The INSANE Story of Opening Ahn'Qiraj, Then VS NOW | Classic WoW

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The Opening of Ahn'Qiraj brings out some of the worst in players but the best in stories. A time gated event thats a unique experience on each server and entirely player driven... what could possibly go wrong?
As chaotic as it was, this was one of my favourite parts of Classic WoW, today let's relive the event and i'll share a few stories that I remember from it.
This is the Opening of AQ in Classic WoW
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[@WillEmmo]

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[@dantedante8837]

didnt ask

[@Galivelol]

can we have a video dedicated for the Black lotus history in classic vanilla please Wille ?

[@lightsabr2]

Oh, I've got some good stories about that US - 3rd Zul'Jin. We were up to finishing the quest chain for the mace, and were completing the Moonglade battle with Eranikus. Though one 40-man guild raid did defeat Eranikus and another 40-man guild raid held the elite voidwalker mobs at bay... Keeper Remulos died and so the quest couldn't be turned in. In addition to 80 players fighting the enounter, many dozens of spectators had gathered, and they were told (dejectedly) "Sorry boys. The NPC's dead and doesn't respawn 'till server reset". Go home, nothing to see here. But in /w's and in teamspeak among those actually fighting the fight... (Hey, come back here in 1 hour). So we came back. An someone had come up with an idea. We stacked nearly 100 player characters into the same square foot of land. Big pile of peeps. And we spammed every ability we ever had. AOEs, shouts, chain heals... And we crashed the server. We brute-forced a server restart and sure enough, Remulos was alive when we logged back in. Quest was turned in, final preparations were made, and we secured that number 3 slot for AQ.

[@rohitjohn7498]

That's amazing

[@joelongreen1313]

Thanks for sharing

[@Thesoulofalion]

just wow

[@stacrafty]

Fn epic!

[@cerominho]

Was it back then or classic era?

[@CefcaPalazzo]

Thanks for reminding me of AQ40, time to rewatch Barny's entire Scarab Lord series again.

[@Bronimin]

that's maddie to you, transphobe

[@laranjo5999]

The best WoW videos ever made

[@dudere]

@@Bronimin WTF are you on about?

[@godlygamer911]

@@Bronimin Or... hear me out... literally the channels name is barny idiot

[@bigchungus1888]

That guy makes great videos

[@NEPAAlchey]

I love that Blizzard has refused to this day to admit there's an autoban for reports despite this big example and tons of streamers proving it exists. Clearly it's just a series of coincidences...

[@JH-zs6vh]

I think they use auto squelching as a technicality to get around from calling it an auto ban system. Squelching is easily abused due to mass reports, disconnects someone who get multi-reported in a short time and takes away all their ways of communication and forming groups for content. Arguably squelching is worse than a ban because atleast you know what you did wrong with a ban, while with a squelch you could be waiting a week without anyway to communicate with players in game only to find out you were mass reported.

[@joshea7861]

@@JH-zs6vh squelching definitely isn't what they were doing in classic wow phase 5, where this auto ban was triggered.

[@quintrapnell3605]

Blizzard didn’t admit any wrongdoing until classic wrath prepatch and even then still never addressed this bit honestly. Just a vague please keep playing our game we will do better post and started using community feedback.

[@DrewPicklesTheDark]

What's even more insane is the dipshits who believe them, defend them, and attack you if you call Blizzard out.

[@Popmycherryyo]

The thing is, it doesn't even need many for it to trigger. Back when classic vanilla launched, I managed to tag some pirates from a spanish guild (on my faction), them being ultra sad, all reported me (alongside prolly their guildmates) not 30 seconds later I was autobanned.

[@cubeh8331]

Back in original vanilla, our chosen Scarab lord, the only one of the server because that’s how it was back then, completed their rep grind with the guild then we later found out that he was hated by the goblins, so we then had to farm pirates to get his goblin rep back up before we could progress with the quest 😅

[@andreaskarlsson5251]

How the heck did no one beat him to it if you had to do that? ;O We had Kungen on my server so it was kinda already decided wether we wanted it or not lol

[@H4licarnassus]

Grizzly getting no scarab lords was the best story to come out of classic wow. Thousands of players kept going for 10 hours straight off the back of pure spite, hatred and a desire for revenge.

[@lct23]

It’s beautiful. Just goddamned beautiful

[@joshwilmot4257]

Was a day one Sulfuras player, and watched as Grizzly came right before BWL dropped, and dreaded going to bwl with world buffs with grizzly just kucking the whole mountain every Tuesday. Seeing them get denied like that despite the insane lag will always be my best wow memory ever.

[@vuuuf]

they did end up getting it in the end, the guy with it transferred to a server that was slow with the war effort and was able to get it. he then xferred back after the cd

[@grandmarshaljeromial5174]

@@vuuuf doesn't matter he got cuckd

[@Vihara2]

@@vuuuf they made him spend money and time to get it, he had to spend months off server on that character to get it, thats still a win.

