It really feels like WoW has always been, never mind just turning 7. It's never really been toppled in it's genre, so it feels so dragged on.

first mmo*

SKYRIM

I like to imagine that every Nov 23rd, Blizzard employees go nuts with all the money they made off this game and start doing crazy shit like throwing insane parties and making multi-thousand dollar bets on Starcraft 2 and WoW arena matches...and even non-Blizzard shit like Mortal Kombat...and Scrabble.

Then after he gets hammered, Metzen starts prank calling other MMO studios and shouting, "YOU COME AT THE KING, YOU BEST NOT MISS" then he hangs up.

it was so memorable that you got ragnaros's name wrong

that or spell check f'ed you up
I played for a good 4 years then I just left, to much damn pandering going on for my tastes nowadays and no it's not the "casuals" fault

Wow, it's almost hard to believe it's still going strong after all these years.

I've been playing since October 2005, quitted in early 2011, might come back but as long as they making everything more accessible, no.

Happy birthday

I've never been a fan of any MMO, but I can't deny that WoW definitely changed the industry.

@BrowneyeWinkin

Boy, that was a constructive comment. And it was completely relevant to the story, too! Literary gold, even!

But in all seriousness, shut up.

old game is oooold

I'm still looking forward to Mists of Pandaria.

Soon as GW2 comes out (hopefully) WoW will be just an afterthought to me

@pokota - I felt that the arena completely killed the exciting world pvp, and all that was left was people ganking lower level areas without fear of anyone organizing to stop then like they used to. The only option was to park my main in the same areas my alts were leveling so I get them back. The occasional raids against cities were never challenged after that, and it essentially ruined the point of pvp servers. Don't even get me started on resilience and stamina gear...

You really should have played Dark Age of Camelot if you wanted large scale, spontaneous fighting with tangible stakes. Three continents called realms (knights vs vikings vs elvish fantasy), six relics that each give stat boosts to the entire realm that controls them, and huge zones that are designed for all three to clash as they attempt to conquer keeps and towers for their guilds. I was regularly in battlegroups of 100+ people going against similar numbers of enemies. That game didn't have PvP, it had RvR, and I still feel like no game had come remotely close to matching it's scale our intensity.

@Mag - Absolutely. Battlegrounds caused a big hit to the open pvp scene. Whatever was left, arena finished it off. When I eventually quit, I remember ranting about battleground and arena in the text box asking why I decided to unsubscribe.

It's still a fantastically designed game that lead to very close knit groups of people when they raided. With the advent of daily quests, though, I felt that the carrot-on-a-stick design became far too apparent, and without exciting pvp, I became disillusioned.

Coming from a MUD with the most exciting, political-based guild wars, to DAoC with unparalleled faction warfare, to World of Warcraft with a neutered sense of war, I had to move on. That's when I got back into DMC and then got a 360.

@Arttemis - I actually followed the exact same path, having sunk thousands of hours into a MUD (still the best roleplaying experience I've come across) before moving to DAoC for a couple of good years (played on Guinevere until shortly after New Frontiers went live). Getting into the WoW closed beta sealed my fate as a gamer for a few years.

For quite a while, I found it to be the perfect balance of MMO components, allowing one to enjoy the benefits of being in a living world but not always required to group or grind. I loved the scenery of Burning Crusade, but was heavily turned off by the fact that I was essentially doing the exact same quests I had done before, just in new locales. I made it a few levels into Wrath of the Lich King and gave it up, never to return. Beautiful world, but not worth being the only game I can play.

Well, I did peek back in once they made it free to level 20. And my god, has that game become unbearably sugar coated. Everything is easily obtained, and the hand holding is unbearable. I can't find much enjoyment in doing a quest when the game all but plays it for me. Good on them for sustaining an MMoRPG better than anyone else, but my time as a player is long over. I still spin the soundtracks fairly often though.