The first WoW beta I ever participated in was the Wrath of the Lich King beta. According to the screenshot’s filename, this was taken on September 16, 2008. The first thing I did, as any hunter would, was take a trip to Shadowmoon Valley to tame Uvuros. Core Hounds were a new pet family being introduced in 3.0 and I remember being quite excited about it. They weren’t shrinking very much once tamed, as you can see. I always liked the ridiculously large pets, even though melee must hate them with the fury of a thousand suns (sorry melee).
This was only a month before the pre-expansion patch 3.02 came out, so it was near the end of beta. I don’t remember doing a ton of testing in Wrath content. I think I didn’t want to spoil myself. That’s not really a thing anymore in the age of content being datamined before the developers can even open their mouths. That pre-expansion patch is worth another TBT in the future.
I believe I took this screenshot because I was so amazed at the pet’s listed DPS. Let’s just say that Bestial Wrath was a little more substantial back then. I remember BM being pretty strong at the beginning of Wrath, only to be nerfed into nothingness for the remainder of the expansion. We all still kept our BM specs anyway for the spirit beasts.
Later, I was in the Cataclysm, Mists, and now Warlords betas, but right now is where I have a bit more of a vested interest. The WoW community is very different now from what it was back then. There wasn’t much developer interaction at all. What little there was didn’t make us feel like we were participating in any meaningful way. I’m not sure I’d even be playing if it was still like that. For me, the community stuff is half the fun. Also, it would feel wrong to not be playing on the 10th anniversary of my first hunter.
Ah yes I remember this! What I did on the patch was go and fight people trying to get a Devilsaur! I ran that guy through all BC end game and my 1-button Hunter macro that we all used as BM… then again in Wrath until the nerf… I only stayed BM for awhile because it’s what I knew and was easy. Then I saw a post somewhere saying how they then switched to SV and got the same DPS. I tried it and it worked. Then THAT got nerfed and it was all about MM and Armor Pen. through ICC until… ok I could go on and on I made my point lol.