[@Barny64]

everywhere i look i see silithus

[@bezretmet]

Not everyone can be THE scarab lord. such a title should be expected to come with burdens. also... NEW VIDEO WHEN???

[@deokots]

i played horde on sulf during this time and it was one of the best feelings ever to watch grizzly cry and eventually crumble.

[@jennz7330]

My dad played on Medivh during the original AQ opening, and I played on Mankrik on classic, which meant I spent an ungodly amount of time in the bug caves helping to tag mobs or out farming chimaerok meat. We had 2 scarab lords in my guild, and I was actually on the gems portion of the quest when the 10 hour war started so I didn't end up making it in time, but I had fun anyway. Two generations of my family got to experience AQ opening for the first time, and that's a memory we both cherish.

[@PRC533]

During the original event in Vanilla, I was leveling my first character and the war effort was directly responsible for being able to afford my mount at 40. I was selling stacks of linen, wool, light leather, etc...for ridiculous prices (for back then) on the AH.

[@evankimori]

Now that you mention it, I wish there was a way to calculate how much G my character has earned and spent throughout my account life.

[@Olivruh]

​@@evankimori go to your achievement statistics page it will give you a character based gold breakdown

[@linac5804]

Being able to solo multiple silithid elite mobs at once as a shadow priest and selling the fragments at 4-7g each netted me around 2k-3k gold per hour and was truly a highlight of vanilla classic.

[@shodan785]

Facts, back then in august I just finished bachelors and had a lot of time to spare, so I farmed carapaces for 2-3 days to sell them to a guild For irl cash. Been working for 2 years already and I still don’t get as much cash/hour as back the xd

[@weareprepared2075]

@WillE 13:30 The fragment math is wrong, you used TBC values when the rep was buffed on the turn in (original TBC servers launched with closed gates). It was 1:1 fragment and rep, so 42k frags. Love the video on this event tho, it was such a fun time, and a great distraction when the first covid lockdowns were happening

[@gbach919]

Yea I was just thinking the same thing, helped a buddy in my guild do this on classic and I thought it was well over 40k. Appreciate the math check 😅

[@chefnerd]

The opening was quite a sight back then. Constant server crashes in glorious 5 FPS. I was there, ten thousand years ago ...

[@RephChorew]

Correction about the Sulfuras Twilight corrupter debacle. Ally were griefing the fight by intentionally dying which buffed the boss. After 4 deaths the boss was unbeatable by a standard 40 man raid. So horde had 4 full raid groups show up with The thought being 200 horde could kill the boss even if it was griefed. We pulled the boss 4 times so all 4 raids could get kill credit. Soufflé was banned on the final pull when it was his guilds turn to get the kill credit.

[@t.k.tyrantic1192]

The joke about the dragon knowing about you buying the base edition of dragonflight really cracked me up. I instantly subbed and liked :P

[@PsyrenXY]

This is a million times more entertaining to hear about than to actually play through, kudos WillE

[@DRourk]

haha no! I played through it.. it was a phenomenal blast!

[@TheIceisDry]

Scarab Lord here, our guild had 2, i was 2nd, and there def moments where i was skeptical i would complete. Took 3 days for the 1st to finish the farm, and mine was 7 more days (with my most loyal friends continuing while most dipped). Even on a PvE server mob competition was fierce at the start. I avoided any chance at false reports by playing my hunter to farm the caves, while my pally was the character I got the mount on (since ofc farming as holy was not good). We split into multiple groups to farm different hives to establish our farm spots. To try and stay ahead of other guilds on quests, at the start we would taunt tagged mobs following non warriors (since they had no deputies) as the best guess was that most Scarab Lords were warrior tank/GMs. People were using macros that spammed fast attacks/spells to tag respawns and if they were opposite faction you could flag and /duel them and get them to attack you and gank them. A portion of our guild lived in Los Angeles which was under 10ms from the server so we would out tag most people who weren't. The green dragon trash farm took multiple 3 hour farms vs other guilds, and i was able to get my red fragment the day before the war effort ended. I was also moving between states IRL, so during the travel time for the war effort completion i was trying to pack my house up . Hitting that gong during the lagfest while people got ported out due to zone capacity was spooky too. We also took the first twilight corrupter into stormwind because we wanted to troll, my POV is on my channel if you wanted to see. Such an insane event, grinding hives 20 hours a day, eating premade beans and rice meals i had prepped prior, taking naps on the floor so i would wake up uncomfortable and get back on to grind more instead of going back to sleep. By far THE MOST UNIQUE event and time I've ever experienced in the game by a longshot, I wouldnt do it again, but im glad I went for it, and i still play with a majority of the people who put in all 10 days for our guild in those hives. We also had a few people farm linen from the windmill defias in westfall, abusing the hyperspawns and a meme came about that our guild was going to solo finish the war effort and screw everyone else out of their mounts. Good times. Great video WillE!

