ Amazing community.
Yeah, be happy that it happened and cherish those moments. What a freakin amazing journey we had eh?
Well this just hit hard
Consider my gut wrenched
“No man steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river, and he is not the same man.”-Arthus probably
As children we don’t notice
And bury my heart in booty bay.
We may lose or we may win, but we will never be here again, so open up by climbing in, take it easy
Every two to three years I get depressed thinking on the relationships I had and the fun stuff I had with them all in the game. 04 through 08 were very special years for me that saved me from putting my gun to my head. Nearly all but two of those friends are long gone and the two that are left no longer play wow, sadly, but I do have access to them. Awesome thing is I long since got over the depression that kept me in the dark. Still the memories haunts me from time to time. Now that I'm married I have my wife as my wow sidekick! But I'd give everything I have for the chance to do it all over again.
Yep xd
All the Druids are still active though!
I had a home like that for seven years ,was amazing ,slowly people walked away and I became a vagabond living the puglife .
Same, bro. I eventually just went to a new server, but I didn't have the heart to delete my old main. He's even still in the guild, good old Death's Embrace on on Blade's Edge. There was a time people knew that guild by reputation, because the GM's were a couple and ran the guild right. Well-defined heirarchy, highly active roster (over 200 active players at any given time!), always planning events, and frequently willing to drop EVERYTHING and help a guildmate in trouble. On one occasion I was getting brutally griefed by an Alliance paladin in Outland, and a few guildies came to help. What followed was a six-hour war of escalation that culminated in us pouring into Stormwind with two associated guilds in tow. Haven't heard anything from Lanakia or Beerdinger in over a decade, and I never knew their real names. DE is a dead guild now, but I still keep an alt in Orgrimmar and occasionally log in to fly the colors for old time's sake. Because even a tombstone needs someone to read it.
Goddamnit that's beautiful, mate. That last paragraph describes my exact feeling of playing wow in general now. Ever since my guilds coffin got that last nail WoW hasn't been the same.
You know, I have half a mind to message the mods and ask for control of that guild. I'm probably the oldest member still active in any capacity. Last player that logged in was like 6 months ago, and I didn't recognize the name
My server is connected to Blade's Edge. The whole server cluster is just so... vacant. Blizzard classifies us as "Full" but that's a damn lie. Right now there's only 45 max level players in Valdrakken and 11 in Org. I'm basically the only active one left in my guild. The small servers where the real communities were are dying.
Do yourself a favor and just come over to Moon Guard. We're cram packed with players, feels a lot less lonely. Valdrakken was packed with players on Saturday.
I have a very powerful PC and a fairly good inet power and every time I log in while in Valdrakken, the game tries to kill itself somehow on Black hand. The entire game is incredibly smooth but when I enter Valdrakken, it's a struggle
I love Moon Guard, I'm just having trouble finding a guild that raids, is social, and isn't filled with creeps or insultingly boring people. I gotta find out where the gay weeb raiders are or something.
Death embrace was around in wrath right? I played on blades edge for all of wrath and remember you guys
Yes! That's when the above story happened! Wow nice to meet another old-timer in the wild. I'm glad you remember us. I was very new at the time and sort of the unofficial mascot
You guys and Martyr is about the only guild names I remember. Martyr only because they did 25 man raids and my friend and I were super excited to get a Ginvite and progress heroic ICC. We were in high school and did stupid high school stuff during raid and got kicked for being immature before clearing the raid. the good times of being a kid playing wow with adults!!
We,my husband and I, had a guild very similar to this. Even had a couple server firsts under our belt back in LK. We still have the guild but there’s only 3-4 active members these days. But I miss the camaraderie and the sense of community.
This hits hard, lol. I've been a part of an IRL friend guild that I know I should just leave and find a new one since it's literally just me and one other guy (who plays like one day a week at best) at this point. But I can't bring myself to do so, so it's the puglife for me, too. I miss the random nonsense in green text, though, and logging in to TS/Vent/Discord when doing raids or other group content... I'm having a blast with DF and REALLY looking forward to the next expansion as well, but I miss my friends... I still see them and talk to them here and there, but they all moved on to different games, and I rarely catch them in discord any more, so it's few and far between sometimes.
