“When I started playing WoW, I think I was about 9. I came to WoW from runescape.

I played runescape more or less fine on my dad’s 2001ish integrated-graphics toshiba laptop, but WoW was a different story. The game ran as a small, maybe 6 inch by 4 inch box in the center of the screen, with about 3 inches of black on all sides. I didn’t think that was weird at the time, because hey, runescape runs in a little box too.

I had a friend who was alliance, so I rolled a human paladin. Playing was pretty laggy, but not impossible, especially on a paladin because I could just cast heal if I fell below half health and it would cast eventually. I remember seeing some people talking about fps in chat and I asked how I could see mine. It was 1.4. If I was standing still or inside a building, it would go up to 8 or even 10, but if I was outdoors and moving, 1.5 fps was about standard.

I made it to Goldshire eventually, after having the fight of my life with a level 7 wolf I pulled on the road at level 4. I still remember healing myself, getting in a few whacks, and healing again until I ran out of mana. I used my one health potion and finally chipped him down. I picked up mining and blacksmithing in Goldshire because that’s what I mostly did in runescape. I had a quest to explore the Fargodeep Mine, and I wanted to get some ore, so I flipbooked my way down there.

I probably died a couple times to the kobold swarm pulls trying to get inside, but eventually I made it in (or ran in after someone else had cleared a path). Once I got a little ways into the mine, my fps jumped up to 15! And there was so much ore! I mined until my backpack was full, then made my way out and flipbooked back to Goldshire.

I turned in the first “Explore Fargodeep” quest and picked up whatever kill 10 kobold whatevers quest came after it. But before heading back, I forged myself some shiny new copper equipment. I could see that in a couple more blacksmithing levels I’d be able to make a green piece or two, so I was pumped to head back down into the mine.

It was incredible in there… the game was butter smooth. I could heal and buff other players and save them from certain murder by kobold swarm, which I liked doing since I was a paladin, after all. I figured out that I could use my 10 yard range stun to pull one kobold at a time. By level 9 or 10, the kobolds weren’t much of a threat, and I could pull several at a time and whack them all down with my copper mace.

I finished all the mine’s quests, and leveled my mining and smithing as far as I could with copper ore. I had quests to move further into Elwynn forest, but venturing out there was difficult. Making the journey between Fargodeep and Elwynn at 1.5 fps was doable, but it wasn’t pleasant. Trying to do quests in the open world gave me headaches. I could go to my friend’s house and play on his computer once a week, and I lived for that hour or so. I made it to the gnoll camps and killed Hogger easily around level 12 or 13. But then, back at my house, I had make the long slog back to my home in goldshire.

Once, at his house, I logged off in Ironforge. I couldn’t even log back in on my computer – it would just crash every time. I had to call him and tell him my login so he could have my character hearthstone.

I decided that the mines were all I needed. I was still getting experience at level 13 from the level 8 and 9 kobolds, and I was still making plenty of money from vendoring my copper products. I made enough money to buy four bags from the Goldshire vendor so I could stay in the mine longer before going back. At level 14, it got a bit tougher, because I could only get experience from the less common level 9 kobolds. At level 15, I couldn’t get anything from them either.

But I wasn’t done – there was still Narg the Taskmaster. He was a rare spawn in the very back of the mine, and he was level 10. I could still get experience from him. The wiki says his respawn timer was 1-2.5 hours. I only got to play 2 hours at most per day, maybe more on weekends, so I must have killed him at most twice per day, if no one else got to him first. I went from level 15 to level 16 entirely by killing Narg the Taskmaster. It must have taken weeks if not months now that I think about it. I spent the rest of the time helping lower levels with heals, buffs, and free copper gear, killing gray kobolds, and mining more copper.

I must have killed each kobold hundreds if not thousands of times. I wonder if anyone ever leveled multiples alts through there and saw me there, every day, in my blacksmithed copper gear, killing gray kobolds, waiting for Narg.”