Yes, I'm an Altaholic

There are a couple of reasons that I've played World of Warcraft for over two years.

• There's a wealth of things to do, new content to experience, and goals to keep reaching for.
• It's a highly social game, where I interact with other people and, believe it or not, have made friends online from different parts of the world.
• It's actually fun to play, even two years after I first started.

For me, the journey, the experience of discovering the new, is much more important than being the best possible player ever in WoW. While I like having the good gear to improve my ability to play my role within the raid/game, the reason I spend hours raiding every week is not for the gear, but to have the opportunity to see new things in the game. For better or the worse, a lot of the best-designed content in the game is only available to a small number of players who can make it through the difficult challenges to the end of the game. I know I'll probably never see the Mount Hyjal (which is very disappointing to me as that event is one of the best parts of the Warcraft continuum) or the Black Temple, but I'll keep pushing along to get as far as a I can and to see as much as I can.

In the meantime, though, I seek other journeys when the endgame looms like a big brick wall.

It's for these reasons that I've become an altoholic. I have as many characters as are allowed on my server. I've done this so that I can see as much content as possible: all the starting areas for every race in the game; all the low-to-mid level quests from different perspectives of different classes; the class-specific quests; all the professions and the resource gathering that goes along with them; the different approaches of the Alliance versus the Horde quests and the lore behind them; the attitude of the various races and how the history of each develops through quests in the game. It's a journey, a constant journey, of discovering the new, and that's what keeps the game interesting to me. It's also satisfying to keep hearing the "ding" of leveling and to grow and expand each character in to its own different being rather than grinding day after week after month on the same character doing the same thing at the endgame.

So here are the various parts that make up my time and play in the World of Warcraft:

• Soraxen — my main: level 70 Night Elf Restoration Druid
• Theor — level 70 Human Holy Priest
• Glindoren — level 62 Dwarf Fury/Protection Warrior
• Corilaine — level 58 Gnome Frost Mage
• Borindus — level 36 Dranei Elemental Shaman
• Zyxx — level 35 Troll Shadow Priest
• Wyk — level 27 Undead Arms/Fury Warrior
• Cyzxa — level 22 Blood Elf Warlock
• Melline — level 20 Human Protection Paladin
• Xytora — level 14 Dranei Hunter

(I've also played a dwarf hunter, an orc rogue, and a tauren shaman, but have deleted those characters over time for various reasons — usually because I had no interest in playing them past level 10 or so, or, in the case of the rogue, I really didn't like the class.)

By playing all of these characters I've also gotten a deeper understanding of how the game works from a number of perspectives. I've learned that I'm better at some things than others, and have an appreciation for just how difficult some roles can be. I've also come to known that I really am a healer at heart in the game, and that's the role I'm going to be sticking with for a very long time to come.