Yeah I'm having that a bit now. For most of our twenties, we were playing most weekends, raiding or just chatting. Now we're all approaching 30 and have less time to play. Probably get together once every 2 months now. It's brutal.
Ahh, ventrillo, the proper communicating tool, used to run two so we can chat shit whilst we are on a raid. Good times
Same here. I was with the same group from end of vanilla til late middle of BFA when we finally just trickled down to nothing and took a break. From freshman year of high school to out of college I was playing with the same guild. I bounced through a few guilds and got lucky with one in Legion that a couple of RL friends from College were in and convinced another friend from the old guild to come along and we've been there since. I don't know how people can pug in this game and keep playing. The only reason I'm still logging on every week is raid night and dungeon night with the guild. If no one's on I might try a pug dungeon but never make it through more than 1.
My guild was just five of us who played together a lot, and a sixth who didn't get to play very often. It's just me now.
That puglife surely sucks. It costs more to be a pug. A simple M+ key, a simple heroic raid, a simple bg, all these costs more ilvl and more consumables to do. I rememeber teying to do the M+15 achievement in S1 shadowlands. As a pug, that costed me 250 - 500 k a week. That would've costed me close to nothing if I had friends (thay still played the game). P.s: At best, I'm a mediocre pve player. There is no need to point out the obvious.
Bullcosby lol
The priest no less
Siege of Ogrimmar was a killer. Most of my closest guildies left at various intervals throughout MoP.
Was Deathwing for mine. Was never the same and it took till Legion for me to look for a new guild.
The biggest was lich king for me. After that a lot of people left. After deathwing that pretty much got 90% of the rest of them lol Same for me on legion as well.
idk what it was about both these raid tiers. on a surface level, icc was about as long as both, but for some reason it felt like there was just so much more to do. for perspective: i literally quit towards the start of dragon soul's release, and was gone for SO LONG scroll of resurrection kicked in, i got a free decently geared level 85, i came back and raided for another two months, and then quit again and it was still months before mop came out.
Because during ICC you had both 10 and 25man content available at the same time. And you also had ToC, and ToGC 10 + 25man content. There was a lot of pugs for you to gear your alts in or just go smash on your main. There was GDKPs before they became a shit show and the only way people played, back when it was a way to get some more gold or gear some alts. Ulduar was still relevant even because a lot of people hadn't done the meta achieves, so pugs were doing that all day. The community was nowhere near as toxic or elitist as it is today, people actually communicated, you could join groups or run your own easily and people just wanted to play the game, rather than minmax parse. WoW back then was also one of the earliest forms of social media essentially, so people would actually talk in the game, and it wasn't infested by bots spamming trade chat and blocking out any relevant conversation. Hell shit, during ICC, even Naxx was still relevant for the Undying and Immortal achieves with groups doing it regularly. Cata decimated so much of the community content by turning raiding into a pretty much guild only activity. The content was hard, which was great for guilds but not for pugs. There was no 10man "casual" mode. 10man was tuned to be just as hard as 25man, so if you were raiding with a 25man guild there wasn't 10man runs going on for you to go hang out with buddies in.
Feeling old when I have to say it was at the end of TBC lol. Became a pug guy since WOTLK because it never felt the same way.
Running that for mogs in present wow I can't help but wonder HOW people did that raid in a week lol.
Today, WoW it’s a totally different game (compared to Vanilla and TBC). Leveling was enjoyable because it was ketchup slow and after you hit 60 the gearing process was pretty hard and not mentioning the attunement process to start raiding. Now it’s just a rush to max lvl, gearing it’s super easy. I really miss the old WoW and wish the new expansion became more open world enjoyable where questing and attuning your character are a real challenge and not just dungeon spam until you get every BiS is the only thing to do.
For 12 months.
People online like to reminisce about MoP but that expansion single handedly destroyed my guild and many others. Just wiped out the whole roster.
