This did.  (h/t to mmo-champion, tongue firmly planted in-cheek.)

*Update: A commenter on mmo-champion posted this link, which is reportedly for “the forum ID they use for beta.”  I don’t have confirmation either way on the accuracy of that comment, but the error message taken alone is at least odd.  Combined with unannounced downtime for battle.net (EU) earlier this afternoon, and things are starting to smell like they’re picking up pace.

*Update II: See also this and this.

*Update III: Well, my prediction of last week appears to have been wrong.  I am sad, but not so sad that you will have any delicious tears to eat.

I was browsing some old, old emails the other day to figure out when I had first logged in to Azeroth, and realized that it was exactly three years ago today.  My first toon was a Tauren Shaman, named Tiirek.  I dimly remember toying with him and a number of alts before settling on leveling up a Blood Elf Paladin named Raynier.

A bit of advice:  Never name your main after a new boyfriend, no matter how much you think you like him.  Having figured out that the IRL “Raynier” (his middle name) wasn’t a match made in heaven, my desire to be reminded of him constantly soured somewhat, and I left the game for a while until those wounds healed.  In my dormant account were probably upwards of 30 alts of varying faction and class.  None of them had hit 80, though.

Burning Crusade waned and the hype grew about Wrath.  I was drawn back into Azeroth in time to participate in the grief-fest that was Scourge Invasion II, otherwise known as the Zombie Infestation.  Unfortunately, I hadn’t gotten back quite in time to level up to 80 for the event.  Nevertheless, I very much enjoyed zombification and the resultant chaos in the major cities from my perspective as an easily-dispatched low-level pest.  After Wrath rolled out, I paced my leveling of the draenei Paladin now known as Cayleb.  (He was formerly known as Raynier, more on that shortly.)

It took me a while to get there, but on 28 June 2009 I finally had my first ever level 80.  This began a different phase in my experience.  Prior to hitting 80, I’d kept several alts at varying degrees of progress on several different servers.  I didn’t have any raid experience, didn’t understand a lot about how the mysterious “end-game content” worked, and generally was as n00b of a n00b as ever did n00b.  Oddly enough, I had already found a guild by this point.  This guild was a collection of friendly and reasonably competent players that helped me finish up those last few levels, run heroics, learn about the nuances of gearing and raiding, and I was ready to raid fresh content by the time the Argent Tournament opened in patch 3.2.

Things didn’t really work out well with that guild.  In fact, they went so poorly that the experience left me with a bitter aftertaste.  I stepped back for a couple weeks, decided I wanted a fresh start, and transferred to Dark Iron-US with little more than the clothes on Raynier’s back.  I couldn’t even transfer with his name.  (There’s an inactive belf dk with that name already on Dark Iron.  Grrrrr…)  So Raynier became Cayleb, and I decided to start my own guild, Armada.

Armada lasted about five minutes.  Recruitment was more difficult than I’d imagined and as soon as I started pugging I got offered a spot to tank with Minions of Khaos.  In hindsight, I should have kept an alt in charge of Armada, but I was so eager to rejoin a social raiding guild that I handed the reins over to whoever was on at the time I joined MoK.  I’ve been happily raiding with MoK ever since October 2009.

My current in-game experience now has a bit more focus than my early habits of alt-hopping.  It needs to be said, though, that there is nothing inherently wrong with alt-hopping.  The game allows for that sort of experience, and there are players that enjoy the leveling process and managing multiple toons.  Just as there are players who enjoy only running fivers, or who prefer strict 10s raiding.  For myself, I have found it difficult to set those kinds of limits.  I am one who wants to experience everything.

For my mother, it’s puzzles.  For me, it’s World of Warcraft.  The game is my puzzle, and the joy comes from putting the last few pieces in that puzzle.  Or rather, the game is my puzzle collection.  And if I keep switching between too many different puzzles I not only get confused, I also get lost.  Ultimately, without some goals, no progress is made and I derive little enjoyment from the game.  (Or less enjoyment, anyways.)

Goal-setting has become the driving force behind my experience.  When that started, I’m not sure, but I do know that the Achievement system was an incredible boon.  It was a set of pre-defined goals that I could aim for.  At first it was relatively easy ones like World Explorer or Level 80.  The Achievements were carrots.  They were the picture on the puzzle box.  And I really like piecing together those pictures.

It’s gone beyond the Achievements system now, though.  Thanks to that habit and some relatively simple steps, I’ve essentially created my own Achievements (goals) to aim for in-game.

I’m still an altoholic, but now it serves my purpose, and helps me capture those last few jigsaw bits.  I’m still a raider, but now because it fits within my goals in-game.  I’m still a guilded player (and an officer), but now because it is one of the core reasons I come back to the game day after day, rather than a social feature.  Now, because it is one of my goals to be a good officer for my guild and a good friend to my guildmates.