When did you begin playing a mage?

[Akraen]

In this getting to know the community thread, I'd love to hear about everyone-- when did you begin playing a mage? What drew you to mage and what keeps you here? Did you like the idea of being the top DPS but then grew to love it, or something else?

Personally, I played a druid since 2005 right up to patch 5.0 when I got so tired of the druid changes that I changed to my mage. My mage was an alt since 2005 as well, always lazily geared up and I either played frost or arcane. I was haste obsessed even back then, too, back when defeating Archimonde I went in wearing Frozen Shadoweave gear and +haste items, completely ignoring spell hit, but topped the meters.

I stick to mage because I fell in love with personal utility. I find it a lot more rewarding to be in charge of my own life via spells than being relied upon to save others with my spells. It's something I fear disappearing from mage.

So anyway, how about each of you? Let's hear your tales. Y u mage?

[Zildijana]

Oh that do bring back good old memories!
I did play a holy/retri paladin back in vanilla and this mage was my alt. I hated that I had chosen to play healer in the raid. I made my mage on a late Saturday night at my friends place and named her Vaskemaskin (washing machine) I never got her to lvl 60 before i quit the game for a long time.

When I came back in the beginning of ToT I decided to not play my paladin but my mage. And here I am, never regret it at all, been true all the specs and atm I find frost the most fun to play.
I was a typical noob when I came back to the game but with some help for other mages in guild and forums I see my self as a better mage then average. I will never turn away from it all tough I got several alts.

Zildijana out!

[Berlinia]

Playing like a mongolian without using keybinds? Since Firelands.
Playing like a mage? Since november

[MGT]

Hmm hmm.. the launch for EU WoW was early 2005 if am not mistaken.. But I did start as a Fury Warrior first.. Yes I levelled a fury warrior to 60 without arms or prot And it took like a month or so. Looking back must have been the fastest pure Fury to level in early vanilla

Then I was like fuck this class and Mage was just something I thought looked more fun and oh my it was a different world compared to Warriors. Anyways, it took me around 3 weeks of pure levelling to get to a point where I could join the gear grind groups etc.. Oh them memories.

And been a Mage pretty much ever since, Although in TBC we needed a healer so Holy pala and in WotLK I had way more fun with a rogue at the start of the expansion.

As to why I kept playing a Mage.. It just has the "wizard" feel and I've always liked wizards in fantasy and in games. And the gameplay with blink, ice block etc etc.. Was sort of unique at the time. Your spells hit hard, you did all your damage upfront(except ignite). Your positioning mattered a lot in raiding, had to actually think differently than just how to press buttons to kill the boss. All them little things I loved. Funnily almost all of which are gone now.

[Phígment]

I started playing in 2009 in Wrath right before patch 3.3 I picked the game up for $5.00 @ a black Friday sale. My 1st toon was a dwarf rogue did not have a clue what I was doing lol and once I hit 80 I had no idea what ICC was but wanted to try it but could never get a invite cause of gear score lol. Well joined a guild got a invite to run Icc because the rogue they ran with could not make it and they needed a rogue I told them never been before but they were cool with that. Well I was excited my first Raid ever we are clearing trash up to the 1st boss when the RL says "Ok rogue you go disarm traps" I was like WTH where are the traps first time here. They explained it ok got it I stealthed right up to the trap and ran right over it and all hell broke loose called all kinda names lol I was so embarrassed I left group and logged off. I never logged back in that toon for fear I ruined my name as a noob rogue and would never get a invite again so instead of quiting WoW I decided to start another toon but really hated having to travel the world again I heard about portals a mage could make and you could go from one land to another and thus my Mage was born and has been my main ever since.

[Crabmodem]

For me playing a mage goes back to late 80's early 90's and the DragonLance books. Raistlin Majere was the biggest bad ass and he is what got me into my current profession as well. There was just something about that character in the books that I just loved. Then there was the part where he was doing the coin work. I remember thinking at the time, "that would be cool to be able to do that." A few years later I met my mentor in the night club my parents owned. He was a close up magician doing things that I have never seen since the TV guys didn't do that type of stuff. That was 20 years ago and I have been playing mages and performing magic ever since.

This toon has been my main since launch. I have played some other toons for the guilds I happened to be in but it was the mage that I would play on non-raid days and try to find guild that needed the mage.

[Rigaldo]

Now! Is pretty much my answer. I had an 85 Mage which i levelled for teh lolz, but I boosted it to 90 so as to get the professions maxed. And after having flicked at length through my 90 Paladin, Druid, Mage, Lock and Priest - I think I have finally settled on making my Mage my main for WoD.