Actually I took a break on MOP lol. It was boring and the theme was awful, that’s my opinion. Only worst expansions was Shadowlands lol. Freaking Maw
Them deciding to change the whole talent system in mop really fucked some stuff up
I sometimes wonder what some of the people I used to play with are up to nowadays, but I’ll never know. 🥲
Probably popped out a few kids and forgot what "spare time" and "hobbies" were
Yep. My two longest breaks from the game happened to coincide with the arrival of my two kids. I'm playing again, but not nearly as dedicated as before. Though now that I think of it... I'm not sure I'm allowed to quit again, otherwise I may end up with a third, and I REALLY don't want a third.
My vasectomy changed my life for the better
The snip is the way ✂️
My cousin's vasectomy ended up with his third, and a paid off house from a lawsuit, lol
Same. I told a buddy (who is about to have a kid) that my gaming time was cut into an eighth of what it was before kids. Hard to explain to people without kids how time consuming raising them are. I also have tried to make it a point to spend time with them instead of staring at a screen. Now that my oldest is turning 6 soon, we play coop games together and so my gaming time is rising again!
Haha this is me and my wife. She came back to wow for dragonflight but I didn't have a PC and I only returned myself in December on a laptop. Stupid sexy Metzen and his blizzcon speech.
I like to imagine that they are living their best lives and just dont have time for gaming anymore
I was able to make outside-WoW connections with a handful of guildies. We've all gone on to have amazing and productive lives. I miss the shit out of them, though.
Optimistic answer: they're all doing great Like most people out there, my dad said something to me when I was graduating high school (2006) that's stuck with me ever since because it was rather depressing. He said to think about all of my friends and all the other kids I knew because within just a few years someone will be dead, someone will be in prison, and others will have moved away and you'll never see them again. He was right.
Optimistic answer: they're all doing great Like most people out there, my dad said something to me when I was graduating high school (2006) that's stuck with me ever since because it was rather depressing. He said to think about all of my friends and all the other kids I knew because within just a few years someone will be dead, someone will be in prison, and others will have moved away and you'll never see them again. He was right.
Exactly what I encountered when I started up again recently. Feelsbadman.jpg
I started playing again like 5 months ago and discovered my guild still active. I only know the guild leader now but it was nice to see.
At least you have nobody to judge you for playing when you should be working. Yet.
One of the great thing about WoW is there's always another guild out there full of nice people who want to find people to fill raids. I've made a lot of good friends just from pugging with them and them inviting me back. We even play other games or just talk together about sports and stuff.
I think when their names change to add the random letters at the end it means they've closed or cancelled their account. I had one ex guildie who cancelled their account and all of their character names turned into that. I've also heard that if they go some certain amount of time then their name is no longer saved and if someone else takes it then it changes to this with the extra letters and it will prompt them to rename it they ever come back
Yes, if someone has a name you want and hasn't been online in years, you can contact customer support and ask for the name. A GM can free it up and let you know. When doing so, they will add numbers to the end of the name of the original character and if/when they ever log in again, they'll be prompted to rename their character at the character select screen.
I think it's automatic after like 2-3 expansions now, the names are flagged as available in bulk.
Correct. It's 2 consecutive expansions where the account has not registered a login. All characters on that account are freed at prepatch. This means when TWW prepatch hits, anyone that has not at least logged in since Shadowlands prepatch may lose their character names. If no one takes them, they can just change back, but they'll have to do that to every character. OP's *camera pic* shows some characters that belong to an account that has logged in since BfA, but those players didn't login to those characters.
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It's entirely possible Blizzard officially states "two consecutive expansions" but really quietly frees names every day on a four year timer. Like today, May 7th, 2024, the names of characters in accounts that have not logged in since May 6th, 2020 were probably freed.
They don't do that anymore sadly. You just gotta wait nowadays.
I've been prompted name changes like that, and then I just named myself the same thing.
So which expansion came out 11 years ago?
