Grinding weekend, day 2

12:47PM
50% to level 65.

Was doing the quest where you set off the mana bomb in Terokkar and Braxxis' Staff of Slumber dropped. I didn't notice it until I went back to town to sell vendor trash. According to WoWWiki I'll probably be using this staff for tanking for a long time, so I got the +35 Agil enchant on it. Now I have 12k armor and ~20% dodge. My health is low at just under 8k, though.

Taking a break.

Grinding weekend, day 1

9:28AM
Dinged 63 while doing quests in Zangarmash. Can now use Starshine Staff of the Beast, giant upgrade from Agamaggan's Quill. I love Druid itemization in Burning Crusade.

9:46AM
Neutral with Sporregar.

12PM
35% through level 63.

I made the mistake of listening to Kimya Dawson while playing. I love her music, the way she sounds so innocent and jaded at the same time. But... it was thoroughly depressing, too. I'm going to take a break, drop the roommate off somewhere and buy some cigaretts. Maybe read a little Harry Potter (shut up, they're good books and they reset my mood to neutral when I'm down!).

More later.

2:45P
Back and restarting the grind. No more Kimya.

3:24pm
Honored with Cenarion Expedition.
Herbalism- 376 (Tauren get +15)

4:42pm
Got almost all of the solo quests in Zangarmarsh completed. I've decided to move on Terrokar.
54% completed with level 63.
Taking a bit of a break before the evening push

10pm
Fell asleep for 2 hours.
Got up, maxed herbalism and skinning.
Hit level 64.
Time to stop for the night, I think.
4 levels until I can fly!

12 Sept- updates

Didn't get to level 63 today, I ran out of steam before it happened but I'm 85% through 62. If I get up at my usual time, I'm sure I'll hit the next level by noon, and maybe, just maybe 64 by the time I go to bed. A guildie asked if I was chinese, I said, "no, I'm French German."

Bumwaller got a beta key. Yes, I've already commented how much I hate him. He's already posted pictures of his Death Knight. When the expansion comes out, I'm sure I'll roll a DK, probably a female Blood Elf, just to do the beginning quests. According to Epic Dolls and Bumwaller, the quests are very... uncomfortable. I'm looking forward to it. Depending on how annoyed I am with the glut of DKs, we'll see how much I level it (and depending on if Greatjohn is ready for Northrend).

Speaking of that, I think I would have leveled today if I hadn't had to play with the Alliance. It got to the point where the druid was getting ganked by an annoying gnome mage so much that I had to log into Claz and kill him a few times, just so he'd go away. Sure, I'm on a PvP server, sure I'm going to get ganked, but... this was getting too much. I almost even went to STV to take out my anger, but then I realized that I was turning into that guy.

So, that was the highlight of the evening. Now I'm going to go to bed and try to get up early enough to avoid the gank parties.

Quick update

To the left you will see a poor fel orc being slashed by three ferals. He's having a bad day. This was from the quest "The Foot of the Citadel".

GJ hit level 62 and I'm getting very anxious for flight form. If I keep this up, I could have it in a week, but I think it will be less. I'll have 2.5 days of nothing to do but level GJ and I'm about it hit Zangarmarsh (actually peeked in there) and Terrokar. These two zones have a lot of easy and clumped-together quests.

So, the "first part" of the next patch is available on the Background downloader. When I saw that I panicked because GJ isn't ready yet. Bumwaller had a good point that they may not want to have Brewfest interfere with the new content. I guess we'll see.

Nothing even slightly amusing to say. I'm tired. RL Warning! I audited over 500 accounts today and I think I was ready to dump the computer into my bosses lap after hitting her soundly about the ears with my telephone.

No. That wasn't funny, either.

Planning for the future

I've been giving a lot of thought about what I'll be doing when the expansion comes out. My guess is that we'll be seeing the new patch right around the time of Blizzcon, probably the Tuesday just before. I think they'll want to give people more of a buzz about WoW, get people excited and have more to talk about during the proceedings. Then, maybe a month later, Lich King will be in stores. If memory serves me correctly, this was about the timeline they used for BC. If I'm right, we have about a month before the world event (spoiler alert) to get ready. What am I going to be doing?