[Komma]

I got sucked into WoW when I played a Balance druid belonging to a friend in Vanilla. Balance wasn't really a viable spec back then, and it was really frustrating taking forever trying to solo a regular mob. However, I really liked the gameplay of ranged nuking. So when I joined, I asked myself what class fits the "Nuke a ranged target for gigantic numbers from really far away" description best. As the only magic class with 41 yard range back then, mage looked like the obvious choice!

[Feuertorte]

I started playing WoW as a druid back in these days when the cataclysm started.. Somehow druid bored me really fast and I switched to mage which was real fun back then. My little Gnome joined a relatively good guild and was invited to the first raids where I was playing Fire first. It worked pretty well and some weeks after I felt like I was doing pretty good. (there were not that many mages that could beat me) This feeling didn't change the whole expansion... When Mists of Pandaria came I got hacked and decided to stop playing for a while.

After coming back I thought about playing mage again, but seriously: Waiting for the LFR to get gear to reach the ilvl marks that everyone sets isn't that funny at all, thats why I decided to play my Holy Paladin as my main. While my Paladin is my main now the Mage still owns my heart thats why I decided to play him as my main again as soon as Warlords of Draenor arrives. (actually he has ilvl 560 and does about 300k dps as frost)

Now I'm looking forward to improve my Mage skills again while helping others to improve their understanding. (I love to analyse logs )

[durrtygoodz]

My mage story is pretty short but it's been a good one. I started playing after I saw a guy playing boomy in ToT HC exactly 1 year ago and thought it looked too fun to miss. So I made a boomkin and got into heroic raiding. My mage was a small side project but from the start I took a keen interest in the mage forums and learning about the class. There was a 25hc SoO alt run happening on my realm at the end of last year that I got invited to and ever since then I have been raiding hc content as a mage and trying to contribute what I can to the forums.

After progress was over this tier I decided to fully dedicate my time to mage and made it my main whilst my poor boomkin is mostly used for camping BMAH these days. I don't know what it is but I am completely obsessed with frost and love what I've been able to do with the spec so far!

[Shangalar]

Hm. I started playing a Mage in Baldur's Gate and all subsequent RPG games and strategy games when available (like the human Archmage in War3). And I play a mage in all games where mages are playable.

As for WoW... sometime in 2006 or 2007 my best friend started playing and back then I hated online games because gaming was a totally personal thing and leave me alone. One of my very often repeated lines was: "WoW would be the best game in the world if it were single player". How and why I became an active member of the community, nobody will ever know.

Anyway, my best friend tortured me about trying the game and I told him to fuck off and before summer 2008 I decided to try it. The trial version was spectacular - no whispering unless whispered first, no mail, blabla. I used 4 days of the 10-day trial and called it crap and quit.

And then 6 months later at the end of 2008 I tried again and here I am. My first and only important character is Shangalar the Arcane Mage. Alts are just tools to get professions, gold and waste a bit of time. The leveling was dreadful, I didn't know anything about the game, had to call my friend to come help me solve half the quests and kill any tougher mobs because I was dead all the time. But it was an overall amazing experience and I still claim that without heirlooms and stuff, the mage was by far the hardest class to level up. I remember doing Dragonblight and Storm Peaks on a ground mount and I loved every second of it.

Now talent points... hah, I hated Arcane Missiles, so my rotation was kind of Blast, Fireball, Fire Blast, Barrage. And then I found someone in the game who gave me his talent tree to copy and I was so happy because I increased my damage by 4k DPS! (while in reality all that happened is that my Blast did 4k damage, but I had no idea what dps was).

And in autumn of 2009 I joined a starter raiding guild and I vividly remember them explaining to me what OS+3D meant hahahaha. And I learned guild and game stuff from them a lot, after which my real life friends joined a more serious raiding guild and I followed them. That was after new year 2010, Icecrown Citadel was out for less than a month. And 3 months later I became a class and raid leader. That guild, which is my home and all my alts are in it, has unfortunately fallen apart as a raiding guild in December 2012. Even if I am now in an amazing guild with great people and an officer in it, I expect that one day in the future when I stop playing that I will return my mage to his home where he learned the most about the game and himself.

Writing this brought out so many memories and emotions, damn it.

[Kver]

I actually used to play a rogue for a long time, and I still miss him every day. I was a raid leader at the start of MoP and during the first week of MSV I was like "yeah no, not going to be melee here", so I dug up my old mage alt, got him to 90 in a day and geared him up. Been playing him ever since.

To be honest, coming from a community which is very small but incredibly skilled and helpful the mage community was a bit difficult to adapt to. This might be one of the reasons why I began AT: I know what it should be like.