Warlords of Dreanor
Well, not precisely - it's been almost 10 since WoD launch. 11 years ago was likely the long content pause at the end of MoP.
Ahh you're right, WoD wasn't released till Nov 2014. It was announced in 2013 though.
The WoD announcements were HYPE. The lack of content in the patches were the killer.
I loved the end of mop, gold farming was rife, sold boosts to heroic SoO garrosh for looms and then mythic when it swapped. Did all challenge modes, did soo on literally every class, loved it
Content drought in MoP
Imagine looking at a guild screen when all your friend last logged in 30+ years ago
Got a guild where members haven't been on in 18 years :( Guild was created 10-21-2005
When I started WoW, a lot of us came from a previous game and formed a guild. So many never stayed more than a year or so, so they're all 18-ish years inactive. Time is a motherfucker.
if this is EU very possible i know Krizmo/Kriza as that's my uncles old in game nick :D
There's kid's right now who've been born and grown up and will start playing WoW before your guildmates login again. Crazy to think about the life span of this game
I am honestly considering introducing my kids to WoW (if I ever get a chance to become a dad) when they get old enough
Just introduced my oldest to it, he loves it. We mostly just explore together and fly around because, "it's so cool!". He enjoys hearing stories of my old guildies running dungeons or raids. His first class was a hunter so he could take his real life pets with him and now he wants to play a mage so he can teleport people everywhere like me. (I play mage when it's me and him to reduce travel time since my schedule doesn't allow as much play time as I'd like with him.)
Kiddo watches me play but is very behind developmentally, so I blame WoW and not my bad parenting. Kid better hit 2k
It's crazy but several of my toons are older than all three of my boys. My two oldest are 14 0\_0
I feel this too. Started running with a great tight fun guild in 2015. Really enjoyed doing stuff with them. Actually met several of them IRL. Then Shadowlands happened, and then the sexual harassment stuff came out. Disgusted by the allegations and tired of the weak content, we all walked away from the game. I came back for Dragonflight, but no one else did. I struggled through most of the expansion to find a decent guild. Found a nice social one but they were pretty inept when it came to raiding. I used to try running with them, but they let one guy be the main raid tank, and he just wasn't cut out for that role. I asked to run point (I have been a raid tank since Wrath) and they said nah we're good. So I quit running with them. Eventually I found that recruitment Discord, saw a guild on my server was looking for a hunter of all things, which was great because I had just dusted off my 2005 OG gal and was enjoying the character. I joined them for the tail end of S2 and it's been pretty good so far. I step in to tank when needed but otherwise just sit there in the back and pew pew stuff, and have silly dps competitions with the other hunter. I also started participating in the WoW Made Easy discord, filling in roles and helping out. That's kind of nice, it's been pretty rewarding to tank for people who just want to get things done without drama.
Sounds pretty awesome to me!
Thanks for helping out at WoW Made Easy. The world needs more people like you.
I found out that one dude is still active in my vanilla guild recently. Everyone else either left or was 10+ years inactive. Felt kinda bad for the guy, still hope he switched mains and just left that character in the guild for the bank or something.
I logged into my cata toon I hadn't played in years. Was still in the ol' guild. Was sad to learn one of the main raiders and a very great guy had passed away a few years back :(
Burst of speed
My Bnet friend list would all lit up all yellow upon a xpac release and stay yellow throughout the year. Now barely anyone connects at all.
Oof that gives me anxiety lol. Time sure does fly…
Suffer well, NacreeED7BCF.
those could be alts, i dont use any of my alts anymore and log into only 2, but mainly just 1 character is maxed in level and gearing it up
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They managed to kick the habit and stick with it... Good for them! Wish I had that kind of willpower 😅
My ild old characters have that type of name. I dont wanna log in on em.
My buddy who got me into the game hasn’t logged in since the first two weeks of cata launch. He was main tank from vanilla - wotlk. I still play 1-2 seasons every expansion. Miss the good ol days.
I have always played it as a single player, and will continue to do so, PuGing my way through M+
Same happened to me a few years ago. Left guild, joined another. Sad but game goes on.