With my concentration on the druid lately, I've been considering making him my main and relegating Claz to more of a gatherer / farmer toon. I still love the hunter, don't get me wrong, but... Greatjohn is just so much fun to play! If I go in this direction, my overall goal will be to get GJ to level 70. But, the secondary goals (in somewhat order of importance) are:

1. Epic flight form- I never had this on my old druid. /Hug has a nice walkthrough on the quest. It doesn't seem too bad, though getting the rep for heroic Sethekk Halls may be an issue. I can't remember if you can get the rep through questing or if I'll need to grind some other instances.
2. Max out Herbalism- Since I'm really sort of excited about Inscription, I want GJ to be ready to concentrate on that skill. With herbalism being the associated gethering skill, I don't want to have to worry about having to level that skill.
3. Try to max out the seconday skills- Cooking, First Aid and (shudder) fishing. The worst will be fishing because I'd like to get this done before Lich King so that I don't have to spend a lot of time in Outland leveling it up later.

Hmm... not too bad.

They're also saying that leveling from 60 - 70 will get sped up after Lich King, which means the lock will be leveled pretty quickly when I get back to her. Man, I don't know how you people with multiple 60s leveled them when Outland came around. That's a serious investment of time. My goal is to have 3 80's six months after the new expansion (Druid, Hunter and Lock). How did you guys do that? Any suggestions? What I'd like to do is level them up one at a time so that I can enjoy the new quests without getting burned out on them. I have a fear that I'd start to hate WoW if I had to repeat the same quests three days in a row on different toons.

My eyes have melted and are running down my cheeks like hot wax

I have not had a grind like that in a long time. Even leveling mining on Claz (2x) wasn't as bad as that herbalism grind. It helped to get the fast kodo (isn't that an oxymoron?). I went from Hillsbrad to STV to Swamp of Sorrows / Blasted Lands and finally Un'goro.

I seriously think I would have rather leveled fishing.

Yep, today Greatjohn made it to level 60 in the Eastern Plaguelands. At level 58 I did pop over to Hellfire Penninsula and did a couple of the first quests to get the massive gear upgrades. But I realized that I was underpowered at level 58 to be there without a whole lot of frustration. So I finished the last two levels today. I can't believe the difference between 58 and 60.

So, I hit 60, trained, went and bought my Great White Kodo and the skill, then back to the Penninsula. Much easier.

If you're trying to powerlevel, I do recommend listening to something other than the game's music and sound effects. I got caught up on the Epic Dolls and BLARM! (not WoW related and VERY not for kids) podcasts. For some reason listening to podcasts makes grinding so much easier.

Ok, taking a break for an hour or so, then back to leveling!

Outland awaits... but it needs to be patient

So, today Greatjohn dinged level 58 and is eligible to go to Outland. I took him to Thrallmar and did the first three or four quests to get the rewards, but then decided that I'm going to level herbalism to 300 before really starting the leveling again. The way I see it, I'm going to have to do it sometime soon anyway and I'd rather level the gathering skills as I level the character. You see, I've decided that GJ is going to be an Inscriber and herbalism is the gathering skill connected to that profession.

Having changed Claz's professions a couple times and countless times on the old Druid, I've decided to try and plan things out a bit better. Besides- I want to be a Polar Bear! (I know, you can be one anyway, but... I needed to end on something very slightly amusing)

Claz dings 70! Claz dings 70!!

That's right, today at about 11am (my time, not server time because I play on a server on the West Coast while I live in the midwest and there's no way I'm not an egotistical man) Claz dinged 70 while questing in Netherstorm. It was the quest where you take some orb and measure a manaforge just South of Area 52. I turned it in and *bang* dinged 70. And I announced it to Limited Warranty and everyone celebrated. You know, because I need ego stroking...

First thing I did was go to the bank and grab Valanos' Longbow that a guildie gave me. Then I realized that I needed to make myself a new quiver since I was using a gun. Had to farm 5 feathers and then I made it.

