Last weekend I completely geeked out because I was lucky enough to be a guest on one of my favourite podcasts, The Training Dummies. I’ve been listening to Rob and Darryl for awhile now (TTD and Realm Maintenance were some of the first podcasts I listened to after Girls Gone WoW got me in to them!) so it was a big nerd time for me to talk to them and be on their awesome show.

I had an absolutely amazing time. The topic of the show was about bringing the love back in to WoW. As a die-hard fan, this was easy for me, but not so much for others lately. My goal for the episode was to help people who are in a bit of a rut in the game feel a bit more positive about it, and to get back to that point where they fell in love with the game.

The episode is up on iTunes and Stitcher, or you can listen to it directly from their website here: Episode 131 – Dear Warcarft: It’s Not You, It’s Me.

In preparation for the show, I asked readers and twitter followers to let me know what it was that made them fall in love with WoW in the first place – what made them come back after that first day. I got so many responses! THANK YOU!! Unfortunately because there were so many I couldn’t read them all out in full during the show, but I wanted to share them all with you so I’ve posted them below. Sometimes we need a reminder of the wonderful things that are in WoW, and you guys really came through with some wonderful memories. (If you’re wanting to hear mine, you’ll need to listen to the episode! 😉 )

What made you fall in love with World of Warcraft?

@froo – the thing that I fell in love with (coming from EQ) was my footprints in the snow in the Dwarven starting area.

@spankyhunter – what made me fall in love with wow was the huge co op that wow had. 25+ players all working together. also a game that always updates. you dont lose everything when a new version of the game comes out, eg call of duty 2/3/4 etc etc. all your personal progression stays. also its a game that has a restriction of paying so back then it dettered a lot of cheating cause it took a lot of time to get a character to the point of being useful. if you lost your toon it was a lot of lost time.

@Mominatrix75 – The community. No other game I’ve played has a community like this one. Not only large but diverse and mostly positive.

@espiroth – A combination of my class (Druids) and the fact that I can do whatever I want in game. It’s not all about raids and dungeons. There are places to explore, professions to learn, pets and mounts to collect. There’s just so much stuff 🙂 I am the person that spent ages collecting things in Skyrim so I could make stuff. I like that kind of thing 😛

@SpazzWesson – the game itself. On my way to max I explored everything and at max I went to do old raids that I hadn’t seen.

@NavimieDruid – I loved the variety that the game offered. I really liked the lore and doing things with others but I also loved that I could also do those things by myself. At first I played because I had friends to play with and then we got into a guild and got more friends to play with and then there was PvP and raiding… all these things that just seemed to add more and more things to enjoy and not enough time to do it all.

These days it is the addictive nature of achievements and collections that keeps me in game but the ties of friendship make the WoW cake even sweeter. I love that I can make friends because of a game and get to know them as well as I would amyone I met IRL. 10 years ago people would think it was weird to make friends on the Internet but now it seems to be nothing out of the ordinary. WoW inspires my imagination and makes me write my thoughts, fiction and poetry and I can’t imagine putting it down any time soon.

@Disneygirl85 – I’ve been playing WoW since 2012, and I have to say the thing that made me fall in love with the game is the story. Even though my main is a Mage, I didn’t create a Mage until Mists of Pandaria came out. My first character was a Shadow Priest, but she didn’t resonate with me. So, with the help of a couple guildies, I decided to create a Mage for Pandaria and THAT is when I fully fell in love with WoW. As soon as I found the class for me, it was so easy to become engrossed in the story of the game.

Thank you so much again to everyone for sharing your stories for the show. I hope that it helped reignite some love for WoW for you! And thank you again to Rob and Darryl for having me – they are both such lovely guys and made the whole experience so much fun.