Learning from my EverQuest 2 experience, I knew that choosing a character class and a server was something that needed careful thought. To get things moving, I reached out to Igor Boyko, Chief Editor of Navigator of Gaming World magazine. He said that he was no longer playing, but he did give me the contact info the main WoW authority, Dima Rommel. Dima was truly at the heart of the game at that time, and he regularly published “Azeroth Chronicles,” chronicling the adventures of his troll-hunter, Rasula.
Dima advised me to go with either a warlock or a hunter. Being a big fan of shooter games, I felt that a hunter was the perfect fit. The question of race was resolved even quicker—I’d always had a fondness for dwarves ever since reading The Lord of the Rings.
Regarding the server choice, Dima suggested joining a role-playing realm, explaining that “the people there are more decent.” He meant that there were fewer griefers , and that the role-playing aspect added an extra layer of interest to the game. He himself had played characters on role-playing servers. At the end of the day, I chose Moonglade-RP-PvE, which became my virtual home for the next year and a half.
So, that evening, when I was finally ready to dive into World of Warcraft, all the major pieces were in place. I created my account, activated the time card code, and installed the game. Of course, there was a hefty download of about a gigabyte of updates, since the disc only contained the basic version without patches.
My first character, just as planned, was a dwarf hunter with a prominent hooked nose and a thick mane of black hair. The first little snag came with the name—”Gatekeeper” was already taken. After a moment of thought, I decided on “Drovosek” (Russian word for woodcutter)
Back then, dwarves and gnomes began their adventures in the snowy Coldridge Valley. The fir-tree-covered mountain valley immediately captivated me. I’ve always been drawn to those kinds of locations in games. I spent my first couple of evenings exploring the valley, doing quests and just taking it all in. Yes, I’d seen plenty of screenshots, but nothing could compare to experiencing it firsthand. The first big win for the game was its vibrant and emotional visuals. The colors could sometimes be a bit too “acidic” but for the most part, they were striking from the first moments of the game and left a lasting impression.
The second big plus was the game’s loading speed. It took about 30-40 seconds from clicking the icon to seeing my character in the game world. EverQuest felt like ages in comparison, taking two or three minutes! What’s more, WoW had a seamless world—you didn’t have to sit through loading screens every time you moved from one area to the next. In EQ, loading a new location would take around one and a half to two minutes. Naturally, staring at a loading screen wasn’t all that fun, especially when I only had an hour or an hour and a half set aside for gaming in the evening.
The Coldridge Valley is like a “newbie zone,” where newly created characters all hang out. I spent a couple of evenings there until I finally decided it was time to venture into the “big world.” That journey began through a tunnel leading to Dun Morogh. There, I had a run-in with a trogg that almost got the better of me. Emerging from the tunnel, I found myself on the road to Karanaos. The run went without a hitch, and soon I arrived in the first “town,” which consisted of just a tavern and a forge facing each other. There was no grifon landing spot yet.
However, Drovosek’s life proved to be short. After exploring the world, playing for a few evenings, and looking at the character from a new perspective, I realized I just didn’t like his appearance. And the name didn’t feel right either—too “Russian,” somehow. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of it but I decided I needed something more original.
The name “Deckven” had been kicking around in my head since the early 90s, originally that was a name for one of main character in my fantasy novel. I liked the way it sounded—short, catchy, and original. In Latin, it came out as Deckven, which seemed perfect. I hadn’t come across that name on the European servers. As it turned out later, the shortened version, “Deck”, also sounded pretty cool to English-speaking players, playing on both “deck of cards” and “deck of a ship”. This time, I put more effort into crafting my character’s appearance, resulting in a bearded, bald dwarf with a Ukrainian Cossack “oseledets,” or a single long forelock.
Deckven would become my main character for the next four and a half years of the game.