Then I hit the jackpot. A group was running The Steamvault and I got three upgrades: The Crystalforged War Axe, Earthwarden's Coif (I hate meta gems!) and... wait for it... Beast Lord Leggings! First piece of my Dungeon Set 3.

Not a bad day for old Claz, eh?

Next? I need to keep running Steamvaults for the Beast Lord legs, Botanica, The Shattered Halls (not just for the Beast Lord hands, but I want to rep stuff from Thrallmar) and The Mechanar.

I really want the Dungeon Set 3. I need to do more research to see if the Beast Lord stuff and the weapons from Thrallmar would get me ready for Karazhan. I might just be too lazy to research and ask the BRK Forums.

Today's runs in Steamvault really helped me get a better understanding of Crowd Control. It was horrible at first, but then it just clicked and there were three or four times where it went perfectly and I was pretty happy with it all.

Now I need to get Misdirection pulling down. The group I was with had feral druid tanks who preferred to use Feral Faerie Fire to pull, and, since I was half-panicked about trapping, I didn't suggest to let me experiment with pulls. Ah well, maybe I'll just go and practice it while grinding. I suspect that I need to find a macro to make it easier.

Ok- now I need to make some food.

Edit: And Claz got his first flying mount last night, too. Man, he's poor now.

Leveling updates

Claz
I played Claz this weekend because he had 150% rested experience and I didn't want to waste that time leveling Hirnek while the hunter's rested didn't go up. I leveling Claz and he's sitting at about 95% to 68 and still has 80% rested experience. I quested purely in Nagrand (which, in my opinion, is the most beautiful spot in the game) and grinded (ground?) on the ogres in the basin around Halaa for rep (I want my Talbuk! I know an orc hunter on a talbuk will look stupid, and I love my Wolf, but the Talbuk is... I dunno how to explain it, I guess).

My goal for Claz is to hit 70 in Nagrand or Blade's Edge Mountains and then do all the rest of the quests in Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley for the gold/rep. Level 70 should take me about a month (because I'm going to be leveling Hirnek, too) and I'll for sure have enough money for the first flying mount right when I hit 70. I'm actually about 50% of the way there now because I don't waste money on AH equipment, enchants or anything else that isn't necessary.

And then? Oh the rep grinds! There are so many rep rewards that I want, not to mention the heroics that I want to get into.

Did I tell you that a guildie gave me Valanos' Longbow? Gave it to me?

Hirnek
Short term goal: Get to Outlands! Then I'll be transferring the toon to the Vashj server and get him into Limited Warranty.

Longish term goal: I need to decide if I'll stay feral or go resto. I think it will depend on the needs of Limited Warranty, whether we need tanks or healers more. Of course I could go both and respec depending on the need of the time, but that will be so expensive.

Long term: Swift Flight Form! (which means rep grind...).

And then?
Oh man, I don't know. Part of me wants to level another alt after Hirnek gets to 70 (well, after a break from leveling, of course), but I have no idea which. I think a mage would be fun (I had a gnome mage up to mid 30s) and a warrior would be nice to have laying around, but from what I hear they're not as fun to play (your mileage may vary). But I think I probably have enough goals with Claz and Hirnek that I don't need to worry about what to do with a new toon in the near future.

Hirnek 29 - 43

I blew through the 30s and I got Hirnek to 43 today. Leveling with all the changes in experience requirements makes leveling easy! Especially when you use Jame's updated leveling guide. Of course, because he cut out all of the grinding sessions, Hirnek still doesn't have a mount (but I have travel form, so... so what?).

What am I finding? I'm re-discovering my deep love for druids in general. I'm finding that I'm having more fun with Hirnek than with Claz (don't be sad, Claz, you'll get to 70. I promise!). I think my play style fits with the shapeshifting better than with the ranged DPS. I seriously was grinding Claz today while eating: attack mob, pop trinket, let autoshoot fire while fixing my PB&J. I came back, set down the sandwich, attacked another mob while going back to the kitchen for a coke.

