There's a shining lightbulb above my head right now. . .

My first character ever in Wow was a blood elf paladin. I picked the class basically because I wanted to wear plate armor and be able to heal myself. I picked blacksmithing because I like making weapons and armor. I supported it with mining because I needed raw materials to make the armor and weapons. I made these assumptions pretty much blind although I was assisted by my coworkers, most of whom were playing paladins at the time.

Over the course of playing the game, I got more involved in making alts, trying new classes, and trying the other professions. A longtime friend from college convinced me to switch servers and roll alliance. I knew a little more at this time, so I could plan what characters I wanted in what roles, I tried a few new classes and basically learned the game all over again from the alliance side.

The next stage of my developement was when I decided PvP really wasnt my thing, and started completely over on an alliance PvE server. This is also around the time I started reading various Wow related blogs and thinking about the game more. This lead me to frost mage AOE griding, which lead me to prot paladin AOE grinding which leads me to the point of this post: I REALLY REALLY like AOE.

It's almost sad that it took me a year and a half to realize I basically want to play an MMO version of Diablo (which is most of why I tried wow in the first place, diablo was fun, warcraft was fun, why not?). I enjoy leveling, making new characters, crafting, itemizing (my fiance calls me a serial accessorizer, everything has to look cool) and running instances with my guild. What I enjoy most is gathering up a load of mobs and killing them.

I came to this conclusion this morning after a session last night where I was mining and herbing with my mage (mining being basically a placeholder for inscription once we get it). There were much lower level mobs around the nodes so I gathered them up, frost nova, blizzard, then arcane exploded them till dead. They were grey so I didnt get any real in game benefit but it was SO MUCH FUN!

I'd be curious to know who else had a similar epiphany about the game. . .