Hi. I'm some shitter named Doode. I, like so many of us, started playing on Nostalrius as soon as it launched, with WOD and its freshly-pinched SELFIE camera leaving a taste not unlike shit left in my mouth.
My first instinct was to hop back onto Gamer District, because I am the definition of a Wrath baby (at least I started playing BEFORE LK was down...) and I'm sure before Nost that we all considered "home" to be where we started. I'd wager that for the majority of us here, that wasn't vanilla--but it sure as hell has become so. This server showed me that the people who dismiss the longing for vanilla, BC, etc, as rose-tinted glasses are simply assholes speaking out of turn at best, and twattish corporate bootlicking faggots of the highest degree at the worst.
Playing Nostalrius, I felt as if I were being sucked into my position in the world from forces beyond my control, both story-wise and socially. I never intended to raid. I never did it on live, first from pure hardware restrictions (finally tanking HoR on a good computer made it completely trivial), then to that shocking feeling of inadequacy you get when you're trying to accomplish something above the bare minimum without any social structure to support it. Some random drunk night in UBRS led to me being recruited to Gentlemens Club and doing some actual progression raiding. Not cutting edge by any means, but in a certain way, to me, it was. Of course, that guild ended in the way it did and our GC diaspora ended up mostly in Convulsion and Reign, but... I still look back on everything fondly, and I've formed more valuable memories here on Nostalrius than I ever did in retail.
But maybe that's just nostalgia talking, right?
So, I ask: What is your story? What drove you away from Blizzard however long ago, and how did it lead you to Nostalrius? What unexpected paths did you find yourself traversing?