No, I'm not saying that Hunters are easysauce. Well, I used to tease a hunter I was guilded with back when I had Amantara about how easy hunters were, but I never really meant it. At the time I had a lot of angst about the state of the druid class and all the love that the hunters seemed to be getting. Yes, I'm still a little raw about how ferals got a huge amount of love when BC came out and then we got nerfed. And, when I really think about it, a level 68 druid with quest reward gear really shouldn't be able to take out a level 64 shaman, 62 warrior and 62 mage. Well, I shouldn't have been able to do it, since I'm so horrible at PvP. But it was still tough to take. I mean, I stuck with Amantara through a lot of teasing because of how terrible ferals were at one point and then when the love pillow (as opposed to the nerf stick) was gently pushed up to our furry little faces...

Anyway. No, I'm not saying that hunters are easy. They're not. They take a lot of skill to properly equip, spec and learn the tactics for. Playing a hunter means a lot of backend preparation and learning before you even go into the instance.

*Cough* Not that I'm saying druids are easy. They're not. Druids take less backend preparation (because there's less itemization? Hmmm...) than hunters, but they're such that you have to be more on your toes and adjust your tactics a bit more. In my opinion!. Hunters seem to have a lot more options to recover if things aren't going the way they plan: the mob comes after you, feign death or intimidate or trap. The mob comes at your druid? Run away!

You see, I think I have a touch of ADD. I'm not a person that can sit back and zone out while I grind, which you can do with a hunter. I need to be jumping around, popping out of kitty, warstomping, moonfiring, casting a HoT, switching to bear, enraging and then pounding the living crap out of whatever dared to raise its fist/claw/tentacle against my nature-fueled fury. Can you tell I used to play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons?

Anyway, there's a lot of camaraderie in the druid community. Just look through the official forums (don't bother with the "nerf druid!!!111!1!" QQ Posts) and you'll see that, for the most part, druids help each other out. Sure, we'll tear into each other in the BGs, but if you play a druid, you're more likely than not to get a /wave and /salute from a passing highbie druid than you would if you played a rogue and another rogue happened by. This is especially true with the old school druids. Those of us that grew up through the "you need to innervate if you want to see MC" period of WoW are more likely to help each other out or at least ignore each other. I mean, go to Moonglade and you'll see a lot of silly bears, kitties, trees and hawt nelf ladies (*cough*) dancing together, lions and panthers all together in a big hippie love fest.

And I get all caught up in that. Amantara would sit and fish in Moonglade for hours. If I noticed a cow druid trying to do his Aquatic form quest, I would lead him to the right spot. I've ganked groups of lowibies but left the druid alone (and even maby do a /lick and /hug while he tried to stick up for his friends). I just get off a bit on the druid.

Ugh. I'm such a WoWNerd.

Leveling as an obsession

I power-leveled Claz to 60 in about seven days played. No, I don't have a life, girlfriend or any other responsibilities other than paying rent and bills. Shut up.

Now, seven days played to 60 is not a record but I'm pretty damn proud of it, especially when it probably took me 40 days played to get Amantara to 60. How did I do it? I'll explain after a bit of a disclaimer.

DISCLAIMER

Don't powerlevel if you're new to the game. I recommend this for a couple reasons. First, you will totally miss out on a lot of what makes this game fun (well, for me. More power to all you "twinks", PvP Gods and gankmasters, but that just isn't my cuppa). You'll miss out on a lot of the storylines that were put into the game. You'll find yourself running Scarlet Monastery and not know how these religious fanatics fit into the world, you'll find yourself wondering why Thrall is sending you on a quest to root out some evil warlocks (as opposed to the "good" warlocks?). I really feel that this turns the game into a more expensive-in-the-long-run Neverwinter Nights (and I like that game). You'll just be going through the motions and it will be easy to fall into becoming one of those outraged number-crunching bastards that no one likes but will run with because they can one-shot Ony.