[@actavisprime514]

I was 10 years old questing near camp Turajo when i was attacked by alien dog people…i was mortified

[@lct23]

Bro that 10 hour fight in tanaris is the most neck beard thing I’ve ever heard of

[@Archimo]

My server had some very obnoxious alliance players as their top guilds of the server, they quite literally told us that they would do the entire war effort on their own, didn't need us and insulted us greatly far before the war effort happened... It became the great peacebloom war of the server... not joking it was the actual name alliance players were farming peaceblooms to transfer over to horde or even on horde characters and got killed regardless, people collected peaceblooms or sniped them from neutral AH and recorded themself deleting them infront of the turn in guy, we even had some alliance players supporting us going into orgrimmar to spam kill the peacebloom turn in NPC. Probably the funniest thing that ever happened on the server wasn't even mad that I didn't get to raid because we had such a big grudge with the alliance side.

[@Stormwern]

Huge war over carapace on Razorgore, the "Coalition" that put themselves in charge of who got to farm was overthrown by disaffected parties after about a week of fighting.

[@ShadowFlummer]

Some of the most fun i had in classic, which guild were you in?

[@Stormwern]

@@ShadowFlummer Eternal Fury

[@yweitering]

Frozen bby

[@DeutscherDummer]

It also brought us Barny's incredible scarab lord video series, so that alone makes it an amazing event :P

[@noname-gp6hk]

I was there on fairbanks alliance, night elf druid named Beardozer. The grind and group effort we put in to get our scarab mount was by far the most rewarding experience I've ever had online. Back to back to back 16+ hour days banging our heads against bugs and horde and their colluding aliance friends made for the best drama and the best memories I'll ever have from this game. I probably never want to do it again, but I'm glad I did it.

[@Evan-mt7bc]

I feel like whenever this event gets covered the massive bug world bosses at the end always get overlooked. IMO those bugs are once in a lifetime opportunities to fight. To see literal thousands of players just launch in every single corner of the zone is absolute magic. Video never quite describes it and editorials always focus on the gong ringers but everybody else flying across the entire zone to these bugs. I was there and that shit will never quite be recreated ever.

[@wh0racle3]

I wish I was there for the Classic gates opening. I was there back in the original version in 2006, but the servers couldn't handle it, it was so laggy everyone was just running in place and getting disconnected. I tried relogging in for awhile and eventually just said screw this I'll play tomorrow. Didn't start Classic this time until tbc

[@AleksandarSimeonov93]

I remember that on Firemaw the event was underwhelming because we had an alliance layer and a horde layer. Progress rushed the gate opening to go for EU first AQ40. Most of these interesting stories happened on realms who weren't layered.

[@Golemoid]

I'm fairly sure that the war effort required less turn ins for Horde because in Vanilla majority of players were Alliance. So it was a matter of balance and not bias.

[@stonesec]

"With the advent of discord allowing cross-faction communication instantly" shoutouts to the burning legion IRC channel back in vanilla, one of my favorite WoW memories was shitposting in there with the boys

[@Hoibz]

I'm 99% sure you needed 42k fragments to get Neutral with Brood of Nozdormu. As far as I remember, one hand in gave 200 rep, and required 200 fragments.

[@keeve1320]

You are correct

[@justinperry8445]

It's a bit less with Human as well isn't it? 10% increase to all reputations racial

[@rdb8324]

fun fact: blizz actually did not implement the 90 period after transfer during which a player would not be able to ring the gong. we had a guy on our server farm out the entire quest line and build the scepter and then transfer and immediately hit the gong. he got the mount and the title

[@adamt4776]

As someone who experienced it all as it was released.. I was not interested enough to do it all again for Cthun then Nax (thats where I quit in 2005-6) Watching how CLASSIC was handled by the players and Blizz.... What. A. Shitshow. I dont care how much flame i get for this comment... But the player base now is utterly disgusting. Little brother syndrome killed any chance of it being like it was.

[@dungeonsanddobbers2683]

I remember the opening of AQ on The Sha'Tar, one of the new servers that went up with the release of TBC. The whole server came together to do the quests, pouring donations in to get everything done. Then, about halfway through the event, one guild just had a player with all the requirements do a character transfer from their server over to ours to ring the gong. The only notice we got was a post on the realm forums about an hour before they rang the gong, from someone in a different guild who had learned that this other guild was doing. Suffice it to say, there were a _lot_ of people who were pissed off.

