When Did You Become Aware?

In Faulkner's "The Barn Burning", Abner Snopes becomes aware at a certain point that his father's peculiar admiration of watching other people's buildings burn is.....different. This self-awareness leads him to make an important decision. Like Abner Snopes, each of us WoW players have experienced a similar type of epiphany at some point, and a critical decision.
For me, it was when I dueled a player three levels lower who kicked my butt. As a classic rogue on rogue battle, I thought I would dominate him. After the first loss I thought, "I screwed up" but didn't really know how or what to do to fix it. After 2, then 3, then 5 losses I finally decided I was being outplayed. ((I'm slow that way I guess)). I had more health, more abilities on my bar, but was getting pwned.

This was my first toon and I had spent all my time questing. I couldn't even spell PvP. The time I had spent completing quests and getting rep this girl (at least the toon was a girl) had been in battlegrounds learning how to pwn other players. 


The decision for me was critical: do I try to learn PvP, or step back from that aspect of the game? I decided to leave PvP in my rearview and work on PvE aspects of the game. At least, until I hit 80, got bored, and revisited PvP. Now I'm still playing catch up, lol.


Even though this may seem like a mundane example, it is important for me. It is the moment when I realized that the game did not mean the same thing to everyone. This may seem like a very basic component of game play but until then, I figured it was a really big world of WoW and that other players had just experienced more of it than me. I didn't realize that other players could, or even wanted to, ignore the part of the game I experienced.


This realization helped me in many ways. Gear in the AH now took on a new role--was it twink gear? Was this potion or elixir used for PvP? If so, the value would be more on Tuesdays than Saturdays. These realizations helped me develop a more precise lens through which I could focus on details of the world like never before. I was hiring alchemists to craft PvP elixirs before I could even gather the mats myself, just to sell on the AH.


There have been many more moments like this for me, but this was seminal in that it was the first. I recall it vividly even today.


So, my question to you: what was your important moment of self awareness? Did it have to do with the guild you were in, or the quests you were doing, or even what type of character you rolled? How did this awareness help you in your game play?


Please take a moment to share your stories with everyone.