Friday evening I left work with the sole purpose of going home, logging on to my Shamans and leveling from 55-60. Well, That didn’t exactly happen. I leveled them to 58 instead. Silithus, WPL… I never even touched on EPL. It was a good time. at 59, I made sure to log into the paladin and grant some levels and then when I hit 60 I did the same. So, in the course of about 15 minutes I leveled three characters to 60. It was fun.

From UC, I ported to SMC, trained and all that, 36-60 in 10 minutes is not good for the bank account. I had to mail myself more gold halfway through. Glad I had about 1k built up. Jeeeez. I begged and pleaded in SMC general for a mage port to Shatt, but nobody was biting. I asked in /g offering up “Me love you long time” and I got a few responses that had nothing to do with ports to Shat, but finally one mage came on out and tossed me a port. I tipped her 5g and thanked her profusely. I then proceded to get killed 5 times on the way out of terrokar, and decided to give up. hearthed back to shatt(not dumb am I) ported to UC, Zepped to Grom’gol, flew to stonard and rode my pink pally butt through the portal.

I flew over to Thrallamar and got some quests, headed over to the Fellspark Ravine to take on some quest mobs. Here’s how it went… “Miss, Miss, Miss, Miss, Miss, OhCrapHeal!, Miss, Miss, Miss…” but the good news is that with all that missing and healing I leveled two handed swords up to 293ish.. Finished my quest mobs, turned it in and… got a nice lvl 60 axe to replace my lvl 38 Sword. With a 0 skill in Two Handed Axes I had my work cut out for me. It wasn’t as bad as I thought, with Judgements and Crusader Strike I was able to do damage, heal myself and never had an issue with mana. ever. So much better than 1.9 Paladins.

Next up was Maerdred, I ran him down to the Dark Portal and off to thrallamar as well, did the same quest, but it took forever to kill things. I think I forgot to train or something. Aren’t Enhancement Shamans supposed to be great at DPS or is that gear dependent? Because my gear all sucks. but I had to drink after like every 5-6 kills. that doesn’t sound right to me. Maybe it’s because I was used to having two shamans in my group and doing damage twice as fast, but this just doesn’t seem right to me. I’ll have to tweak it a bit.

Meardred, however is sitting in UC, unable to get to Outland, and will probably remain there for the duration. I’m most likely deleting his account at the end of the billing cycle. But who knows. I may level up a couple of mages or something so I can get another month out of RAF and get a Zherva mount.

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Okay so here’s the deal. Yeah, I got Wrath on Thursday. I leveled a Death Knight through the starter zone. I leveled my druid to 71 and ran the first three dungeons in Northrend. And then, I stopped. I picked up my level 48 shamans and started the grind to 70 with them. I’m currently 53, and when doing quests at my level it takes me 5 quests to get a full level. The problem is, I am not doing quests at my level. I’m doing green quests almost exclusively. That’s changing as I move into UnGoro. I’ve actually got 3 or 4 orange quests to get done today.

Once I finish there, where do I go? I can tell you this, I am not going to Felwood. Never again. I refuse. that place is the bane of my leveling experience. The only reason I will ever go there again is for an achievement or a flight path. I cannot STAND that zone. so, where do I go when I am done with Ungoro in a level or two? WPL? EPL? Silithus? Winterspring? All of the above? We’ll see. I haven’t quested in WPL or EPL since August 2006, so it might be a good place to go. Once I hit 60 it’s  “hey guys, can anyone help me in ramps? BF? yadda yadda yadda?

But at that point it’ll only be one shaman and there won’t be the 3x EXP thing. I hope I get some gear. I am using  32 and 34 maces at the moment. Why buy anything? It’s useless. It’ll get replaced in Outland. So just stick it out with my horrid gear and hope for a few instance runs to get some quick replacements at 60? Hmm who knows. I hope someone needs achievements still and will be willing to help me in these instances. I’ll have to level the Shaman, The Paladin, the Death Knight… And Maerrakech is still 71 and Maerdred is 70, and sitting on a fresh new server. When will I have time for ANY of this?

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Today after taking on the Nexus, some guildies and I decided to tackle Azjol Nerub in Dragonblight, Northrend. If you don’t want to know anything about this place yet, Stop reading. This is going to be mainly a photo Montage of the instance, no real strategy, but still. if you don’t want to see it yet, don’t click.

more…

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It’s official, There’s a copy of Wrath sitting at the local Gamestop store, ready for me to pick it up on Thursday. The only question now is, do I go pick it up at 12:00 AM Thursday or wait til 10:00 AM?