[@Dimumouto]

"Did the players who did nothing wrong deserve to not get the mount and title?" No, they rightfully deserved to finish the quests and get their well deserved reward. But because a guild who thought themselves the arbiter of the war effort felt the need to use underhanded tactics to cause issues. The retaliation itself was justified, I feel. Grizzly took the fight OUT of the game, while the Horde played fair and kept the fight IN the game. The only people the innocent players should be upset with is Grizzly. That guild is the one who started this, holding down Duskwood so that NO ONE ELSE could continue, neither Horde or Alliance.

[@kylelowe137]

TLDR it’s a game…

[@desyncer]

GRIZZLY is the definition of sweaty no lifes who commit scams, ninja loot and are just general griefers to both factions even on the private servers. They relish the negative attention as they are socially undeveloped no life gamers and the fact that the Horde of Sulfuras could get their revenge by keeping Anachronos in combat for the entire 10 hour war is pure divine justice.

[@Ceece20]

Grizzly should have had their SL title and mount removed and have their guild name permanently changed to “Losers”. Horde were justified and the other Alliance guilds suffered because of some of their own. Then again, Classic just seems to breed sweaty losers so…

[@yoremothra9838]

@@Ceece20 Classic didn't breed them, but it definitely drew them in, like flies to shit

[@joshmallon]

"Did the players who did nothing wrong deserve to not get the mount and title?" Yes.

[@Bintuh]

As a player back then, i had no idea what was going on in gerneral :D I was farming a lot of resources to get my undead a tauren mount. Once i realised what the event was for, the gates were long open

[@jimbology7617]

the 90 day transfer limit was a great bit of foresight, but also a learned experience from the past. in vanilla, there WERE people who fucked up scarab lord for entire servers by transferring to them at like 2 am, ringing the gong, getting their mount, and leaving. I remember preach telling a story about a scumbag rogue he knew that did exactly that; the server's "gong ringing" date was set for the following week (coordinated on the realm forum i think) and so he saw that, transferred, hit it, and peaced out. some real classic rogue'ing there xD

[@natecw4164]

Nothing proved to me how ready I was to move on like the opening of AQ40. It was so cool in 2006, this time round it was so min maxed it made me sad. You can't go back in time. At least I can't. Oh well, great game great times.

[@Epidombe]

Theres a rogue on horde who bought scarab lord on TWO characters. But because he could get both on fairbanks, he transferred one toon to another server, and RMTd thousands of turn ins to stall progress and basically crashed their auction house.

[@ProjecTJAD]

I remember on our vanilla server, the gong was rung "secretly" in the night by one of the guilds - Rather than being on the agreed upon "truced" gong date established on our forums. They claimed things like "preserving framerate" and "Preventing a server crash" but everyone knew and most people expressed it was just so that guild could be the only ones to ring the gong and play the event.

[@kiearawagner7901]

God, that must have been so demoralizing, especially for the would-be Scarab Lords. Imagine going through the ardous task of getting the rep up, and managing to get the three pieces of the scepter and then reforged, all prepared... only for a guild to secretly agree to do it ahead of time just to screw over not just the enemy side's would-be Scarab Lords, but also their own side as well.

[@evankimori]

I was present for the very first 10 hr War on Turalyon when it launched but I was nowhere near being in a raiding guild or capable of participating in this event outside killing loads of the statues that escaped into the world post-gong. I spent most of this time helping other players who were trapped in zones because of these mobs and only long after did I realize what the AQ event was in the first place since I had not too long gotten into the game, much less read forums or patch notes. I was quite upset knowing I missed out on this event but I couldn't get any of the mounts either because raiding guilds on that server were a practical job interview and incredibly elitist. I didn't see my mounts until well after BC launched and some folks went back to farm AQ, much less me soloing it for pets etc as well. This event was wonderful albeit I saw it from the sidelines. A great bit of design on Bliz part.

[@lightlink85225]

It wasn't mentioned, but a big factor in Grizzly not being able to finish the questline is because their own would be scarab lord (among several others) received temporary bans as a result of their abuse of the report system. A screenshot circulated showing just how long the ban would last, which would be lifted sometime in the middle of the 10 hour war. Grizzly then had to log in and speedrun BWL for the red shard which you couldn't get on week 1. They then summoned two full raids to the back of the caverns of time, while a coalition of horde guilds waited below to prevent their turn in. During this time, it was attempted to let other alliance players seeking scarab lord through to finish their turn in, which became futile as more and more players began to arrive and participate in the blockade.

[@thh1899]

That was a fun day on Sulfuras. Truly one of the great gaming memories I'd hope to receive when I started playing classic.

