I have played World of Warcraft for quite awhile, while not as long as when it was in the beta, but only a few days after release. I originally started out on a server called Draenor as a Human Warrior named Sindri ,I had a fun time leveling him up to 60, I was on a normal server so primarily what I did at 60 was craft items, and run through a few endgame instances such as Strathlome, Lower Blackrock Spire, and Upper Blackrock Spire a few times.
I didn't really mind my experience there at all, in fact I made a few friends, and I had a guild that did endgame content somewhat regularly. When it wasn't doing anything, I had other things to do like try to get gold for a epic mount, or level up engineering because it seemed fun at the time. I did however leave it because of an unexpected influence in reality. I met someone at my school who I found out also played World of Warcraft, and because he was a much more standard gamer than I was, he already had PvP experience, and was on a PvP server already, but somehow he found out that Blizzard was opening a couple of new servers and included a few PvP ones in it, He probably looked at the World of Warcraft community site and it was listed there, but I didn't do that much either. I ended up deciding to go with him over to a PvP server that he had picked, it was called Firetree, from there I found out how vastly different a PvP server is from a normal server.
The first thing that was different for me was picking a character to play, I saw a few Horde characters while I was on Sindri, I was intrigued by the Orcs mainly after I saw their dance and I thought it was funny and neat. Despite that, I first wanted to try out a “holy” class of which only Trolls, and Undead were able to choose, Undead didn't really appeal to me, so I went with a Troll Priest. That didn't last very long in-fact I don't even remember his name. I ended up only getting to about Sen'jin village before deciding that I really didn't like not being able to do as much damage in favor of healing; so, back to the character creation screen I went. After thinking for awhile, and deciding that since I was on the Horde, I might as well play the Horde specific class, very easily directing me to Shaman.
I honestly knew nothing about the Shaman other than it was Horde only when I first started out, luckily for me I was very pleasantly surprised with it. Right off the bat, I enjoyed small things like the fact that Rockbiter was a weapon enhancement even though I spent most of my time casting Lightning Bolt, and that Earth Shock was a instant cast. I had experience interrupting spells from being on my Warrior before, but I much preferred Earth Shock even though I remember it's range being fairly short, I think I just preferred it because it looked a lot better than pummel, so I ended up really enjoying a Shaman for their interrupting abilities as well. All of this made leveling very fun, along with the fact that all of the quests and areas were completely new to me, it was somewhat confusing to get used too especially with how much traveling around there seemed to be as opposed to being on the Alliance, but at the same time I found out that many things were more confined than Alliance zones, the lack of any sort of random elites or high level things such as the dust devils in Westfall was also a plus.
The main PvP server experience came to me later on, it was also the first time I met up with my RL friend. In Ashenvale, when I was about the right level for it, I went over to it to quest, I originally was avoiding it because it was the first true contested zone that I knew of other than Stone Talon Mountains where I didn't really see any Alliance at all. I wanted to not be under leveled if I had to fight but as I was running out of quests I ended up going to Ashenvale anyway. While I was on my way to do some quests, I ended up getting a message from my friend telling me that there was a big fight on the road, so I decided to go over there, and see what was happening. I remember the numbers on both sides being fairly equal and the horde pushing forward by the time I got there, I don't entirely remember how big the battle was but it wasn't more than 10 people on each side give or take. I joined the fray and decided to see what I could do, I can't remember the exact things I did, but I do remember helping route the Alliance and killing all of them before they got away, I also remember me and my RL friend survived, and I healed him after the battle. Looking back on it now, I believe we won because for the most part we out leveled the Alliance fighters, and my friend's rogue was about 5 or so levels higher than the average for Ashenvale. In any case, after the battle my friend decided to log for the night, and I went on my way questing, I remember getting into a few more fights with the Alliance while I was questing but nothing that was too bad, I never went looking for fights, but instead I just attacked any Alliance I saw while moving from one area to another. The only real problem I remember is when a few high level Alliance came to the Splintertree Outpost, I can't really remember what I did in that situation but I do remember running into the tunnel and hiding, I forget if I was ever found and killed.
From then on into the higher levels it continued pretty much the same, my friend stopped coming online, and he moved away in RL so I was pretty much on my own but it wasn't so bad. I was much more confident in my PvP abilities after Ashenvale, but for the most part I don't really remember being bothered too much in zones such as Azshara, Desolace, and even in the Plaguelands, I believe I might have skipped Strangle Thorn Vale because I was more interested in leveling rather than dealing with Horde/Alliance hit squads, and when I was in STV on Draenor I really didn't like the quests there at all save for the Naga Explorer quest, I mainly liked grinding them because they were fun to kill, plus they were a good source of clams.
