I should preface this with, as the title suggests, this was my first time playing WoW, of any expansion. As a kid, I played Runescape, and to me, it was one or the other (which caused some schoolyard rivalries).

I was invited to play on Lordaeron about last December when a couple of friends of mine were all starting together. I figured, "Hey, it's free, nothing to lose!" and joined up. I have to say, I'm glad I did. I think my first "wow" moment (ha), was when I first started training tailoring and made a bag for a friend. It had a tag: "Made by (me)" on it! That blew me away. Something so simple, yet incredible. My name was permanently attached to an item, and it was something another player would use and have. This spurred me to make tons of bags and other useful items, just to spread my name around, even when I reached 450 and making bags was chump change compared to other recipes. As my friends (now guild-mates as well) started to slowly stop playing, whether for work reasons or just because they weren't feeling it, I had to start doing Dungeons with randoms, and I quickly saw we all hadn't been doing dungeons very well. It was fun learning how to properly fill my role as Healer, and it was even more fun to explore the dungeons with strangers that could've been from anywhere. It was here, as I was reaching higher levels, that I started to do PvP, mainly in Wintergrasp, and that's where I realized I had been missing such a major, fun, part of the game. It was exhilarating, running around with tons of other players trying to finish what Admiral Proudmoore started, even if I still don't have any idea what I'm doing.

But it was just yesterday I finally reached Level 80 on my first character, a Holy Priest, and I just wanted to say how awesome this experience has been, and that I'm hooked now.