[@ThorGodofThunder420]

Imagine if they changed the war effort requirements for classic, that would have been horrible and hilarious. I took part in farming for my scarab lord, Stuz. He was the richest in our guild and one of the most try hard on the server. Bigglesworth definitely had at least 6 scarab lords, and we were a VERY evenly split pvp realm (55H/45A if i remember and the alliance were more coordinated), so I wouldn't be surprised if there were 10+ including both factions. It was fun, lots of alliances between horde and alliance guilds, and then it had lots of griefing. I don't recall how quickly our gates opened, but that 10 hour window was wild. I mostly remember the lag 😆

[@pendragonfan42]

I think Blood and Fury stalled the horde turn-ins by 2 or 3 days after telling everyone they had farmed like 85% of the mats, thus placing the gong opening period at like 10pm on a Sunday, fucking over everyone who had to work that Monday.

[@phantom0456]

The best part of all of this was how T-Rex’s “Bang A Gong” would play when the Scarab Lord on a given server would bang the gong… as a Scarab Lord myself, I can personally attest to this. Sometimes, if a given server was really lucky, “Bang A Gong” by Power Station would play instead. And this was server-wide, of course… even fresh level 1 toons in the starter zones would be treated to these gems if they were playing at the proper time. It was basically as if there were huge loudspeakers all over Azeroth proclaiming that the gong had been banged!

[@Hask79]

I was there man!! I was there!!

[@Bager_RBN]

On the 90 day no-gong-banging period, I'm pretty certain Blizz introduced that because people ninja-banging the gong actually happened on the server I played during TBC. It was a new server opened during TBC, so the effort hadn't been completed during vanilla. There was several people working on the scepter and a set date for when all of them intended to open the door, which had gone very well... until some guy transferred in, opened the gate before anyone else could, and a few weeks later posted on the server forums asking people how mad they were, as he was disappointed by how little hate mail he had gotten. The story was pretty funny, in retrospect.

[@Xanariaa]

I do remember it happening too maybe even still in early lk, when they opened a new server you could see videos of dozens ppl poping the achievements

[@Chili1179]

Sulfuras Horde here, our proudest achievement was preventing Grizzly from getting Scarab Lord. Fuck them.

[@Halibel764]

We need a collection of history about Opening AQ in all servers. In mine : I was lv 37 and never knew anything about it.

[@robertgoodman1829]

Loved and hated these events. Still have my black scarab and scarab lord title, and the nightmares that go with it!

[@darylcheshire1618]

In early days I had an alt on a pvp server which had the gong event early and I didn’t know what was happening, I logged in to the hotel in Gadgetzan to a bleak scene, all the NPCs were dead and just outside the walls were some ?? giant insects. At the time I asked myself “what had the Horde done this time?”. I logged off. I made enquiries and apparently Feathermoon Stronghold was similarly devastated.

[@PhilerinoBTW]

On Kingsfall-EU (PvE) during SoM we had a very special individual, who will not be named. He was so madly infatuated with being the first person to ring the gong (and get the server-wide emote with his name on it), that he broke the agreed time of ringing the gong at around 8:30 am by 4 hours and ruined people's chance to experience the 10-hour war event (irl commitments and whatnot). Thankfully none of the actual Scarab Lords missed their chance to ring the gong, and I personally got decently lucky during my own grind and rang the gong around 9 am no problem :)

[@wimgeuens8433]

How many Lords did you manage to get on SoM? Were the World Bosses buffed aswell or only the Raidbosses ?

[@Babaganoosh69]

Excellent vid, the AQ war effort perfectly sums up why I loved playing Classic and look forward to playing Classic Vanilla again. Stories, rivalries, alliances, backstabbing, etc, etc all are created and occur to make every playthrough on Classic different and just as interesting as the last.

[@JohnDoe-km9vx]

Really enjoying the high quality videos WillE :D keep it up they are awesome.

[@WillEmmo]

Thanks!

[@JoshuaJacobs83]

I didn't get into WOW hardcore, so I missed out on this, but I do have fond memories of hearing about this event. Thank you for this

[@christophermcdermott2300]

- Sulfuras let's goooo

[@martinmullender-taeter5163]

sometimes i feel sad about how the internet made wow the biggest thing that ever existed in gaming, so many random stories and giant events and wars ... you name it ... sad part is that the internet also destroyed it, now when you level then you can reach level cap within a short period of time because you go all spreadsheet and look everything up, back then you made your own way and met people along the grind, made friends, made enemies, shared tips and tricks you came by with your guild, guilds used to find random houses in the world that they would call headquarters, we would hold peace councils with some horde guilds and settling our long rivalry on some farming spot, deals were made, backs were stabbed .... yeah it was a living breathing world back then, now its just people ignoring each other in the same zone and if you need anything just look it up on wowhead, takes the magic out of the whole experience

[@placeholdername3206]