I have taken Thursday and Friday off from work for the dual purpose of A)using some of this vacation time before I lose it, and B) playing Wrath for 4 days straight. Will the loss of 10 hours hurt me in the long run? I think I’ll still be one of the fastest levelers in my guild.

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From The Orgrimmar event to Hyjal, This is a very eventful Monday!

9:40PM The raid is about to start!

9:45. First Pull down!! a hail of AOE!

9:48 Trash wave 4? 2 FPS!!!!

9:50 Lowered my Resolution to get better FPS.

9:52: DC’d from server.

9:55: Logged back in, Fighting Rage Winterchill. DC’d immediately.

9:58: Same thing. Rage Down. Loot is being passed out as I try to log in.

10:08 Fighting more trash. looks stable…

10:18 Anatheron down

… DC’d again during Khaz Rogal trash… wiped at 19%

Logged in, waited for the group to regroup and DC’d right after the first wave started…

Might be a lost cause.

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I logged in tonight to hear that there were frostwyrms attacking the valley of honor in Orgrimmar.

/mount

/sprint to The Valley of Honor

Hey! Thrall’s here, and Sylvannas is here too! they’re fighting the frostwyrms and abominations!

The Fight is over! The Herald of the Lich King yells: AARGH! HIS SMALL VICTORY WILL AVAIL YOU NOTHING! COME! COME TO NORTHREND. MY MINIONS ARE WAITING, AND THEY ARE HUNGRY!

And here’s a Screenshot cobbled together with all that is said by the NPC’s during the event.

This is what it looks like when Thrall and Hellscream fight.

Look at all the people watching!!!

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Friday night a group of intrepid adventurers from my guild entered into a 7-man (ok, 6-man and Sunn) Karazhan run. While I feel that 7-manning Kara is a feat which deserves a blog post in and of itself, That’s not the main reason that I am posting his here.

You see, the 7 Hordies we took into Kara with the tag <Kohrruption> over their heads were all members of my former guild. The best hing about it is these 6 people were 6 of my best friends in that other guild. I left there to play with my family and over time, that guild started falling apart, and the new guild just seemed more and more like home.

My friends had all made Alts on my new server so they could hang out, a few of them stuck with their new alts and just over the last few weeks the bulk of them all hit 70.

In RD there was generally a Friday night Kara run led by Drew, called Drew’s Kickin’ Kara. When I was invited on Tuesday I knew I had to go! We had a Tank, two Warlocks, A Holy Priest, A Mage, a Boomkin and my Resto druid. A fair group of 7 if I do say so myself.

at 8:30 we set out, six strong to start he Attumen Trash, while we waited for our mage who was filling out his talent tree. Partway through we grabbed him with a lock summon and we were off to the races…

4 hours later we were wrapping up Prince and one of the best nights I’ve ever had in this game. Thanks to Sun, Plat, Grish, Sothe, Stubby, and BD! We have GOT to do that again!

Once I get home and am able to get to my screenshots I’ll make a play-by play post.

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I posted about people missing out on parts of the game that happened before they played. Missing out on the AQ gates opening, Missing out on the Scourge Invasion, missing the opening of the Dark Portal…

Well last night I logged on to Maerdred/Meardred and instantly got a whisper. “Hey Keith wanna go to ZG? We just finished Ony.”

I could not pass that up. Shamans, you get to stay 43 for the night.

So, I logged over to Maerrakech, got an invite and summon and they were on their way to the Tiger boss, having already downed the Snake Boss, the Bat Boss and the Spider boss. We killed Tiger, Panther and Hakkar. It all took about 20 minutes. I remember when that place took 5 hours to clear. I even took a Screenshot reminiscient of my first ever forray into ZG.

For the record, these Screenshots are probably going to start a “How has your UI changed” post soon.

After ZG was down and we all, all 9 of us, had the Achievement, we decided to hit AQ20. We took out Kurinaxx and whatshisname… Then it was on to the big boss, who I had never seen pre BC. We had one tank, and apparently we should have had 2. we wiped 3 times and ZA was starting so we disbanded and called it a night.

What I realized last night is with the new achievement system, I have been missing out on a TON of fun by leveling my Dual Box Shamans. I know most of my guild has explored every dungeon pre-BC and they’re moving on to raids. I think Tuesday we’re going to try to get MC done rather than Kara. It’s so much fun that I forgot how to have. I hope I can get a group of people interested in Ony soon as well. I want my Moose Antlers.

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As I write this I am sitting at work on a slow, boring day.

Maerdred, the Restoration Druid is… no more. Well, he is, but he’s been retired more than likely. I’ve gone back and forth with this idea many many times, and it seems the best way to go.