I do actually consider going back to rogue from time to time because that energy based gameplay is amazing, in my opinion.

[Frosted]

Been playing my mage as a main since 2005. Long time >.>

[Dutchmagoz]

I've always played "wizard" type classes in all games that I've played. Sorcerror in diablo 1/2, mage in WoW, elementalist in another game, etc.

I started my mage in vanilla, but before even hitting level 10, I quit the game. Then I re-started in early wotlk, got my mage to like level 40, and started playing a paladin instead. Don't quite remember the reason. Hit max level on it, decided to l,evel my mage again with heirlooms for fun. Hit max level, never looked back at other classes except for alts run.s

[Malon]

I swear that I replied to this already, but my post appears to have been eaten. So...I started playing about a month after EU launch: March 2005. I'd been through a couple of classes beforehand - Hunter, Shaman, Priest and Warlock - but none of them had the single-target direct damage I was looking for. The Mage just clicked straight away.

I've almost always levelled as the least efficient spec possible - not through choice, but because it was fun. I went 31/20/0 in vanilla, dumping my first 31 points into Arcane - I even used the spec, which relied on Fireballs, in MC and BWL; in BC I used an elemental (fire/frost) build, having fun with Shatter. After arcane's changes in the 3.0 patch I levelled through Northrend as arcane. It wasn't until Cataclym that I discovered how fun frost could be, and used it for levelling in Cata and MoP.

[mastamagee]

I mained a Mage at the start of MoP. I played my Boomkin from BC through WotLK and quit it because of the change to Eclipse in Cata. I took almost all of Cata off and came back in DS and finished leveling my Mage in my spare time. Chances are I'll be going back to Boomkin come WoD due to a long awaited Eclipse change.

[Pahonix]

From the first time seeing a friend play a wizard in Everquest, I knew that's what I wanted to play. Ever since then, I've played mage (or whatever was the closest thing) in every MMO I've played to date. I started WoW just days after launch in late 2004 and have raided every tier as a main specced mage from Molten Core to Siege of Orgrimmar. I've never taken a break.

My memory fails me in terms of exactly what spec I played over the years, but I do remember being Frost in Molten Core (naturally) and Blackwing Lair and then switching to fire partway through Ahn'Qiraj-40. From there, it all gets a bit fuzzy. I remember playing Arcane for a while during WotLK, though in Ulduar I definitely remember a hybrid frost/fire build. Anyway, pretty much since the start of Mists of Pandaria, I've stuck with Frost and I don't see myself changing. We'll see how Warlords of Draenor pans out in terms of class changes.

[Mumrit]

Vanilla! Rolled my mage a few weeks after release after trying a rogue and a warlock. This was my first 60

[Mageski]

I started in Vanilla as a Paladin, but never really got into the game seriously until just before the end of BC. Finally hit 70 just in time to start leveling to 80. Once I'd leveled and started getting some gear, it became clear that my guild didn't need healers and already had a ret pali (10 man) so I went ahead and leveled a Death Knight. I mained that toon through Ulduar and into ToC, switching to Mage just before ICC came out. After that, I never looked back.

Along the way I've dabbled in many highly geared alts, but the Mage has stayed my baby. At the end of Wrath (and again at the end of Cata) my rogue was equally geared to my Mage. For anyone that ever thought about pugging your Legendary daggers, I can confirm that it was not fun. So far this expansion, my main alts have been my druid (Bear/boom) and now my Destro lock, but I'm a huge altoholic overall.

[Kver]

I started playing WoW as a druid back in these days when the cataclysm started.. Somehow druid bored me really fast and I switched to mage which was real fun back then. My little Gnome joined a relatively good guild and was invited to the first raids where I was playing Fire first. It worked pretty well and some weeks after I felt like I was doing pretty good. (there were not that many mages that could beat me) This feeling didn't change the whole expansion... When Mists of Pandaria came I got hacked and decided to stop playing for a while.

After coming back I thought about playing mage again, but seriously: Waiting for the LFR to get gear to reach the ilvl marks that everyone sets isn't that funny at all, thats why I decided to play my Holy Paladin as my main. While my Paladin is my main now the Mage still owns my heart thats why I decided to play him as my main again as soon as Warlords of Draenor arrives. (actually he has ilvl 560 and does about 300k dps as frost)

Now I'm looking forward to improve my Mage skills again while helping others to improve their understanding. (I love to analyse logs )

This post actually saddens me because it is how I feel about my rogue. I'd play him(Maybe even main spec at the moment) but I'm looking at months of LFR for the cape