Second, you won't learn your class correctly. This is an issue that I'm having with Claz and crowd controlling. I leveled this hunter so fast and mostly solo that I don't really have the nuances of traps down and it was an issue. You're going to learn how to work with a group only by working with a group. I think that PVPers don't have this problem to the extent that Raiders have it. In PVP, you need to know your class and be familiar enough wih the other classes so you know how to team up and how to take down. With raiding you need to know the player as much as you know the class.

Third, powerleveling is painful, at least for me. I wanted Claz to be level 60 so bad that I spent a lot of time working on him, doing quests that are annoying, ignoring the tradeskills and not chatting with the many cool people that play this game. It was a lonely, frustrating and exhausting experience. And god help me, I'm going to do it with a priest...
END DISCLAIMER

So, you've decided to powerlevel, how are you going to do it? If you dare to utter the words "pay", "Chinese levelers", or "I don't need to do it, I'll just buy a toon", kindly go away and please delete my blog from your links. Ok, don't. But just don't mention those words within my range of hearing. Here's what I recommend.

1. Find a leveling guide. I used Jame's guide. It is free, very coherent and he breaks things up in bite-size pieces that are completely solo-able and efficient. Live and breath this guide while you're working your character and follow to a "T" his suggestions on add-ons, gearing up, when to group and what quests are worth doing and which aren't. There are other leveling guides out there, but this one really clicked with me and it was free. I don't know about the pay guides and I really wasn't interested in finding pirated guides (and neither should you!). That is the mechanical side of things.

2. Because you're going to be spending a lot of time on things that aren't going to take your full concentration (I mean, how much attention do you need to pay when you're grinding those earth elementals in the badlands, amIright?) I recommend that you have the game's sound turned off. You're not going to need to listen to anything in the game at this point, so don't get burned out on the repetitious sound of that blunderbuss or your wolf howling every 10 minutes. You will have plenty of time to get burned out on those when you're raiding and having to split your attention between many things. Instead, have your favorite media player playing your favorite music (or podcasts. If you're over 18 Kevin Smith's SModcast is a source of much entertainment while you're grinding. Or, play a lot of DvDs. Notice I didn't say watch a lot of DvDs. You're going to be so braindead from running all over Azeroth that you need to feed your mind. I recommend getting DvDs of TV shows you like (House, Deadwood and Battlestar Galactica for me).

3. Get a comfortable chair! You will be wearing a butt-print into the bottom of your chair with all the sitting and shifting. I have a bad back and if I had an uncomfortable chair I would still be bed-ridden.

4. Tell the people in your life that you will be doing this. I am blessed with many people that love me and worry about me if they don't hear from me for a few days. Learn from my mistake- you don't want your friends and loved ones wondering why you fell off the face of the Earth or them showing up at your door with that worried/pissed off look on their face. You're friends know you play Warcraft, don't they?

5. Take a day off for every three days you're power leveling. No, not a day off from work, you need to make a paycheck to pay for internet and the monthly fees, don't you? Level for three days, then on the fourth go to a movie, take a walk with a friend, read a freaking book. Do something other than Warcraft. You don't want to have a spanking-brand-new level 60 that you can't stand to log into because this painful experience is still seared into your neurons.

6. If you have a boy/girlfriend, pay attention to them if they interrupt you. Always maintain your relationships outside of warcraft. Those 3,419 murlocs you need to kill to get the drop will be there in 20 minutes, your girlfriend may not after considering the priority you're placing her into. And give her a good night smooch when she leaves you for your night of powerleveling agony. Sure, this is a bit funny, but you've heard the stories of people getting divorced over one of the spouse's Warcraft habits, haven't you?

7. Remember this is a game! Yes, you're not having fun from 1 - 60, but you're setting yourself a goal and the fun will start when you get off from the leveling train and you stop to smell the felweed. If you're getting frustrated and annoyed, take a longer vacation from the game. Like I said, those 14,761,991 murlocs are still going to be there when you get back.

There, that is Claz's guide to powerleveling and managing the agony of playing a game in a way that isn't fun for the moment. But when you get to that first raid, you're going to see how it paid off.