WoW anniversaries

I just logged in and in a spam of login and addon messages I didn’t see why a guildie jokingly? congratulated me. After scrolling up I saw the […] has earned the achievement [WoW’s 17th Anniversary!] and of course I had to dig into the achievements pane now.

17 15 12 10 9 16 14 8 7 6 5 4

Wait, why aren’t they sorted?

17, 16, 15, 14, _, 12, _, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, _, _, _

So the first missing one is the 13th, that would be 2017. The second one is the 11th, that would be 2015 and then 2007, 2006, and finally 2005.

This surprises me a little because I’ve taken a lot of WoW breaks over the years and mostly hadn’t payed a sub uselessly, but on the other hand I’ve been playing for a long time, so especially the first 3 missing made me curious.

So let’s look at post history in the WoW category first:

In September 2018 I wrote “So either I’ll buy BfA and play WoW in early October,…” but I only came back in January of 2019 and I think I’ve been subscribed since then. But I had completely forgotten about the “free up to Level 20” thing, so that probably explains why I have the 14th anniversary.

Next up (in reverse chronological order) I wrote a post titled WoW Legion: 10 weeks in in November 2016 where the 12th anniversary would have to have happened.

Intermission: The WoW token went live in April 2015.

Now it gets a little mysterious. I subscribed in December 2014 for WoD and did not continue after a month. Either I still got the 10th anniversary achievement (unlikely) or the “log in sub 20” thing went live before November 2014.

And then I seem to have mixed up dates, I stopped raiding during SoO, that was in spring 2014 (not 2013) and then I had a half-year break until WoD.

Good old warcraftrealms.com shows me as Level 25 in October 2005 and Level 40 in December, so I was most certainly subscribed and actively leveling, but no clue why I didn’t get that one. But searching on wowhead seems to point to the 4th anniversary being the first one with an achievement.

The Burning Crusade launched on Devember 5th, 2006 and I was subscribed for that, but I don’t know for sure if I was on a break the month before. Unlikely though, with the hype for the first expansion.
Again, warcraftrealms has me guildless in October 2007 and guilded in November, as I remember that time (my original guild had imploded in the summer) it’s also unlikely.

So, what did we learn except that I played too much WoW in my life? Keep a blog and a few links to a few fansites it’s not problem to trace back your steps for the last 16 years.