Because there’s nothing I enjoy more than the prospect of giant anthropomorphic martial arts pandas, I’m now back in World of Warcraft, bringing to an end in one moment of mild ennui, the abstinence of five years.

At first I was full of self-loathing about falling off the wagon and abandoning my long held principles, but then realised that actually, no-one gives a damn about any of that but me. Certainly I know that Blizzard couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss either way about my own personal participation, my own ‘+1’ in their vast book-keeping numbers, especially since I’m doing my usual thing of just mooching off the free bits anyway; an extensive sampling of their current Play Free to Level 20 Forever endless free trial thing.

Not that I had much alternative there. At some point in the last half decade, they did a something drastic with the account management and now I fear my old ‘proper’ account is now gone forever, linked to a Battle Net account I have no idea what even is, let alone what the Secret Question was. After the initial burst of rage passed, it suddenly dawned on me what a liberation this actually was.

In my heyday, which was pre Burning Crusade, I managed the grand achievement of one single Level 60 character – a Troll Warrior. I don’t even know if ‘ilvl’ existed as a concept back then, but the concept of ‘By Their Gear You Shall Know Them’ certainly did and I think I may have managed one or maybe two pieces of purple equipment in my prodigious arsenal of otherwise unremarkable quest reward blues.

I’d basically finished the levelling, but then wandered off before the raiding end-game got underway, and even back in what it pleases the internet to call ‘Vanilla’, my own tale of WoW Accomplishment could have been replicated by someone more dedicated in under a fortnight of robust play, I expect. I was certainly proud of ‘winning’ but suspect that it represented only the pre-event warm-up for most regular players.

To me though, it was a win and at first I was quite cross at not being able to get to my ‘main’ anymore. But then I thought about how significantly the goalposts have been moved out from under me in five years; 25 more levels, three expansions, several new continents and likely a complete class redesign or two and realised that actually, it would be lot like starting again, so why not just do that anyway?

If a decade of MMOs have finally taught me anything, it’s that you can’t take it with you when you’re gone. The end product – the supposedly ‘finished’ character means nothing against the memories and experiences gained along the way. My recent determined efforts to pimp out my L65 LotRO Guardian were made irrelevant overnight with Rise of Isengard; a new L75 cap and stats almost double what I previously thought barely attainable now being commonplace. A retired BR23 Planetside trooper was something to be proud of once, but now is barely over half way to the current ‘end’ – BR40 is it? I lose track but don’t even have a beret! 22 million EVE Skill Points? So what? That was something, once…

The practical consequence of all this sank home the other night though, when I realised that to me, a brand new Battle Net account based off a throwaway webmail address was in fact more valuable to me than an old veteran one in good standing with a L60 Troll Warrior on it, because it was just a lot more convenient to get on and get access to the game. Odds are my L60 is probably naked and goldless at this point anyway, hacked or some such in the time I’ve been away. And I don’t care.

Free at last! I wonder if any of my other accounts in other games would ultimately matter in similar circumstances either. Could I just abandon them out of hand if the fresh free trial was easier to sort out?  Three L20s in Guild Wars, a L65 Hobbit in LOTRO, a L78 Inquisitor in EQ2X, and a L50-something Swashbuckler somewhere on EQ2Live. A Gallente Battleships V pilot in EVE. A 74 Trader in Anarchy Online. A L50 Ice Tanker in City of Heroes. The list goes on – digital representations of Time Spent, some of which have already been long destroyed. I can’t even remember which server some of those are on. The EQ1 Rallos Zek server no longer exists, and took two years of my gaming life with it. Asheron’s Call 2. Tabula Rasa. More time murdered, and nothing now to show for any of it.

Everything gets deleted in the end – Sunk Cost Fallacy, indeed! But it’s always okay as long as I can honestly tell myself I enjoyed the journey in each case. Otherwise, it would all have been A Bit Stupid, and I’d have to immediately go mad!

Annnnnyway, the early levels are usually the best bit – by necessity! Life as a perma-newbie in WoW has great appeal – access to a sampling of most of the features in a fundamentally solid and polished game engine, a large enough choice of races, classes and starting areas to keep me interested for long enough to scratch the itch, and no real exposure to most of the aspects of the game which seem to cause so much of the general blogosphere dissatisfaction with this otherwise hugely successful MMO.

I’m starting off my Grand Tour with a Draenei Hunter, mostly to see the new (to me!) Azuremyst Isle area and The Exodar, and I have to say, it’s all very pleasant. Wandering about moonlit forests with a killer moth pet and a crossbow, just chilling out and relaxing. Nothing in newbie WoW is especially fraught, hectic or dangerous and it does rather work like a kind of audio-visual Valium.

Pleasing palettes, soothing noises, simple fetch and carry, rudimentary trade skills. I can see how the whole thing would make a lot of gamers quite angry! I wouldn’t call it exciting particularly, and perhaps this is the negative consequence of not caring about stressful things; I seem not to care about a lack of exciting things either. Zen gaming!

At my present rate it looks like Level 20, the trial cap, is doable in less than a week of mildly interested play, but there are nine other races to go visit after this, (Worgen and Goblin seem to require expansion purchase), so when the Hunter is done, I can just delete it and start something else, safe in the knowledge that it never mattered anyway, and was only a vehicle for my own idle explorations.

I increasingly find a peculiar liberation in the cut-down feature set most MMOs now offer as trial or free-tier, and will often and quite perversely take the reduced functionality on as a kind of challenge that goes beyond a mere reluctance to spend any money. For a while back there, I was about the only person in EQ2X playing seriously on a Bronze level subscription – Silver is only a one-off $10 and opens much. Not having access to the things Silver and Gold people have actually increases the zest of the experience for me, forcing me to use wits and cunning far more than usual.

Not what they intend, I’m sure, but I seem to be approaching WoW in similar spirit; just what can a L20 get away with and how far can that be pushed? Maybe I’ll try a permadeath L20 run as e-sport. Maybe I’ll try a Pacifist L20 run. Maybe I’ll try to uncover the entire map, L85 zones and all. Maybe I’ll try to twink out a L19 Battleground character. Perhaps I can see firsthand the horrors of the Random Dungeon Finder! Lots to dabble with, but dabbling it is, and I like dabbling most of all.

An interesting sub-game of its own, and also a way to make many of the bigger end-game woes completely irrelevant. After all, if the first twenty levels aren’t fun in and of themselves, why would anyone go further at all?