I got to level 60 not long before the first expansion pack came out (The Burning Crusade) but managed to get PvP rank 10 on my gnome warlock. I played the game mostly for PvP and when arena season 1 came out my double Fel Guard warlock team made duelist rank (top 3%). I also loved finding exploits and playing the game in ways it wasn't originally meant to be played, that was where the fun was for me. Twinking was also a favorite of mine, as I had decked out level 19's, 29's, 39's and even a few level 1 twinks that I did some interesting thing with such as 97% dodge ( beat a level 22 in a duel ) and 0.4 second speed on a 2 handed mace.
I wasted a lot of time in that world however I met lots of cool interesting people along the way. You really got to know the people on your server, you made friends and enemies alike and it was very intimate. This all changed when the cross realm battlegrounds and instances were introduced. The game moved at a faster pace but at the price of real human relationships and interaction.
At some point I realized that in RL (real life) I also had a character (my body) that could be improved with time and effort and thus realized it was pointless to keep working towards virtual goals when Blizzard would just keep making the loot phatter and the numbers higher forever. There is nothing like vanilla original WoW and the current game is a soulless shell of what once was.
Thanks for taking me down memory lane!
PS what server did you play on?
Oh by the way Warlocks were one of the worst classes for me to PvP against when I was Prot specced. Not a chance in hell to take you dotting mofo's down!
I played on a few but Dark Iron was my stomping grouds for a long while. I totally agree about cross realm BG's and instancing almost ruining the game. There are a lot of things Blizzard did in the name of making things better that slowly but surely as you say sucked the soul out of the game. Another huge example would be Raid Finder and Dungeon finder. At one point you actually had to make the long trek to dungeon entrances. Hence the carnage in Blackrock Mountain.