I remember this event when it took place in the original level 60. (I didn't play Classic, so unsure how much of the original AQ event there was left) Obviously people weren't as good back in 2006, or had 10+ years to read up on this entire thing, or do it on private servers. Only the sweatiest of the sweaty guilds had an actual shot at finishing the scepter quest. Just being a BWL guild that cleared it every week wasn't enough. Most high pop servers only had 1-2 of such caliber guilds on each faction, willing to put in the time. 99% of people playing the game had no idea what it was even about. Most people hadn't even cleared Molten Core. Datamining was not a thing. Everything wasn't laid out and dissected before the content was was even released. You couldn't just KZbin everything

[@erdemsahin2800]

😅❤😂

[@thegreattaiyou]

But no you don't understand, ThE hOrDe HaD iT eAsIeR

[@RW77777777]

95% of pugs couldn't beat the Bat Boss in ZG or do UBRS without 4 cc classes people would come to raid in T0 Devout Shoulders like Leroy

[@Pompomatic]

Man I do love gaming without data mining

[@darknessn3]

Sulfuras horde here representing. No scarab lord for grizzly. Beautiful day.

[@joshw3719]

Just one of the many reasons why vanilla wow is the best AND in its natural unchanged state. Thousands of people are waiting for a fresh SoM and are just itching to get off of wrath and play it. There’s a reason why people have been playing this game over and over again for over a decade without any changes. Give us a fresh vanilla server with no changes, exactly how it was intended to be and I as well as thousand of others will continue to play it every single time. Great video Willie.

[@mr.shenanigans7737]

Bought war supplys in the neutral AH for 1 copper and then sold them for tons..server hated me but I was far too rich and petty to mess with lol(mage)

[@CrixGuides]

AQ HYPE AQ HYPE

[@noname-gp6hk]

I didn't enjoy AQ that much, but man participating in opening the gates was the most fun I've ever had in gaming.

[@stevenhanna8768]

One of my favorite memories of WOW was the opening of the gate for AQ. I can't believe that was 2006. The level of ganking was something I never saw again and it was the most special event I remember from my time playing 2004-2008

[@N4xu5]

Wasn't there in vanilla one server where the dedicated scarab Lord hold everyone hostage ab demanded gold?

[@noname-gp6hk]

I really hope that happened. This game was just set up for player drama like that to unfold, it was fantastic.

[@TheSold3y]

Great videos as always Willemon

[@Soralax]

Totally unrelated but in a topic of server stories. We had a guy who would once a week orgsnise a raid to kill opposite faction's leaders. Many organised it but that one guy was so famous on a server everyone was waiting for his announcement. After each event people would get on a mount from the reward, formed path for the host for him to walk slowly through Org in full of his glory. Guy was cool as fuck.

[@foxi2434]

What was he called?

[@takealooksee]

Discord was released in May of 2015. Great video bud!

[@Bibitos101]

As someone who played on sulfuras horde at the time, that video was a nice flashback. Hahaha

[@Eyearenub]

seeing nekrage pop up in a wille video is so funny

[@ElectricosCosmos]

**Daddy - Sulfurus** remembers that day in Tanaris… so bogged down it was ~20 second lag. It was amazing to me to wake up the night of the war effort and to find out it had been completed while I was sleeping… it took us weeks on Chromaggus back in the day… turning in Runecloth bandages waiting on pvp que to pop.

[@xeroxboy01]

I was there when we held the ally down in tanris. I remember logging on/off throughout the day and horse was still there.

[@Zordiak]

I actually played on Sulfuras and no one bothered to prefarm anything for the event because we knew Grizzly would do it. It's like, why farm if you can get a bunch of nerds to do it for you? I personally would've prefarmed a ton of mats, but opted not to for that very reason. So it's not really a feat when no one else bothers to participate. Everybody hated them anyways. Even on Alliance. They got exactly what they deserved.

[@IncredibleEdibleCake]

I played Horde on Sulfuras and it still makes me smile when I think of what happened to Grizzly. I've never seen or experienced a more toxic, wretched, and spiteful group of people in an mmo. For all the griefing they did, not getting scarab lord was exactly what they fucking deserved.

[@andreaskarlsson5251]

Its almost as if fleshing out a game for 20 years makes it easier 🤣🤣

[@DrewPicklesTheDark]

While this is not an AQ40 war effort story, I do have one fans of these kind of stories would appreciate (or hate depending on the PoV). Each new expansion I would try to grief the enemy faction in some way, but nothing beats what I pulled off in pandaland. When MoP came out I helped my faction (the weaker one) get most of the server first achievements by what I did. When going to Pandaria, instead of doing the opening quest-chain, I instead immediately jumped off the ship and ran to the enemy faction's intro quest area. I found a mob they needed to kill to finish the intro quest chain that gives you access to questing in pandaland, then dragged it far out in to the ocean underwater and didn't kill it. Because of this the enemy faction was unable to finish the intro quest line (I guess unless they found me, but I was so out of the way that didn't happen.) so they were all really far behind by the time I killed the mob (about an hour or two later) allowing it to respawn for others to kill. I set the enemy faction back around 2 levels letting my faction get the server firsts for everything besides one class, who was a chill guy going for a server first of his class who I let in on the scheme so he knew to avoid it. He kept his mouth shut since it also benefitted him since he didn't have to compete with others of the same class from his own faction. Another friend of mine on the enemy faction said there were hundreds of players standing around where this mob was supposed to be, a lot of which sent in reports that the quest was bugged and such. Other than the 5 or 6 people I let in on it (who all got server firsts), nobody knew it was me.

