I kick sand at people.

You know, it wasn't all too long ago that I was a member of the Alliance. I had long flowing blond hair and a wicked goatee. I looked like a paladin. I was...rather dashing. Stereotypes aside, though, I was something of a coward.

I remember fearing every time the Alliance emblem would pop up next to my character's portrait indicating that I was PvP-flag enabled. Oh lord, my first trip to Scarlet Monastery was a real white-knuckled pony ride to be sure. Whether the threat of get ganked was imagined or not, it was very much real in my head. For whatever reason whenever I was...fair game, as it were, I really became paranoid. There was an undead rogue hiding behind that next tree, and his name was Mido.

World PvP scared the crap out of me, even though it shouldn't have. I played Alliance on a pretty Alliance-heavy server, normally we would have the advantage of numbers anywhere we went. Maybe it was an irrational fear, but for whatever reason...it stuck. Looking back on it, though, I'm thinking it was because I was a holy paladin with nothing to save myself but holy shock and whatever damage retribution aura could put out...which, against an arms warrior wielding the original Obsidian Edged Blade, didn't add up to much.

Granted, this sort of run into the closet and hide fear softened a bit once retribution paladins got a little bit of bite in the expansions since the original vanilla WoW, but it was one of those things that I just couldn't easily shake. It was...ingrained into how I played the game--one eye looking over my shoulder whenever the shield of Lordaeron came over my head.

Wrath of the Lich King put me at odds with my own apprehensions via Wintergrasp. Sure, we had had PvP dailies and quests before, but never an entire zone enabled for just that one thing where you could essentially come and go as you pleased. Or at least, for me, it was something new. Maybe not so much the actual PvP that was going on, I'd done plenty of that before in the old standby encounters of WSG, AB, AV, and Eye, but more of what happened after the encounter was over. The fighting was done, but the two sides could, and usually would still go at it just because they could.

For me, this sort of post-Wintergrasp interaction would come up during one particular event: the PvE Wintergrasp daily/weekly quest. You know the ones I'm talking about. The ones to go kill the water elementals, the shadow elementals, the fire guys, the flowers, those ones. Kill some PvE mobs in a PvP zone. Brilliant. Though, as a side note, the fishing daily quest also fits into this category.

I recall blowing into the zone just after a fight to knock out the daily, and still that paranoid mentality hung with me. I was always on the lookout for red-colored names. I'd pick and choose my PvE mobs close to the edges of the zone if possible so I could quickly dust off on my mount and bug out if need be.

Regardless, doing the quests was meant to take as little time a possible. I'd hop in, do the quest, and zip out. Hopefully before any PvP-flagged Horde saw me. Every now and then I'd run by a few Horde on their mounts, but I'd try to keep my distance, maybe even toss them a /wave if I thought I could skirt their humanitarian side. After all, weren't they just in there to do the daily/weekly quests, too?

Since making the jump over to the Horde side, I have to answer than with an emphatic, "No". Those Horde aren't just in there to do the daily/weekly quest. If anything, they are out to get you in any way that they can. And damn it, they like it.

Honestly, I can't really say what's caused the change in my mindset toward world PvP, but now that I'm on the other side of the fence, I live for it. Regardless of whether or not the Horde take Wintergrasp, I find myself cruising about the zone, dropping in on the Alliance/quest hot spots in the hopes of finding a red-colored name. Maybe it's because I currently out gear a good number of Alliance players on this server, but the fear just isn't there anymore. The other night I flew my rusted proto-drake directly into the Alliance-controlled outpost to the east of the fortress just so that I could burn an AFK'ing rogue.

It's not just me either. It's my entire guild. We flag PvP outside of instances and even go as far as to bait Alliance players into attacking us only to have a feral druid and rogue waiting in the wings to bring down the hammer.

We're Horde.

We're angry.

And damn, don't we look delicious?