The Altaholic's Dilema

With Burning Crusade, it wasn't a dilema for me, though I'm sure it was for many altaholics, but when Lich King came out, it was hard to decide if I wanted to play with a shiny new DK but have to go through the familiar Outland again, or take my 70 huntard and jump straight into Northrend. I decided on the former as you know, but its a tough call. I'm sure alot of my fellows had the same decision to make then, or for BC, whether to jump on your 60 and head through the portal, or make a new belf pally or draenei shammy. And with Cataclysm on the horizon, I'll face the dilema again... to jump on Faeyth and take to the skies of ravaged Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, or to head to Kezan with my goblin. Yes kids, you can be sure my altaholism isn't cured, I will be making a goblin.

So, my journey with Golbez.. right off the bat, you can tell Blizzard has really changed the game again. The Lich King, who would become the expansion's final raid boss, is there to give you your first quest. You're level 55 yet have no talent points, and you've got some pretty impressive green gear as starting equipment. You know all your weapon skills at max level, and already have a high level in first aid. My only complaint is still you can't pick trade skills to have leveled up to an appropriate skill, and have to go muck about in low level areas or spend a ton of gold on the AH to level some up.

Then I start doing the quests. The first thing that amazes me is the area I'm in keeps changing as I complete quests. Yet, other people must still be doing the quests I've done already, yet I don't see other players fighting invisible mobs. I didn't know about the new phasing technology and how it worked at this point, but I was dazzled by whatever Blizz had used to pull this off.

I also really enjoyed the lore... I've always enjoyed my clashes with the Scarlet Crusade. Scarlet Monastary was probably my favorite instances in the old world, for a variety of reasons. It's design of four separate and short wings was great (why couldn't WC have been like that?), some of the gear you got there was some of the most longlived gear in pre-BC days that would not be replaced for a good 10-15 levels (only rivaled by some of the leather gear from WC and the cloth from SFK), and it was also a good training ground. I feel like SM was where I really learned to play alot of my classes well in group scenarios. It was one of the first instances that presented a challenge, where more than luck and brute strength were required, you couldn't just blunder throug it, you needed stategy. It's probably the instance I've run the most, between hunting for gear for my clothies in Cath and Library, and for my melee classes in Armory, and running it solo on my 60s for the copius amounts of silk and mageweave. So seeing my old Scarlet friends and murdering them in vast quantities was fun.

And then, finally the grand concusion in the EPL (one of my favorite zones) was epic. Seeing my favorite in game human (Tirion Fordring) be all bad ass was awesome Sadly, after this was done, I found myself level 58 or 59, and had to trudge off, yet again, to the Outland....

P.S.: Finished Day of the Dragon today, I got into it finally. Even though it portrayed the Horde in a very negative light (all the orcs, trolls, and goblins in it are dicks) and sngs the praise of the humans to no end, it was good with Cataclysm on the way to get some more insight into Deathwing and the rest of the Aspects. Also read Chris Metzen's short story Of Blood and Honor. My only complaint was that it was too short. It had my previously stated favorite human being awesome, the rest of the humans being racist dicks, showed more of the honor and intelligence and bravery of orcs, and even had a Thrall cameo. All in all, a good read. Next on my reading list, Arthas: Rise of the Lich King. I'm excited because the same author who did Lord of the Clans, my favorite WoW story thus far, did this one too.