Oh, I remember ^^
Got into one of the later waves of alpha testing and it was surprisingly easy to get ingame, I only crashed once lol
Most people were pretty optimistic since it was alpha and so many things would change, and we were allowed to test it

I started making some contacts and then the alpha was over and beta came, and everyone was so impressed with how much SE changed. I felt that they wouldn't disappoint us if they managed to improve so much from alpha to beta.

Uni kept me busy so I didn't play much. Then came release with the CE version. Seeing lots of people in onion helms at newbie zones made up for the fact the release version was not different from the beta one. The random parties at Aetherytes where everyone was following the same goal of exploring new zones were great, but it soon started to wear off and most people quit. Servers became quiet and i decided to quit myself.

Recently I came back and started playing again and funny thing, those people i saw running past me about a year ago were back too, and one of them even is in one of the LS I am in lol