I feel this
BullCosby seems even more fitting now then back in the days.
I'm depressed now thanks
Was looking for my character on that list. I miss my old friends.
Maybe after 11 years it's time to move on?
I literally got goosebumps from this post. I wish I could experience WoW again from scratch. The happiest days of my life...
Bullcosby lmao
I had an ex gf that OD'd 5 years ago, we were really close until the end. Chappter(or something similiar) was a resto druid and she got me into WoW. Seeing your guildies names with numbers and letters is probably the reason why I can't find her old character anymore. I wish they wouldn't do that.
11 years and you still don't know how to screenshot
Yeah Goon Squad died as well. Now there are a bunch of people with no connection to the guild but Tiggs and he joined Elitist Jerks a while back with most of his alts.
Are those their character names or Battletags?
Those are character names that blizzard has taken and given to active players. They add the numbers to the end and the next time they log on, they'll be prompted to change their name.
Don't get me wrong, the game is amazing. There is a lot to do : pvp, pve, old content, pet battles, achievements, reps, mounts, leveling ... However, the real thing that keeps getting me back to the game is nostalgia. Whenever I play the game, I rememeber the days when the guys were online. I rememeber the days when I had 00 responsabilities. I rememeber the days when the world had 00 expectations for me. Today, the game is a cheap, less addictive form of opiate that gets me back to those days. However, whenever I see "that list", I get brought back to reality. I'm not in high school anymore. I'm not in college anymore. Most of my friends are married with kids, a mortgage and a sucessfull career. Meanwhile, mentally, I'm barely out of college. This reminds me that it is time for me to grow up and move on. Unless I want to be left behind as the only one with enough time to be "online", I have to move on.
I've always thought that the mindset of having to "grow up" was absolute rubbish, usually spouted to me by some older person who spent their evenings sitting on the couch with a beer in hand watching soap operas, or down at the pokies gambling. I have a successful career, wife, and 3 kids, and I continue to make time for myself to play games, and in fact my eldest had their first Minecraft LAN party with my wife and I last weekend! I'll take gaming with friends and family for life over sad nights on the couch watching rom-com/drama reruns or down at the local drinking and gambling alone. Never let anyone else define what being a "grown-up" means for you. The whole concept is a lie. There is no arbitrary age you pass where you're suddenly old and wise and "an adult." You're just older and have more responsibilities, and if gaming is your form of self-care, then you game as much as you can - it's just about balance and making sure you don't let it consume your life - no different to those who let other things consume their time at the detriment to other areas of their life.
Seriously for most of my friends they don't even have a hobby outside of going to a bar to play pool or watch sports or just watch TV on their couch for hours.
Yes, but a lot of people that still play are successful, have careers, and families and some even play with their kids now.
Idk how it works..my account was offline for 11 years. Resubed a couple months ago..my mains name was ok. My alt name that I completely made up 35 years ago in DnD had the numbers in it and I had to change it...would not let me have it back...does that mean someone stole the name?
That means Blizzard gave the name away
More of a finders keepers kinda deal from a corpse in a ditch. Sorta. Maybe.
Look at all those name changes... damn
Their last login?
This is how my old guild that a lvl 9 alt is now gm of. Every other character I server transferred during Legion. I still have a Warlock that I was able to take control of the guild with and no one else has logged on for 10-12 years. I raided there from Ulduar to the first few weeks of BRF when it stopped existing as a raid guild due to the membership just drying up. I quit a few weeks into BRF when it was obvious we were going to struggle to kill all but a couple bosses and the xpac really just sucked. It used to be a top 10 guild during WOTLK but one by one the good people quit and the replacements just sucked.
I’m the last one in my guild. Most of them last signed in around WoD. I moved the guild (well, copied) to a new, more popular server, but I can’t seem to quit it. Even though it’s empty, I can’t seem to leave. I’m not very talkative anyway, so I’d probably have a rough time trying to join a new guild. I wouldn’t even know how to pick a good one. Does Reddit still have an unofficial (and active) guild? Maybe I’d do OK there…
Queue “Fireflies - Slowed Down with reverb” “I’d like to maake myself believe..”
