Beginnings — Draenei, part 1: Flight 815 from Draenor

NAANDIMIRA
Draenei mage
Level 1 
Ammen Vale 

The first surprise was that I was a survivor of a spaceship (well, planar ship) crash. The second surprise was that the crash had just happened — that, apparently, the draenei had only just arrived on Azeroth: my first experience with wibbly-wobbly World of Warcraft time.

I awoke — yes, I'll generally be using "I" and "me" in referring to the character; deal with it — in a valley studded with large red crystals; the crystals turned out not to be a natural feature, and indeed served to drive much of the plot that followed.

In the shadow of no dam

NAANDIMIRA
Level 44 draenei mage
Thousand Needles

MACABURR
Level 23 dwarf warrior
The Wetlands 
 

Time is more than wibbly-wobbly in Azeroth — it contorts, in ways a pretzel would envy, to serve the twin needs of storytelling and gameplay. Thus, even though people may have been playing the game for years before you, for your particular story time starts at zero every time you create a new character. To take the two examples I've personally experienced: If you're a draenei, the Exodar has only just crashed on Azeroth; if you're a dwarf, the Cataclysm has only just happened.

I said time starts at zero, but that's not quite true: the oldest players remember a time before the Exodar arrived on Azeroth, and I think most remember the time before the Cataclysm. (1) This also means that from one perspective, the new draenei is starting almost four years before the new dwarf, which is one reason you shouldn't think too hard about World of Warcraft.

I'm one of the newbies, so I don't remember a time before the Cataclysm. That makes me traveling in Azeroth a little like how it would be in real life if I were to visit New York City, a place I've never been. I've seen plenty of photos, TV shows, films, read plenty of books set in NYC — but I've never actually had the experience of standing in a New York City where two 110-story towers rise over lower Manhattan, and now I never will. (Or at least, not those particular 110-story towers.) Likewise, I've never been to The Park in Stormwind, never experienced Loch Modan as a place that was filled with water, or Thousand Needles as a place that wasn't.

A lot of stories start just before or just after a (lowercase-c) cataclysm, and there's a reason for that: it's inherently dramatic, increasing the challenges that those who survive face. Plenty of adventures start off with adventurers wandering a ruined land, rich in history — that is, rich in backstory. There's a lot of history in Azeroth as well — but one of the things that makes WoW interesting and unusual is that players have experienced at least some of that history.