The Beginning

Like many others, I began playing Warcraft because I knew someone else who played. In my case, it was my older brothers. I dabbled around for a while, but no character I created made it past level 30. It wasn't until I moved out of home and into the city when I got the time and the opportunity to really start getting into the game.

It was just after the Burning Crusade came out and my brother let me create a new character on his account to play while he was at work/sleeping. Dalianza the Draenei hunter was born. When I got my own account for my birthday six months later, she moved over with me. Alts have come and gone but one thing stays the same and that is Dalianza, the character who became my main and has been my main for a very, very long time.

Hunters were (and still are) well suited to my play style. I can be bit of a social reject, so having a character with which there was little I couldn't do by myself was well suited to me. Just me and my cat, killing anything that moved and enjoying myself immensely in the process. Coming from a "gamer" family, having played a fair amount of Warcraft 3, as well as lots of turn based strategy games, I fortunately had a basic understanding about what stats were important for me to do well (though I'm sure I had more than my fair share of unfortunate gear mishaps), as well as a pretty good idea about how hunters worked.
 
It wasn't until I hit the level cap when I became I lot more involved in the game than I ever had before. I entered my first instance (I say first, my FIRST first instance had been way back when I started playing and was a very bad experience) but even then it was only with my brother and several of his friends. Not long after that I had my first raid with the aforementioned group plus others they knew, and ever since then I have been what I consider a "casual-core raider" Perhaps raiding a bit more often then your regular casual groups, but still having plenty of time to enjoy the game (with the exception being when 10 and 25man TotC came out, so many runs, on so many characters, for so long.... bwargh)

With the long lull between Cata and Mists, my raiding guild has all but disappeared, so these days I find myself completing those few achievements and rep grinds that I never could quite bring myself to do. I just completed 100 Mounts and ground out the last of my Netherwing Rep.

It's interesting to see how far one person can come in a game like this. When I started I never interacted with anyone I didn't know, didn't go anywhere near the auction house, couldn't level a profession past 100, played with the bare bones UI + minor misc CTMods, never researched anything and didn't even explore too far (because getting your face eaten by a mob you can't even see the level of is a little off-putting). Now I am partial raider, a hunter pet nut, a mod/add-on fanatic, and spend a significant portion of my time when not playing the game, reading the blogs and websites of others who do play.

I often look fondly back on the way I played before and often wish I could bring back both my ignorance and the sheer wonder and awe with which I once viewed the game. So much is taken for granted by long term players of this game (myself included) these days.

My goal for Mists of Pandaria will be to try view it with a mindset not unlike I once had way back when - to play for the sake of playing without a higher goal other then "I'm going to explore what's over here..."

Because it's been way too long since I've had a random high level mob eat my face without warning.