World of Warcraft (mostly vanilla)

I haven't played it in many years, but I won't deny the joy it brought me and the amount of love I have for the Warcraft world and so many of the characters and stories in it. The vast majority of my playtime was in vanilla, starting on launch day and braving the early full server errors and eventually getting to level 60 as a human paladin so I could go try and cleanse the Plaguelands and start reclaiming some of Lordaeron. I was definitley a filthy casual and rarely did dungeons, let alone raids. I just enjoyed the casual game and running around with my guild members doing whatever. I quit before Burning Crusade, and a good while later (Warlords of Draenor, I think?) I reactivated briefly just so I could go finally face off with Arthas over in Icecrown Citadel - something I'd wanted to do since Warcraft 3. I took a screenshot of Frostmourne on the ground after I defeated Arthas and then logged out and canceled my account again without even leaving that dungeon instance. The bucket list item had been checked - 1 defeated traitorous paladin turned Lich King

The early stuff was so good. The Defias, the Westfall Militia, all the creepy stuff in Duskwood that was scary but not all world-ending-scenario horrors, the misguided Scarlet Crusade, that whole line of stuff with the people trying to reclaim some of the Burning Steppes (I think it was that zone, anyway) to start a new kingdom ... stuff that was interesting on a relatable level and was possible to get personally invested in so much more than just facing whatever the next cosmic horror bent on taking over/destroying the world was. (Or the afterlife. Sigh.) There's just no real personal investment in saving the entire world/cosmos time and time again. Of course we're going to do it, it's not like we're going to refuse and let the world get blown up. Learning about the origins of the Defias and their goals was interesting, and you could sympathize with them. They still needed to be stopped, but you could see how they might have ended up as what they were. Helping the Westfall Militia stop them, or trying to go fight and reclaim some of Lordaeron from the undead scourge, was so much more interesting to me than stopping the next godlike creature in line taking a crack at ending/enslaving the world.