Eventually I might actually have something to add here for real, but I think I'll start with an overview of each of my characters in World of Warcraft.First... my hunter. Gotta start at the beginning, right?
Ceres was first born on US-PvP Test Server 16. It was Open Beta and a mutual friend of my boyfriend and I showed us where we could get the client. We were skeptical about playing an MMORPG. There were days in high school where I would just sit down in front of the TV and play an RPG all damn day (Suikoden II comes to mind) and I was a little worried about a neverending game... and I didn't see any reason to play monthly for a game when I could buy one at a one time cost of $50.
WoW definitely captured my interest during the couple of weeks I got to play Open Beta though, so we put in the cash for pre-orders right away. Sadly we both missed the end of open beta, not realizing there would be a special event - but we already were bummed that we were losing our characters ^^;
The day of World of Warcraft's release, I got permission to miss a class I was TAing (my last class of the day) and went to the mall with my boyfriend to pick up our preordered copies of World of Warcraft. We arrived at home and he left for class while I installed the game on our two computers. I got an IM from the same friend who had gotten us into beta - "Mannoroth" it said.
Mannoroth was actually a suggested low-population PvP server (or so we thought - Mannoroth was actually bugged opening day and said "low population" all day, and suffered from this for months), but I promised I wouldn't do anything in the game until Chris got home. Longest two hours ever!
Chris wanted to play horde - I wanted to play alliance. He blames me for not being able to enjoy his first year of WoW as an overpowered Tauren shaman, but I was not the only one in our group who wanted to play alliance - I promise!
Chris arrived home and we decided to remake our characters from beta - I created "Ceres" and he recreated his druid, Blink, but Blink was already taken so he named the druid Kelsin instead.
The first day - hell, the first few weeks and even months - of WoW was fraught with server crashes and lag, but I still loved it. I played Ceres with a small group of friends and we all formed our own guild when we were in our 20s or 30s (it took ages to farm up all of that gold to get the charter). I didn't touch an alt for ages, and didn't get one over level 20 before my hunter hit 60 at the end of winter break (right at the end of January).
Ceres held a lot of firsts for me - on Ceres I learned how to play. Ceres is the character that introduced me to instancing and raiding. I learned first hand why it was stupid for a hunter to roll on a weapon with a "Chance on hit:" when I rolled against one of my rogue friends (and honestly I still feel bad about it, but no one really knew how to play back then!). I learned why it was bad to feign death when you get aggro and you aren't sure who the enemy is going to go on (I feigned onto our priest and he was not pleased, but luckily he forgave me :P)
I still clearly remember my first Onyxia raid - we got her on our 4th try. My boyfriend and I put on a wedding dress and tuxedo (in game!) and posed for a picture under her head hanging in Stormwind. There was a certain rush from downing all of the demons for the hunter epic quest line in the same morning. Pulling a core hound and also bringing a group of surgers to come play. My hunter had a lot of fun times ;)
Learning Ouro in AQ-40 - finally downing him. Helping get the first kills for the first boss in the Death Knight wing in Naxx, and Anub'rekhan. My best memories all lie with the same guild - Aegis Order / Aegis Uprising / Equilibrium. It was a raiding guild that I raided with in early 2005, but played with through the spring and some of the summer, then joined in autumn the same year. I kept that guild tag over my head until the guild disbanded.
My pet is the ever-popular King Bangalash, renamed Tasslehoff after one of my real cats. The real Tasslehoff has since passed on, and I have to admit, naming an in-game pet after a real pet has made it a very real possibility that I will never use another pet for as long as I play WoW!
I haven't really played Ceres since The Burning Crusade came out - she still hasn't hit 61, though I did finally move her to Outland. I've moved on to another server and to other classes, but I'll always remember her fondly. I do hope I'm able to get her to 70 before the next expansion! :)