Maerdred has become my new main, again, but he’s not the Maerdred we all know and love. This new Maerdred is a level 41 Enhancement Shaman with a twin brother named Meardred. You see, I have become a Dual-Boxer, and if it weren’t for Recruit-A-Friend I would never have done such a thing.

The 3x Experience boost with Recruit a friend has been a boon to the leveling process. I have skipped entire zones. I have spent almost no time in instances. At level 14 I decided to triple box with a level 70 elemental shaman and ran through Wailing Caverns for 20 minutes or so. At level 30 I entered into the Scarlet Monastery with a guild member who was hoping to get the Achievement. We ran the Library, Armory, Cathedral(twice) and the Graveyard. We both got our Achievements and I got 2 levels of experience. Since that time, I have leveled mainly via Questing in Thousand Needles, Desolace, Hillsbrad and Alterac.

So, Here’s my plan for leveling up from here on out. Quest.

That’s it. I spent 3 hours last night in STV just puttering around doing Nesingwary quests, killing mobs that were 6-8 levels below me, getting 180exp for each kill. I quested my way through most of the animal Mastery quests and ground our 50 Bloody Bone Necklaces at the horrible drop rate that those things have… I hearthed to Orgrimmar and bought 2 of every page I needed for the stupid book and turned in all of those quests.  With all of that, I still got 2 levels. Imagine if I were attacking mobs which would give me full exp! Imagine if I were doing quests that were yellow! It looks like I’ll be able to skip some zones entirely. I want to get the SM quest to kill the bosses, then kill them. I want to then get all the ZF quests and run that, and all the ST quests and finish that. I think if I do those things I’ll level very quickly. I’m at the point that I’ll be 60 before my first free month is up. and that’s with taking a full week and a half off to move.

So, tonight when I get home from work, I’ll plan to seek out a ZF group, or an unsuspecting 70 to pull me through. If that doesn’t happen, I’ll finish the Mastery quests in STV and move on to a new zone to level in. Hmm I wonder which one. 42 and up… Hmmm

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I look at the game today and think how very different it is than it was when I started playing. I think of some of the events that have occurred and how they shaped the game. Some of these things effected me directly at the time, and some didn’t. Some I never really thought about at the time, and it’s only in retrospect that I see how profound a change they were.

You see, I started playing the game just as Patch 1.9 was being released. This was the patch which introduced the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj. I played, and still do, on a low population server which took quite a long time to finish the War Effort. I never knew a game without the war effort. On Agewynn the gates were opened when I was level 25 on my first character; a character I soon abandoned to start Maerdred on Balnazzar. When I started there the gates were still not open and it took another 2 months for them to open up.

So, for the first four months of my WoW career I was involved in the War effort as a low level player with no affiliation with any of the raiding guilds.  At that point I had no desire to ever raid (I equated raiding with the Evercrack addiction and wanted nothing to do with it) and I had no inkling that I’d ever be in a position to do so anyway. Because of this, I didn’t really pay attention to why we were collecting cloth and such in the first place, I just liked turning in the quests whenever I had some matériel to spare. When the gates were opened, I knew nothing of it until about four days later when I saw one of the members of the top Alliance raiding guild running  through STV on his Black Qiraji Resonating Crystal mount and asked a question in guild chat.

Soon after that, Naxx was introduced, and with it, the Scourge invasion. I was leveling in Tanaris at the time and I thought it was fantastic. I expected the same event to happen on a regular basis afterwards though, so I didn’t spend much time participating, and when it didn’t recur I was rather disappointed. I never really understood the concept of a one-time only event. How would a new player to the game ever understand what happened if they didn’t get to live through it? Every game I had ever played before had a static beginning and end, and the story was the same for everyone. It was a completely alien concept to me. I even thought that if they opened a new server that things would start at day one and everything would be brand new again with no AQ and no Naxx. Wow I was a nublet.

Add more time to the blender and you have WoW 2.0 and Burning Crusade. The game was never the same again. I had hit 60 in August and spent a good 4 months raiding and had gotten through almost all of Molten Core, the first boss of AQ20, Ony, all of ZG, and all of AQ20. I look at people who were either still leveling at the time, or hadn’t even started playing and I feel that they missed out on some of what made WoW what it is today. ZG was my first raid. MC was my first 40-man and it was EPIC. I know so many people who never saw a core hound until they got to Shadowmoon. Some who had never seen one until patch 3.0 and a hunter brought one out in IF or Org.

I can’t understand that. They missed out! Or did they? I missed out. I never went to BWL. I never went to Naxx. I missed out. I have never even set foot into Stratholme. In all the time I have been playing, with 3 characters of 60 or higher, I have still never set foot into Strat. I am missing out. But I don’t really feel like I’ve missed much. I feel worse about having never killed Illidan than I feel about never finished BWL.

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