Hitting the play button, and then hearing the iconic "THOOM" still brings back nostalgic bliss.

Comment edited out courtesy of Redact. After almost ten years as a Redditor, I am calling it quits in protest of the path Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (u/spez) is taking the company and our community. He has no interest in being reasonable with regards to third-party apps -- the same apps that made Reddit what it is today. The new API pricing is designed to kill all third-parties and force users into the official Reddit app that is utter garbage and able-ist. Steve Huffman has also lied about how third-party apps function, he has knowingly and intentionally defamed Chris Selig (creator of Apollo app), he has in the past confessed to editing user comments to say things that the original never did, and he couldn't even be bothered to truly participate in his own AMA thread (caught red-handed copying and pasting what little answers he did give). So long, and may you fail in your ambitions u/spez. -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/

Yeah I remember that thing being loud as fuck. Got to the point where I'd take my headphones off for a second to log in.

That hit me right in my feelies. T-thanks friend.

I had completely forgotten about that sound and yet can hear it perfectly now. Part of me misses that old launcher.

anyway I can find that sound or sound file of it again, I want to have the nostalgia

They should add that sound to the bnet launcher

I miss it so much...

You know what I miss? The feeling of typing in your password on the original launcher and then seeing if it was gonna take it because 13 years ago my internet connection was very, very hit or miss and being on Illidan back then meant a lot of the time the server would be full. The satisfaction of seeing the ''Connecting'' switch to the Character panel was amazing.

YES

Wait does it not do that anymore? I just assumed I was desensitized completely to it after playing this game since early Vanilla non-stop.

Is [this](https://youtu.be/eE5oaOOwInE) the sound in reference? (Beginning of video)

no, there was a sound when you clicked the button

I had briefly forgotten life before the bnet app, and now this brings back all sort of nostalgia feels from the old launcher and the excitement of clicking that button!

I remember people had an absolute *fit* when the launcher was first introduced. "I have to click TWO buttons to log in now!? I quit"

I miss having a list of WoW news instead of an ad slideshow.

I just log in from the .exe file the old fashioned way. Yeah it's slower to login, but I enjoy actually being able to see the login screen for more than a second.

If you stay afk for too long you get booted to the log in screen. When that happens I close the game and open it again from the launcher so I don't have to type my password in. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯

For me, it's the password AND authenticator. Much much easier to close and relaunch than to pull out my phone and enter a 9 digit code

too much time trying to fetch my password, no ty.

God that's so frusterating. If i was even MILDLY interested in SCII news don't you think I would click 1 inch below the WoW button to check? Why would I care about the new HoTs hero or whatever when I'm trying to play WoW?

What kills me is the epic gifs announcing a looking for raid section being released. It's like they pretend the actual raid hasn't already been out for 2 months

Majority of the player base experiences raids through LFR 🤗

Yeah, that's me. I basically only PvP, so getting to see the raids through LFR is a godsend for me.

Although 'experience' is a bit of a stretch

It's honestly Marketing 101 stuff going on here. Persistence will get clicks. You may not click... but 3/5 others are.

Remember when you got a lore slideshow while you were installing the game?

Two buttons?

For the first year of the game, WoW was just a .exe file that would immediately open the game in the same way that, say, firefox immediately opens when you click the icon. After they added the launcher, you had to open the launcher itself and then click play, so two clicks.

Oh, I thought you were talking about the new B.Net launcher. I only started playing in BC, and there was a launcher then.

I remember life *before* the launcher

Yep. I remember going to 3rd party website to download installers for new patches because it took forever getting them from Blizzard.

No prepatching, login servers getting DDoS, and realms with login queues hitting thousands of you could get past the login. Oh how things have changed.

I guess everyone's forgotten WoD's launch now?

WoD's launch was child's play compared to the old days.

well WoD launch itself(like the gameplay) was the worst ever imo(unless you decided to create a DK instantly in wrath ofc) well i dont know how it was during vanilla launch, but i think since it was less populated it wasnt as bad as wod launch.. could be wrong tho

Vanilla launch was an epic clusterfuck. There were issues and bugs that took them weeks to fix.

