It didn't feel right to me to play a cleric of any other race, except maybe Dwarf, and I'm definitely not a Dwarf type. I've always loved elves. My first character started in Surefire Glade because I wanted a druid and my friends I was playing with were around Qeynos, but once I realized I was a crappy druid and that all I ever did was heal anyway -- that that was what gave me identity in the game -- it was time to start a cleric. It seemed only right to play a High Elf.
And speaking of vision around Surefire Glade, my first experience in the game? I drowned. I walked into the pool of water in the glade and couldn't figure out how to swim up before I slowly sunk under the water and died. My spawn point was outside in Qeynos Hills; I had no idea how I got there or how to get back to SFG. And I had no light source. I eventually got Wolf Form, but that was for outdoors only, and was prohibitive of doing anything else, so vision was always an irksome matter for me -- one that tied up your off-hand for a pisspoor light source when it seemed like everybody else had infravision.
Ed: My mistake. Your's stopped at 10. It was another dude's that had all the way up to 13.