[@SimultaneousDarkness]

9:40 That is just wrong, we had some fucking rouge transfer to our server, and he did start event at about 1am and about 60 people didn't complete the q in 10-hour window. To this day, I hate this guy.

[@Lorn058]

Love it man. That's why era will always be the best. You have an actual world and everything interacts with each other. You have real events that make sense and everything is earned. It's not expansion after expansion where we spend a small amount of time in a little crap area.

[@mercurio822]

Scarab lord original is the most hardcore achievement ever in any mmo.

[@styxzero1675]

The opening of AQ in classic was kind of like a war story in EVE online it had the same kind of elements, scheming and betrayal. That is why it is so intresting to listen to.

[@peterschruff3055]

I remember Gandling EU Horde, being part of before Gandling was shut down and transfered to Gehennas EU. Alliance guild started drama about the carapace farming and threatened that Horde's farm is about to end if Horde doesn't stop ganking. This caused massive friction between alliance guilds, cause literally nobody liked at that point, neither Horde nor Alliance. In the end, announced when they would finish their war effort turn ins, prior to what was planned with the rest of the server. They wanted to turn in midnight so the raid would open in the morning at 10am. Horde didn't like that at all, so Horde raided Ironforge and prevented turn ins until 10am. It was a massive captial city raid, even a DJ showed up to livestream it on Twitch. It was a massive thing, I'm glad I was a part of that. :)

[@tomelliott9]

On Zandalar Tribe Horde players posted videos of themselves vendoring war effort supplies to the server subreddit and sniping supplies off the neutral auction house. I can't remember why we did it, something to do with the alliance being sweaty. We actively disrupted their attempts to do both their own effort and to complete ours for us

[@elandiduedarum2093]

All the footage of Tanaris just reminds me of my parents' old guild. Serenity, sister guild to those people who murdered a wedding, were planning to kill us at the Caverns of Time, but we had a spy in their guild. So we sent in all of our feral druids and rogues to insta-kill their healers then wipe the floor with them despite being a PvE guild vs PvP guild. When they regrouped to move again we were in their voice chat listening and were able to counterattack and kill them again. Their GM kicked so many people in anger and frustration because they knew there was a spy but didn't know who it was. So much fun.

[@stacrafty]

This is why the experience of classic wow might not ever be repeated

[@thegreattaiyou]

The Era of MMO's largely being over is why this will never be repeated. Everything is "multi-player" insofar as it's instance-based pvp or co-op for small teams. There's absolutely no focus in the industry on MMO-scale content anymore, let alone MMO-scale PvE. The "market" has shifted and people aren't interested in long efforts like this anymore. They'd rather spend 5 min in queue to play a 30 min game with 2-3 friends. Because that's what's cheapest and easiest for game developers to scale, so that's the direction they've pushed the industry.

[@saubstauger5602]

I can't believe I missed the event not just once but twice. Wish I had been there.

[@panzerfist]

Man I love your videos. I'm new to WoW but I only play Wrath of the Lich King and your videos kind of make me relive these magical moments I wish I would have experienced back in the day. Keep em coming.

[@zoey8977]

6:44 Doesn’t matter whether or not Blizzard likes Horde more, the fact is you had to grind for rarer items but fewer so it was simply more randomized on the horde side, while alliance is guaranteed a straight forward grind with even progression. So as horde you CAN be faster gathering the items, but you can also be a lot slower. Basically horde farms for 1 1% drop chance item and alliance farms for a 100 100% drop chance items. With my luck, I’d go without a drop for couple hundred possible drops

[@EnjoyCocaColaLight]

I remember kiting Anachronus to Orgrimmar. T'was a long run, through thousand needles and the Barrens. And t'was glorious.