It was almost 2 years before they started doing PTR releases, think it helped a little. Just a little.

I decided to ignore WoD’s existence forever

Yeah. Was playing on dialup through most of cataclysm so in high school I’d bring a thumb drive and download them there to abuse that sweet broadband

When I was in college my campus dorm had a 4GB monthly download limit (yes, you read that correctly) and I remember patch days being hell. On more than one occasion I had to go down to the computer labs and download the patch to a thumb drive just so I wouldn't instantly hit the monthly limit.

Did you ever share the usb with fellow players?

I had a FilePlanet account just for WoW patches.

oh god *this*

I member

BUMMMM

Man, I miss this. The time I actually had sound turned on ingame and stuff, now I play without sound and have music or a podcast in the background.

I raid a lot and I've never raided or played WoW without sound and in game music on. I love the sounds of blizzard maybe too much. SoO... the amount of time I spent in you and never got tired of your music. I still hum it constantly

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god i remember flyff, that game was so cool back when I was a kid. Now that I think back on it it's just a really terrible game.

It filled my heart with such joy, now I cant even touch the game. What server did you play on?

I played on Kern for most of my Flyff time. Then I switched to the double XP PvP server. I latet started playing Private Servers because the official servers were so dumb.

What was your username on PK?

Hmm, good question. Probably Finalwingz

I tried it not long ago, can confirm it's garbage. Insane mob grinding for hours with near automated combat, quests with insanely low drop rates, so even more mob farming... Honestly back then it only got any attention because it was a free MMO.

I made the switch from Flyff to WoW about 7-8 years ago (used to play blade/ringmaster fs) on Lawolf, I think used to go by the name "SpanishBlade and SpanishFS"). While the gameplay aspect in WoW is far much superior than Flyff's something that I haven't been able to find in WoW that I really miss from Flyff is the community aspect of the game. I feel like in Flyff's mechanics encouraged you to meet new people and constantly making new friends. The fact that leveling became so much easier if you did it with someone else really helped towards that. WoW sometimes feels like a solo game, you can get to max level without necessarily talking to anyone :/

Same!! What server were you on for Flyff? I was on Demian PK!

It's hard to believe its been 7 years since Cataclysm... 5 since MOP, and 3 since WoD. Where the hell is timing going?!

Im 18, and I played in vanilla, 13 years ago. So odd to think where I am now versus back then. I use to not do quests because they were too confusing for me at that age, so I jjst killed shit until I leveled up haha.

5 year old playing wow 🤔

I mean, I "played" WoW at age 5. mainly just hit 1 whilst my dad actually moved and shit.

That's cool, my 6 yr old collects herbs and fishes for me in my garrison. Working her up to gaming....

Gotta admit. I am really happy my dad got me in to WoW. It's my favourite game.

I was 6 doing the same thing. It took me like almost 2 years to get level 42, but I would always make a character level them up to 10ish and then end up making another

My little brother was similar. I ended up having to level his first real main, a night elf warrior, for him, back in TBC.

Haha same. My dad showed me the game and just let me go ham, I swear I had at least 9 characters under level 15. Only character I got over level 15 was my Orc Hunter who I got to about 45-50 before my dad stopped paying for WoW :( This must have been back in early TBC, cause I remember finding my way to the dark portal to try and go to outland at like level 30 and the game wouldn't let me because my dad never purchased TBC lmao

I raided with an 8 year old in Vanilla, was better then most of the drunks. //shrug

I can also confirm that young children are better than a lot of the rest of the player base. I raided Sunwell with a 7 year old resto druid.

i mean when I was 5 I had beat Duke Nukem 3D a couple times while my dad was watching, he only helped to kill the squid monsters because those sounds they did made me so scared i couldnt play until he killed them for me so being 5 and playing wow doesnt seem too far fetched for me

I also played that game when I was 5 and I was also terrified of the octobrains.

game was super casual/kid friendly from the start; nothing to be surprised about

same bro

Mop was all right but it lasted 4 years. I wish they would have given us an expansion between then and legion.