I had to go through the leveling grind again with this new character, reaching Karanaos once more. The initial euphoria of being in Azeroth—”Finally, I’m here!”—began to fade, and familiar issues started to surface. The kind of quests I’d grown to loathe in EverQuest 2—”kill twenty rats, bring tails”—were back, and in no smaller quantity. The leveling process was also hampered by several challenges related to hunter mechanics. Back then, hunters got their pets at level 10 after completing a quest. I wasn’t very skilled at kiting yet—I’d only learn that in Outland—so I often had to engage mobs in close-quarters combat. The mobs hit hard, but I, not so much. It wasn’t until Cataclysm and beyond that creatures began to fall with a simple hit. In the late Burning Crusade days, a careless player who pulled a pack of mobs risked a heroic death. And in one-on-one fights, you could easily get a beating, especially as a noob hunter. What’s more, the primary resource for hunters at the time was mana, not focus, meaning that after just one or two fights, you had to stop for food and water, further slowing down the leveling process. And if a pull went wrong, well, it was a run back from the graveyard.
Getting a pet after the quest made things more fun, but the leveling was still slow going. There were no heirloom items, either—those wouldn’t appear until the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Nor were there any guild bonuses. The first mount was given at level 40 and cost a hefty 70 gold. Before that, you had to travel everywhere by foot. And then there were the questing problems. I wouldn’t find out about QuestHelper until April—or that addons even existed—so I often found myself running in circles, searching for targets to complete quests. The interface at that time didn’t even highlight the mobs that needed their ears or tails removed.
Yet, despite the challenges, the pros still outweighed the cons. Again, comparing it to EverQuest 2, which was still fresh in my memory, there were a number of things that made WoW much better.
First, there were no death penalties. In EverQuest 2, dying meant a loss of experience, setting your character back a bit in the leveling process. In WoW, there were no such penalties, and since I died quite frequently in those early days (just as I had in EQ2), this lack of consequence was incredibly welcome.
Then there were the intuitive class mechanics and the item/parameter system. EQ2 had a ton of parameters on its items, but I never really understood what they did or how they worked. In WoW, everything was straightforward. A “green” item was better than a “white” one, and a “blue” item was better than a “green” one. For a hunter, agility was the key stat, shields were unnecessary, and you needed to shoot with a bow. I only learned about rotations and other intricacies later on, when I started venturing into dungeons.
Crafting and earning gold were other points of contrast. Both were major struggles for me in EQ2. So, in WoW, I decided to skip producing professions altogether. Dima Rommel advised me against it at first, suggesting that I should get acquainted with the game first, to understand how things worked. In the end, I opted for mining and skinning. The gold wasn’t exactly flowing like a river, but it was enough to upgrade my skills and buy “blue” quality gear from the auction house.
The “cartoon” graphics were another key factor. “Graphics” in games were a tricky subject. Since the early 90s, computer games had gone from primitive and sometimes schematic visuals to photorealistic graphics. I hadn’t decided what I preferred myself. On one hand, the more detail, the more beautiful, of course. On the other hand, the movements of computer characters and their environments always hinted at their artificiality. Conversely, a deliberately gaudy or unnatural style emphasized this artificiality, and, oddly enough, created a better impression. WoW’s cartoonish style, which had already become the game’s calling card, definitely won me over, compared to the photorealism of EverQuest 2.
Last, but certainly not least, was the lore. I had made several attempts to dig into the history of Norrath, the world of EverQuest, but I could never find any useful resources. There were some basic materials, but nothing that truly helped me understand, even in broad strokes, what was happening. Azeroth, on the other hand, wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar place. While I wasn’t an expert in Azerothian history by any means back then, I had a general sense of the setting.
All these positive elements, combined with the captivating visuals and the sheer joy of immersing myself in a long-loved universe, all played their part. When I left EverQuest 2 for WoW, I told the guys from “Exorcists” that I’d be back in a couple of months. I even remember writing them a “letter from a foreign land,” in which I described my first days in Azeroth.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. By the end of my first month, it became clear that I was here for good, and for the long haul.
