Why I Play World of Warcraft

I started playing World of Warcraft back in 2004, when the game first launched. M reasoning for picking up the game in the first place was twofold:

1. WarCrafts 1, 2, and especially 3 had endeared me to the franchise and gotten me interested in the lore and storyline.
2. The Paladin class. The Paladin was my second favorite unit in WarCraft 2 and my favorite hero unit in WarCraft 3. (You can probably guess my favorite WarCraft 2 unit and WarCraft 3 non-hero unit based on the name I use. :P)

It just so happened that a good friend of mine from high school had also picked up the game, and so we both decided to create our characters on a promising new RP realm called Feathermoon. Naturally, the first character I created was a human Paladin named Gryphonheart. I originally wanted to name him Ethos, which was the name I used in the open beta and what I've continued to use in the expansion betas, however that name was unavailable, which is somewhat boggling to me as I have never managed to find an existing character with that name on Feathermoon.

Anyway, my friend created a night elven Druid, and although our characters never spent much time together—as we both insisted on leveling on our home continents—we still had a great time chatting with each other and discussing our experiences in whispers and party chat. Sadly, that friend has since quit playing World of Warcraft, but remains one of the primary reasons why I cotinue to play on Feathermoon. (Playing on an RP server was my idea, but my friend chose which RP server we would create our characters on. As a result, every time I see the words "Feathermoon (RP)" on the top of my character select screen, I'm reminded of all the good times we had.)

Sentimentality aside, another primary reason why I play World of Warcraft is raiding. At first, raiding did not appeal to me very much because I got the impression that many of the Alliance-side raid groups on Feathermoon at the time were somewhat condescending towards the roleplaying community*, and every raid group I'd heard of required a greater time commitement than I could reasonably afford to meet. Fortunately, I ended up hearing about a new raiding group which had modest time requirements and was being put together by some of the more famous Alliance-side roleplayers on the realm and decided to check it out. Back then the group was called Totally Molten Core, and raiding with that group was the most fun thing I'd experienced in World of Warcraft up to that point. I still continue to raid with that group to this day, although it is now known as Totally Raids, Inc.—and if that name is familiar to you, it's probably because it's the same group that Anna of Too Many Annas raids with.

Now, there are plenty of other reasons why I play World of Warcraft, but friends and raiding are probably the two primary factors. So, if you don't mind me asking, why do you play World of Warcraft?


*: Were the Alliance-side raid groups on Feathermoon at that time condescending towards roleplayers? Honestly, I couldn't tell you as I wasn't one of their members. It may have been an issue of misinterpretation or miscommunication, or a situation of a vocal minority making things seem worse than they truly were. All I can tell you for sure is that, for whatever reason, I did not get the impression that there was a relationship of mutual respect between Alliance raiders and roleplayers back then.