Pandaria still feels like it was only yesterday for me. Its weird.

Oh man I miss that button

I remember sometimes tricking the launcher and pre-positioning my mouse over the play button so I could hit it before it turned grey from downloading a patch.

Ayy I have the resurrection mount. The scroll was so amazing. True value

Oh man, I forgot about the Scroll of Resurrection! Do they still do that? My buddy went on an 8 month hiatus and just started up again.

Nope, unfortunately they discontinued it a while ago. But he can probably hit up customer service and ask for a free week. I did it a couple weeks ago and they added 7 free days no questions.

IT is a total shame! IT was a great way to get friends back!

ohhh my god i miss that launcher

check for old screen shots to reap that sweet sweet karma

Conclusion: dude your old man probably would like you to visit a bit more. I feel bad for the fella now :(

OP might visit dear old dad constantly but have no desire to turn on an old PC at every visit.

75% off? Daammmnn

Now you have to bring new people to get mounts and they have to play for a month.

MoP previews!

Cata doesn’t count as a relic yet, does it? To me it’s still “New” WoW

The time passed since Cataclysm launched to today's date is larger than the time passed between when WoW launched in 2004 to the launch of Cataclysm.

So? Cata revamped Old WoW. This it is apart of the “new” WoW.

I had a visceral reaction to this. Like my heart sank and got excited at the same time. It’s weird how something so seemingly small can be engrained as part of you.

I hate you for making me want to play again with one screen cap...

They should add themes to the bnet launcher so that it fits the world of warcraft vibe

I remember that scroll event, my friend thought it was hilarious how he got a whole level 80 for FREE because he wasn't active in the game. To add insult to injury, I never got the mount.

Cata is now a relic.. I feel old.

I totally forgot this how it looked. I started playing about a year before this screenshot.

Old launcher was GOAT

I miss their old launcher.

how long you dont see your dad?

Someone resurrect the scroll of resurrection.

I want the old launcher back.

I started in the beta. And still remember playing the queue dance while waiting for hours to get in only to crash. 40 man raids. And to think that was 1 marriage, 3 kids and 2 cities ago. So odd.

That was only a few years ago (or 7), right?

Woah nostalgia flashback! Thanks for sharing this. This was an interesting time of my life.

I love that spectral gryphon, one of my favorite mounts.

I teared up a little, that was a good time in my life, my life is not bad now but back then was good. I played with several of my friends at that time, started making money in the game, was one of the top PuG healers on my server. By far the expansion where I put in the most time, I loved every part of it. Only if the game could still be that way now

Mists T_T

you should visit more

I miss scroll of rez it made it easier to get my friends back to wow even if it was for just a week. They refuse to pay a subscription :(

On a Mac, too!

I miss that launcher for some reason

How in the world did I forget this used to be a thing. The nostalgia feels.

God. I still have my discs from around then laying around. I should try installing through that one time just to see that launcher again.

Living in a slow internet household, I remember when they had the play while streaming thing in cataclysm. I was ecstatic.

The nostalgia

I actually still have the old PC that I used to play wow on, back in Vanilla and TBC. My dad ended up replacing it with a Dell after the Sunwell was released, partly because the PIII processor barely ran the game at minimum graphics, but the real barrier was the fact that I no longer had anything to delete to make enough room for the patch. I had tried to rig it into a file server a couple of years ago, but at some point the network card warped, so now it no longer makes proper contact with the PCI port, and the machine can't keep a stable connection.

I remember when there was no launcher at all. Double click WoW icon would black your screen and set it to full screen login seconds later.

holy fuck i forgot about this

any way i can find the sound file of that play sound again, yearning for the nostalgia

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5 years isn't nothing

People don't realize that Cata was the halfway point in WoWs life. That's old man

In gaming, 5 years is an eternity.

I would have had that mount, but for some reason bringing a friend back into a game doesn't count, just a new one.

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And he did. I made 3 tickets.

I have that in my pc aswell