Feeling nostalgic

I finally made it to level 68 last night and got my new flight form. Being able to fly around is awesome. If there is a cave full of mobs between me and where I need to go I can just fly over it instead, no need to run through and worry about aggroing a bunch of stuff. I managed to get a lot of quests done yesterday, and I think now I'm almost ready to leave BEM and head to another zone, although I'm not sure which one to go to. I guess I'll figure it out when it comes to that point, but for now I have at least a couple more playing sessions before I'm ready to move on.

Actually, what I really want to talk about today is how much I miss the early content. Right now all my alliance characters are past a bunch of my favorite early zones and I'm sort of feeling sad about the fact that I won't be doing those quest lines that I love so much anymore. See, I used to play the game with iTunes running in the background. I never really liked the game music much, but my computer could handle both at the same time with no problem. After doing this for a while, and usually having the same albums running over and over since I was too lazy to alt+tab out and change it, I started to associate certain music with certain zones. Now that I have my laptop I usually play in front of the TV with the game sound turned off so I can hear the TV and I don't bother with putting music on.

Then today I was on my way to work, had my headphones on during the train ride and was listening to an album that I used to listen to while playing WoW. All of a sudden I got this longing feeling and wanted to go back to Ashenvale and roam the forest. I really enjoyed that zone and the whole feel of it, like a magical forest out of a fantasy book. Obviously I can't play now because I'm at work, and with my new goals I've set I still have to make my way to 70 before I can switch it up, but it just makes you realize how much of an effect this game can make on you and just how much thought the game designers put into. It certainly takes a lot for a game to make you feel emotions like that.

I do have a bunch of horde characters that will get the chance to make their way through most of those zones, but the quests are entirely different and I just don't think it will feel the same. One good thing is I will still get to quest in those zones, and the different quests will bring a little variety to my game, but it still saddens me that with all the time I split between my current characters, I will probably never get to level an alliance character through those zones again. Maybe the early horde quests will be just as memorable, and since I have 4 of them to level up it should be plenty to keep me sustained. That's the best I can hope for at this point I think.