I kept on enjoying seeing my Shaman progress especially past level 20 when I got my Ghost Wolf, I think since I was cheap I ended up using that all the way to level 60ish, I do remember I bought a mount sometime around then though. Besides for convenience sake, being a Shaman was just a joy for me to play because I liked being able to do pretty much everything decently. I knew no single area was as good as another classes' and I had to make up for that in other areas, but I felt like I was able to pretty much adapt to nearly every situation. Even at level 60 there were hardly any situations I couldn't find a way to get through. I also enjoyed providing buffs to party members, as a Warrior I had short duration buffs like Battle Shout, but it felt like I had a much bigger impact on others with totems that lasted longer and especially that they had unique and fun effects like putting Windfury or Flametongue on someone's weapons, and being able to share the excitement of Windfury to others was always a fun thing to do.
Despite all of that, my experiences at level 60 ended up being the most fun. I met a lot of different people who I would consider friends but I unfortunately went away from, and didn't keep in contact with them. Evenso I still have nice memories of the people I met such as Smashem, and his friends who were nice enough to let me join their Scholomance group, where I ended up having a lot of fun with them, I also spent a lot of time with them afterwards doing more instances, Skitzors and his friends who broke away from Maelstrom and ended up making a PuG MC raid that resulted in forming Fallen Requiem that I was a part of, and we ended up progressing far, I didn't really talk to Skitzors much but he was friendly enough, and of course many people of Fallen Requiem that I didn't know before the guild was formed, but I enjoyed talking to them.
On the PvP side of things I met a bit more “focused” people who weren't fantastic and not exactly the most friendly people around, but for the most part I PvP'd alone unless I was invited into a group which wasn't too often. I was super excited when the honor system was implemented and I had pretty good gear by then even though this was way before I was going to Onyxia's Lair and Molten Core, I think the most the server had progressed at the time before the formation of Fallen Requiem was Lord Kazaak, and Azureagos. In any case, with a bunch of dungeon items that I put together, as well as a spec that a lot of people would consider weird now days (doesn't go all the way to the end talent, but still concentrates on enhancement for things like flurry and weapon enhancements, but also specs into shocks, and finally it goes into resto for nature's swiftness to get fast emergency heals off) ,and finally with a shield and 1h, I went out looking to get into some PvP battles. At first since I knew Hillsbrad was the center of it all I decided to try there for a few days and while it was pretty fun, especially the hectic moments of the Horde being pushed back and me retreating somewhere to regen my health, or when we managed to push the Alliance back to Southshore or us back to Terran Mill, I found out more about how the honor system worked and with more people, less honor was actually being gained, so I went off on my own. I decided to go ganking essentially, and I searched for Alliance to kill in places like Eastern Plaguelands, Winterspring, Burning Steppes, and so on, it wasn't exactly the most ethical thing to do now that I think about it since it's essentially using people to farm points, but I didn't think that way at the time. However, a lot of the people I found weren't people that were just questing, while I did get some of those now and then, I ended up killing other PvPers, and gold farmers the most, I never camped anyone because even then I hated camping and felt like that was way too much griefing unless they deserved it for one reason or another, and so a lot of the time I ended up just searching, and finding nothing. To that end, being in Hillsbrad 24/7 might have been a better way to go, but I was pretty dedicated to hunting people solo, and I killed about 50-100 people regularly on a daily basis sometimes more. While it wasn't the funnest thing to do, it did pay off in the end I think, as I at one point had the highest PvP rank on the server which was Lieutenant General at the time, and I got my epic mount that way. I was regularly ranked in the top 10 for honor for the week, but I slowed down and eventually wanted to do other things.
I forget the exact reason why, but I ended up leaving Firetree even though I had tons of things going on for me there, and rerolled as a Human Mage on a new server, I think it was out of my want to try to get Grand Marshal before anyone else did, and for some reason I felt like on a new server that would give me a easier chance, I don't exactly remember my logic at the time. What I do know is that I ended up regretting it, and disliking the PvP system for it, I also really didn't like being a mage and that further turned me off, the last straw was that I joined a raiding guild that couldn't be more different than the one I had on Firetree, it was a lot more typical, and the members did things that I really didn't like often, lastly it wasn't serious enough (but it was still the most progressed guild on the server) to actually make any real progress so I got fed up which ended my WoW experiences, at least for awhile.
While none of my PvP server experiences were quite as fun after the first one, I was lucky enough to find one that was very similar to it later on in The Venture Co. so things did turn around eventually. In any case however, I'll never forget Firetree, and while I do miss it when I compare it most of the PvP severs I've been on, if I didn't leave it I possibly wouldn't have ever gone to The Venture Co. and while that itself wasn't the most uplifting server ever, it did have more than enough unique people and experiences in it that I wouldn't want anything any other way.
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