I think the first character I ever had was an Orc Shaman on Azgalor in vanilla. These memories are hard to recall, shrouded in fogginess and all that jargon, but I remember that I essentially gave up at level 35. He might have been enhancement but I can't be sure.
Then I went on an extended hiatus. At the time, only a couple of my friends played the game, so I could escape its clutches without being dodge capped. Then, seemingly out of nowhere (I say 'seemingly' because my memory with stuff like this sucks) I started playing again. I rolled an Orc Rogue when two of my friends leveled Undead Rogues. Basically, every instance we ever did consisted of the following:
Them: "Shit, the mob's fearing! Pop WotF!"
Me: "Uhh... I don't have it."
Them: "Lawl noob."
Later in the same instance:
All at once: "OMG the shoulders dropped!"
/failroll
Them: "Guess you'll have to run it tomorrow."
Ah yes, the endless Sethekk runs. I never got those shoulders. And I ALWAYS got made fun of because I rolled an Orc. I guess I deserved it though. That, and I named him Roguenoob. Now that I think of it, that character had BADDIE tattooed on his forehead, or wherever Orcs get painfully obvious things tattooed onto their bodies.
I went through Kara, Gruul's, and Mag on the green-skinned wonder before my priorities shifted (who knew paying $30K+ a year for college meant I had to study?). When I came back to the game, I knew I didn't want to roll a fail combo again, or a class that all my friends already had. After much contemplation, I decided to go retro and level a shaman.
Let me just say that I love hybrid classes. I almost didn't level my warrior to 80 (who was sitting at 70 for millenia) because I knew that, short of Enraged Regen, Bloodthirst, and Blood Craze, the lack of self-heals made warriors a pain to level. Now that I think of it though, TG Fury leveling was ownage. But still, the point is valid.
Therefore, I enjoyed my enhancement leveling fest, soloing a few group quests with a little help from my wolf-buddies. Hitting 80 meant heroics and raiding, and boy let me tell you, rolling an enhancement shaman that has slightly worse gear than the OTHER enhancement shaman who just happened to run most of the raids in my guild sucked. Big time. Hey, that's an upgra... Never mind. Oh, you already have that unique-equipped weapon? Gimme gimme gimme!
One fateful night in Obsidian Sanctum changed my shaman forever, from my beloved enhancement to (gasp) restoration. I had been collecting off-set pieces for a while, but I always collect off-set pieces for no reason at all. I guess I just like saying I have off-set without actually having to use it. I dusted off my resto blues and purps and tossed chain heals around like they were those garbage black jelly beans that nobody wanted but you try to pawn off on people anyway:
From there, a 10man OS lead to a 25man OS, which led to a 10man Naxx and a 25man Naxx, which led to a 10man Maly and 25man Maly. All the while, despising every shiny bolt of healing goodness shooting out of my hand. As you can imagine, doing these runs resulted in fairly decent upgrades to my resto set, but ofc I was never allowed to roll on any "off-spec" enhancement gear. The disparity between my gear sets eventually led to me abandoning my shaman altogether and, after a quick foray into pre-nerf TG Fury awesomeness, I came upon the answer to my woes: my level 22 Ret Paladin.
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Wow, that was quite a lot. I'll leave it at that little cliffhanger until the next time I get a protracted period of time with nothing else to do.
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