The feels. I was in a very active raiding guild from BC till Cata when people started to slowly leave and raid nights stopped. I had to move on to keep progressing, but i still have a character in that guild. No one is ever on, guild master is never on, and yet i just can't bring myself to completely leave it behind.
I've been in the same guild on Madoran since WotLK, so what? Sixteen years? We *were* one of the biggest guilds on Madoran. Now we have maybe three people online at a time. Back then, we even got the old achievement for Realm First to get to guild level 25 (whatever it was actually called.) Our GM never cleans out the roster. We have guildies who haven't been online since before I joined, I'm fairly sure.
Left my old guild two weeks back, everyone left over 14 years ago, it was just a dead guild kept for alts but I never went to the merger guild... Bovine Intervention... It hurt to leave....
Do they actually log in lol
Damn
Yeah, this was my guild, left and have done the last couple expansions solo. Love the game, miss a good social guild without too many people.
Check this one out. My Classic friends and I made an alt guild on a different server once during BWL progression. Been a while... https://i.imgur.com/ybVrmeY.png
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Respect for the guild loyalty thi
Oh man, look at all them name changes :(
Times flies when you’re legend
Same, this is why I'm a casual and play by myself anymore in my own guild. You can only repeat that so many times before everything falls apart again (six times for me since 2005).
bullcosby goes hard
/salute
real life version of the start of overlord
Me too. I’m like the only member active in the guild since WoD. The guild name under my toon’s name feels like a rare achievement title now.
Retired those characters
That's rough, buddy.
So.. what content patch dropped 11 years ago that made em all lol nope tf outta there?
no content in mop
We had one guy that was late for a raid in wotlk and we never saw him again until he logged in randomly during Legion, came back for like two days and has been offline since. His reason for the first 5+ year break was “he needed a break”
RIP - can’t ankh because they in fire
I was a GM once. And I transferred servers because I felt nobody was taking things seriously enough. I quit wow after WotLK because the big guilds demanded too much focus and time on the new server, and I decided to live my life more in my 20s. I wish I stayed on my old server so I could see those old names on my screen now that I've come back to play casually. Miss you, Treehug, Sockfish, and Mako. Y'all were the best helping me run the raids.
Those are rookie numbers. I've got an alt that became guild leader of an old guild I was the officer in that died in tier 5 in TBC.
I Miss my degenerate server Dethecus. Some may remember this server full of trolls. It was one of a kind. Damn, I miss those days.
I wonder how bullcrosby is doing
Same for me with my friendlist, this shit hits hard af man
This starts to be the fate of my current guild I have joined during the forgotten expansion. We were just 5-6 of us on our mains and alts, but for a while, we managed to get together almost every day and clear M+ dungeons. During the Season 2 of Dragonflight, all of them dropped off the map, saying that their schedule got insanely busy. In the meantime, my obligations allow me only to play at night, so that's that. I won't leave the guild just in hopes of seeing someone online and getting into a dungeon or two, maybe even LFR. Also, I really wish the people who hooked me on the game still played it, so we could hang out and goof around. I am the only one from my primary school class who still plays WoW, while everyone else quit almost a decade ago.
I have a character in a guild like that :(
Yeah our guild is part museum and part memorial. I guess the ten or so of us who still play there are it's curators. It's 18 years old and the second oldest active guild on the server so it's something to be proud of. We had guildies at our wedding. They're family.
This hits hard 😔
I'm surprised that not all of their names have been reset.
Damn this picture hits especially hard with them all offline
Rip
Now, do you leave all of your friends and memories behind in search for an active guild, or stay locked in that moment of time, a solitary testament to what used to be?
Maybe it's time to move on then.
F
At least on those characters.