[@hnsk]

Best part was setting an alarm at 5:45 on a Sunday morning to secretly raid the Duskwood boss as alliance had been 24/7 camping that for past weeks as the Praxis losers thought they would be the only ones worthy of scarab lord as horde has only been drinking piña coladas for the duration of the war effort. They also at some point completely took over Gadgetzan to get the peaceblooms via neutral AH. By far the best times in classic :)

[@SteefPip]

I played on Tichondrius, which was a warzone pretty much 24/7, and our war effort was no different. When one of the top guilds going for their scepter bearer, the horde were trying hard to prevent it. They had us stuck in duskwood because they would just suicide lvl 1's into the boss eventually making it one shot everyone. So we gathered multiple guilds, I believe we had 5 full raids plus a half one iirc, and proceeded to crash the server. We had to set up waves, each guild logging off and on at coordinated times in order to try to keep the server from crashing again. We rolled nearly 2 full cycles of all 5 raids before we finally brought it down. It was a laggy mess, but it sure was fun.

[@AlexeyFilippenkoPlummet]

Barny Beekeeper has great story on this event

[@Homer5235]

Im i wrong, i thought you cant do the red shard in id1. You need to loot the Head of Broodlord and after that you need to talk to Vaelastrazs to start the red shard quest.

[@bosendorfer6268]

Sure you can. 5hrs is plenty to loot head and do the quests and then come back and kill nef 😂

[@Homer5235]

@@bosendorfer6268 first you have to start the quest for the 5 hours. Without the broodlords head you cant talk to Vaelastrazs to get the quest.

[@Max-mk7ub]

@@Homer5235 You're right. That was a factual error in the video. Broodlords head>Silithus>tanaris and then talk to vael and kill Nef. It needs 2 IDs, just as you said :) You also needed 42k fragments, 1 fragment = 1 rep

[@hizzousekakashi8836]

On bigglesworth we had a nameplates addon that would show any guild on the truce list so we could instantly know who was clear to kill and who to leave alone, made it so much easier.

[@zoey8977]

7:30 and this is exactly what I described in my other comment. Alliance has to farm more guaranteed drops, while Horde has to gamble their a** off with low chance drops. It’s not only if at all because Faction differences or catching up with the scepter.

[@laituanhoang]

I was there in Fairbank- classic, Alliance, best time of my wow classic. Miss u all, xoxo

[@laituanhoang]

-Trollogist-

[@jwillingham88]

As someone else stated, the rep grind was far worse. You only got 1 rep per fragment. So 42,000 frags unless you were a human.

[@urpurpful]

Phase 5 was the most fun I had in classic. Miss it 3 years later. Bubonics - Earthfury

[@huntermccaskill3938]

Bottom Line: WoW has always been a toxic cesspool of rage and animosity between players - at least at the higher levels - and world PVP is just a bad idea as it creates an incredibly hostile environment

[@kbob9625]

I played on a private server with a grizzly guild that was cthun when most guilds were still gearing BWL. They helped the programmer beta test the bosses.

[@MasonsMotorworks]

We farmed scales for our main tank as our guild was only doing one Scarab Lord, and we helped him get it, hours in the caves killing those damned bugs. Depending on how much you helped you got 3 loot reserves max. Regardless, our main tank quit after we progressed through AQ and killed Carl. He hasn’t played since. I ended up having two reserves, both of which never dropped until I ran a gdkp before tbc dropped. Good ol classic

[@Syraky]

That's horrible man. I was fortunate as a regular member to be chosen ( shaman ) had a lot of preparation in set, was neutral not hated not liked on the server Firemaw ( about 45/55 faction balance at the time). Still playing to this day at times getting compliments. Good times for sure and extremely grateful for all the people that helped me out. One part willie forgot was you needed to kill 3rd boss of BWL to even be able to start the questline to farm carapaces. Meaning you could only get so many people to go for scarab lord.

[@Phara_2]

The Classic AQ Gates/Scarab Lord event just highlighted how toxic part of the WoW community truly is, as well as Phase 2 on PvP servers (I lived through Phase 2 on Whitemane).

[@noname-gp6hk]

What you call toxic, I call cherished memories. I don't remember much about the game at this point, but man do I remember what happened in the game. The actions of players scheming and plotting against each other and jockeying for position to get that mount created some of the most engaging experiences I'll ever have in an online game.

[@Xenbiotic]

On Whitemane the NPC to turn in the carapace fragments kept getting messed with until it was fixed, I think you could toggle at war and mess with him. Or people stand on top of him. And for world bosses Death and Taxes, a ally guild had horde dogs they sick on us. We are like 80 people so we normally still got all the green dragons and the other two world bosses outside of one green dragon in feralas because a asian guild liked to farm there all the time, smart strategy I say.

[@pip5528]

I was still leveling during this in Classic so you can certainly bet I never got Scarab Lord. I got to 52 before TBC and then continued leveling from 52 to 70.

[@dickarsch88]

Just like me. And my first original Tauren warrior still exists today.

[@nisx2012]

This is like watching a drama show, i miss seeing stuff like this in WoW. Every server feels like a community, unlike retail where you meet people from all over your region and after that you never see them again.