The decision to start playing World of Warcraft did not come overnight and it certainly was not an easy one. I had read about the game for quite some time and the material included several rather unfriendly voices. Since this would also be my first MMORPG, the whole idea of a subscription to a video game was alien to me as well.
However, when the time seemed right to actually buy the game and create an account, I was already well informed about the payment methods, the setting, the lore, the different classes, their abilities and tasks, the professions and so on. In total, I would say that I knew as much about the game as it was possible, without actually having played it. I bought the physical copy of the game in the fateful summer of 2006 (somewhere between patches 1.10 and 1.11), when the game was already about one and half years old.
After my previous experiences in the RTS games of the Warcraft universe, I was already convinced that I wanted to fight on the side of the Alliance
Questions over questions: should I create a Night Elf Druid or an Undead Mage? Would a Druid be similar to a Mage, even though their philosophy seemed to be quite different? Would that, at one point along the road, matter from a gameplay point of view? In the end my desire to play on the Alliance
If someone is interested in why I eventually fell out of love with World of Warcraft, they should have a closer look at my ESSENTIAL READING page. Other authors have already – very eloquently – described the same problems I had, so there is no need to rehash the details right here, right now. Suffice to say that it had NOTHING (whatsoever) to do with burnout! If the game had not changed this drastically, I would still be playing.