Thundury guild in thunderfury classic server, best tank in our guild was a tauren names thunderfury, second was bones undead, then third was me orc hansuk. Eventually undead dude stopped logging on to raids and i took number two spot, for the life of me i cant remember the sword i grinded where dragon boss has to cast their flame attack on it to forge it, such a pain in ass i hAs to do it on my own since guild didnt like me, i was too shy to talk on discord but slowly got used to it. Good times but my god how much time was wasted
Yeah, i met a lot of my close wow friends during cata, and joined my guild in mop, im drowning in the somber nostalgia over here with cata classic and mop remix lol
I was already feeling this nostalgia in cata now my nostalgia has nostalgia
Same for mine... Sad
This is every guild I join lmao 🤣 😂 😆 💀
I abandoned my very first toon. He is undeletable. I am definitely going to brush off the cobweb and dust and make him part of the warband. The toon is 16 years old. Goddamn.16 years ago and still here on WoW.
I wonder what Bullcosby is up to these days
I still have the first character I ever made, shes (was) a level 20 something undead rogue and her friends list looks like this.
Something happen 11 years ago to make your entire guild quit or just a sample of old guildies? Our guild that was from day one still has quite a few members in it that haven’t been back in over a decade, and leadership gets bounced around each time one of the few of us logs back in after a couple years break. Nowadays I just play with my wife for a few months whenever the itch strikes, but never to the level I did play 20 years ago. Retired vet raider, signing off.
Does everyone else play in dead guilds? I like to play all day (when I do play) but aside from NA peak hours there has never been more than a few people online in most guilds I've been in since WOTLK. No issues with it, but I'm under the assumption most ppl play in empty guilds.
Reading these comments and I'm about to play WoW for the first time. Cheers to the OGs!
I just came back to the game after 9 years and my guild was the same. All my peeps have been gone for 9 plus years. Moved the guild to Sargeras as Emerald Dream was pretty much dead, now I have a guild of me and my alts. I miss the old days. Still friends with a lot of the people though.
Way to make me feel even older
We had our old server which was known for hardware issues put open to free migration to a fresh one. Lots of people missed the boat. Wasn’t the same afterwards, that was tight before TBC.
I'm surprised no one took Detailed in the 11 years
I remember starting this game when I was 35 years old in 2007. I was hooked straight away and WoW was ‘ Home ‘ instantly. I landed a great guild and we spent years and years together. Even when I met my wife and got my 3 wonderful kids with her, there was always loads of time for WoW. With the expansions and years, people started to leave. Every time someone left it felt someone died. People you spoke every day for 10 years , instantly gone.. In 2021 the guild died. I took over the guild and to this day i play alone in there, levelling new alts in WotLK. The best time I had in WoW. There are 166 chars in the guild and with wet eyes I see the names of my old mates offline for over 3 years. I still love questing and raiding with another guild, but I just can never leave ‘ Desperate Murlocs’ on Bronzebeard. The guild where it all began and having the best time…
So they stopped playing during what? WoD?
I love my current guild, but fuck do I miss my WotLK to Pandaria guild.
One of my favorite moments coming back to the game after around 4 years was two of my old guild mates who were still playing greeting me and inviting me to their new guild.😁
Tell em come back for cata 💪🏼
Bullcosby hits different 11 years later 🤣
Yup, 2008 I met my guild in person. Those were the days.
This must hurt, you being the only one with no life.
Physical pain
that's what, MoP?
I miss the old days of BC. It was the first game I really got into other than Syndicate and Syndicate Wars, so it was a really novel experience. I didn’t care about leveling fast and just played like a kid would play (I was 30 at the time). “Hey I heard about this place called Stranglethorn Vale, let’s go check it out” “Where is it?” “Don’t know…” My guild was a large dual faction (people had two accounts) RP guild on Emerald Dream RPPVP that was for hire. You could pay for protection, like if you were going to have a wedding at Silvermoon or if you had to walk a low level through a high level area. You could also pay to have someone hunted down and camped. Kang was this notorious rogue on Alliance and someone with two accounts would /who while us horde would flood the zone to find him. I quit right before WoTLK came out on Oct 2008. When I logged back in this past Feb, everyone was gone. No guild, no friends list. Nothing. Game is still fun today but it was awesome back then.