How has role-playing evolved for you, from the days of Dungeons and Dragons (and before) to World of Warcraft?

Well I actually played several games prior to D&D. Runequest was the first, then Tunnels and Trolls, then Warhammer, and finally D&D - after that I played more advanced games, such as MERP (middle earth roleplaying games) and a more advanced one I forget! I then started playing games on the Atari and Amiga - really old games, then a few AD&D games that weren't bad - finally ended up on the PC with Bard's tale and then right through to the 3D first person games available today (Risen is one I am playing now) - I don't really play games like WOW though - more of a single player RPG fan myself!

I started out playing D&D pretty much as a hobby. I didn't collect any of the figurines or anything, but my brother had a ton of them. I also got hooked on the Star Wars role-playing game that came out in booklets. I was much more into Star Wars than battling dragons. I tried the official online versions of Star Wars games and hated them. I joined an online group who role-plays through email...and it was great. First I joined a Star Wars one, until Lucas put a kabosh on it. Then I moved to Star Trek which actually had a lot more rules and guidelines on how to play, a lot of information about races and weapons, etc. I have yet to play WofW because my computer is too slow, but I know I would love it.

Not much. I jumped in late in the game, so I started once the change had been made to mainly video game, rather than paper-pen. An understanding of the basic principles of role-playing definitely helps while gaming, but I think the video games add that aspect of visual that makes it all the more real to me.