A digression: This is not about anything new. This is just me being mildly nostalgic.
Though my current account says December ’07, I actually started playing WoW in the fall of ’05. Specifically, sometime around Patch 1.8.0 or its successors – I know it was just prior to the opening of the gates. I had graduated from college, and got in touch with a friend of mine who’d moved out west to pursue a graduate degree at the Colorado School of Mines. We were chatting about various things we’d done together in college (memorable D&D games, etc.) and she told me that she’d recently started playing World of Warcraft at the urging of her new boyfriend and really loved it, and that I should totally check it out. I don’t remember my excuse for putting it off, but I had one, and I managed to stick to it until one day in Best Buy, when I walked by and saw that World of Warcraft really wasn’t all that expensive. Huh, I thought. Maybe this’ll give me something to do. (I was in kind of a console game – and MMO – slump at the time, having burnt out on Final Fantasy XI.) So I picked it up, took it home, installed it on my creaky little Mac Mini G4, and dived headfirst into World of Warcraft.
I don’t remember my first character’s name or the ones immediately following him, and I kind of regret that, but from day 1, I played Horde. My very first character was an undead rogue on Feathermoon, and I didn’t let my friend know about him – just yet. After all, I wasn’t sure I was gonna stick to this game or not. I remember falling in love with the areas around Deathknell and Brill, and how cool it was that I could jump (veterans of FFXI and Guild Wars may understand my amazement as well). I gleefully remember stealthing up to that little camp of Scarlets and stabbity-stabbing them to death, and I probably got my rogue to level 5 or 6 before deciding to try a second class.
My friend, Cassie, was a tauren druid. So I figured, why not? I rolled a tauren druid. Mulgore totally has a different flavor, and by now the variety had gotten me hooked. Cassie hooked me up with some leather gear and other generic piles of mats so I could level my own leatherworking, as well as some low-level greens, and I plowed through early quests in Mulgore and found my way into the Barrens. I remember using my newfound jumping skills (shut up) to get around to the guys above Wailing Caverns, before I had ever realized what an instance was (or that Wailing Caverns was an instance). I also remember that I had the pattern for a Deviate Scale Belt (I believe Cassie or her now-husband had blendered that instance for me so I could do some quests), and that I really, really wanted to make myself a Deviate Scale Belt – all by my lonesome. Self-sufficiency was the name of the game.
Have you spotted the problem yet? This was a long time before Patch 2.4, which would turn all the elites outside instance into non-elites… and no one had ever explained to me what that little gold circle meant. (I just thought it meant they had better loot.) So here I am, a little bitty druid around 15 or so, with what I’m sure was an absolutely moronic selection of gear (I didn’t know yet how utterly useless Spirit was), trying to solo elites – sometimes 2 and 3 at a time. However, I never gave up, at least until I did. I concluded that I sucked at this game, and wasn’t any good at it, and that’s the story of how a Deviate Scale Belt made me quit WoW.
At least until December 2007. I’d built a new rig earlier in the year – a fairly powerful one, to replace my stolen MacBook and underwhelming desktop – and had Gamestop gift cards, and that 19.99 Classic + TBC battlechest called my name…
How did you get started playing WoW? What kind of boneheaded mistakes did you make as a newbie? We were all there once, after all. 
Stop used to be a warlock, then he was a death knight; first he was Horde, then he was Alliance again, and now he's Horde again. For good this time. Lok'tar ogar! 
I remember my first character, a rogue. Human rogue.
When I started the game, several of my friends also played it. And they were a wooping level 30, which was amazing. And before I bought the game I had great plans, I know what name I wanted, class, race. And when I told one of my friends that, he just replied: "If you roll a Night Elf, I won't help you leveling, the music in that place is boring as hell."
So, I decided to roll a human instead, he never helped me.
Anyways, I met a leveling wall at level 25, after running The Deadmines constantly for 7 levels… I didn't know where to go, Duskwood was so depressive to be in after leveling in Westfall and Elwynn. So I figured I should go look for another place to level my rogue. It ended being a stupid exploring trip with way too many deaths. I saw Sunken Temple (looked like an awesome place, swimming to get to the portal), The Dark Portal (10 deaths to get to the portal, and being very disappointed when I ran straight through it), Blackrock Mountain (boring place, didn't know how to get up from the lava), Ulduman (I like the entrance to the portal still) and last but not least the bridge between Wetlands and Arathi Highlands. It was huge, and I spotted my first ever horde player there, I got so surprised seeing him that I jumped off the bridge. And finding myself swimming, I hate swimming. So I hearthed and eagerly leveled in Duskwood, knowing I would get too see so many awesome places when I got higher.
-ik
Heh. I remember taking a swing at soloing them elites outsides WC too. Went about as well fer me.
Worst moment though were soon afters picking up Jame's leveling guide, 'rounds about me 30th season. Said ta go kill a mountain lion in Alterac fer it's perfect spleen, or somesuch, fer ta use in summoning a big yeti. Five hours later, many many dead lions and a full season gained, still no spleen. So I gives up. Found out months later there was a quest I were missing from way back on Thunderbluff. Oopsie.