Okay, so I totally noobed it.

I had been fiddling around trying to tidy up some quest chains before I headed off into Outland. Having bought Burning Crusade a fortnight ago that's a little sad but I do now have the Boomerang of Nintendo and I've done some obligatory smiting of the Plaguelands.

I also started a Dranei Priest (called GawdBovver) so I felt like I was getting my money's worth and Katyana and will still only be in Vanilla for a little while yet.

My guild leader was gently needling me to get out there though. So I wrapped up some Plaguery, deleted some quests from Sithilis and hopped in the Portal from the Undercity.

Then I proudly announced in Guild Chat that I had 'made it!'

The attentive will spot my deliberate error. I was in Silvermoon City. Which was awesome and I hadn't been there before and you couldn't use the Portal until you bought BC so this *must* be Outland, right?

/doh!

Alekto (the GM) kindly zipped in and showed me the *other* portal and escorted me through the other-other portal.

Alekto: Can you see the Portal now now?
Me: Is it behind the enormous glowing green thing?

And holy mother of jehosephat, it's AWESOME.
I had, like, half a level to go before I was 60 but by the time I'd done all the meet'n'greet quests I only needed to sideswipe a Bloodletter Orc and I was golden.

All the talk of better gear was true as well. No more prevaricating over whether to wear that hat that's good for spells or the helmet that's good for keeping your head it one piece. Go with the awesome spellcasting helmet of doom. Obviously.

And as advertised, I can fly. I honestly couldn't have imagined what a game changer this is. I finally understand why people complain about leveling. Being mounted is one thing but once you've swooped into a quest and swooped out again there's no going back.

Read Users' Comments ( 4 )

Technically, I suppose, it was more like a week but I got quite a bit done on Saturday. The main one was Grexel who's zhevra has burning a hole in her bank bags for some time. In the mean time it seemed only fair to ding Undabridge (troll hunter) even though he has been neglected to the point of abuse.

I kinda liked doing it all on Pirate day. That was fun. And apparently there's a dress up your mount thingy as part of Brewfest.

The other thing I did on Saturday was indoctrinate a new player.

We are up to houseguest number 2. It's not that our primary houseguest shows no interest it's more that her Warcraft is an indulgent, eye-rolling vicarious thing. HG2 just wants in.

So while Katyana was otherwise engaged we rolled up a new character on her account to test. HG2 wanted a redheaded human female mage as well. What is it with the people I know? Katyana says she can't relate to a non-human toon. It might be a matter of the tendencies of people new to gaming in general.

10 Let HG2 = fifipi
20 continue

I set fifipi going on the wolf/kobold slaughtering missions and helped her get a hang of the controls. Then I set up a new priest to hang out with her. It's because I secretly want to be Tamarind.
There's another new player in our village. He's noobing around with a nelf as far as I can tell. We may have the makings of a local guild on our hands.

Read Users' Comments ( 0 )

My Ravasaur is all grown up. Big enough to carry a Tauren and not look daft. I never really bonded with my Epic Kodo. It's the eyes. They look like evil robots. Not that I have anything against evil robots, your Governatorship, they just lack personality.

Katyana was a bit the same way about the swift mounts. They're all a bit warlike. Maybe we need to get her that monster cat the alliance side can grind out. Mumphred's got his charger.

Only poor Grexel's left behind. She's got the Zhevra in her bank but she hasn't quite managed to squeeze out Lvl40.

I keep meaning to take her out but Paronymous is too happy swooping around the insect hives on his new beastie.

And the spice! We must control the spice!

Sithilis, if you don't know, has little geysers of magic dust. Both factions are in a race of some kind to gather 200 units of it. The current score on Saurfang is Horde 38 Alliance 37. I dropped in two this morning.

My first shot at it was rife with every possible nooishness you can imagine.

The aim is to carry the dust back to a special collection point, glowing as you go and slowed down to make you vulnerable. So the first thing I did when I found some was hop on my sweet new ride. Uh-uhn. Mounting up drops the spice.

Then I hurried back to Cenarion Hold to find the depot; Cenarian Hold is not the depot. The depot is actually marked on the map big enough to be seen from space but being new to the region I hadn't explored down that far.

All the while I'm jumping out of my skin because I assume the full force of the Alliance is about to fall on me for gathering another 200th of their doom. They didn't. A Tauren Death Knight (first one of those I've seen) whispered me to help and grouped up with me so I'd know where to go.

He rescued me a bit too because I picked up a whole bunch of sandworms on the way. Fortunately he got there while I was still putting up a good fight so I didn't feel too much like a dweeb. Then just when it looked like I was going to get away with it I totally failed to find the machine to hand it in. I just ran around trying stuff and getting increasingly mortified until he took pity on me again.

The only way I can think of to atone for this noobishness is to collect as much spice as I can.
For the Horde.

Read Users' Comments ( 0 )

My main concern when Katyana and Mumphred formed their increasingly profitable alliance was that my alts would suffer. I still think of Paronymous as my main and he's closing on Lvl52. I'm thinking of picking up Burning Crusade for him some time soon.

Poor Grexel, on the other hand, was rapidly becoming my bank alt. She hadn't left Thunder Bluff since the Midsummer Festival. I couldn't even remember where her hearthstone was set.

In fact Katyana is now the same level as her. Apparently I can't be “Mr Know-It-All about Mages” anymore because I haven't got any higher. (I am still allowed to be “Mr Knows-Which-Way-We're-Going”)

So what do you do to make it up to an alt that's been neglected? I bought her a pony.
She'd been piling up the cash (to my noobish standards) and I've come to understand that the announcement of patch 3.2 doesn't mean it's going to actually arrive any time soon.

Turns out last thing Grexel had been doing was trekking around Thousand Needles and that, let me tell you, is so much more fun on horseback. I was a bit rusty on the Mage skills but I realised that I had learnt a thing or two in my other play.

This might make proper grown-up players roll their eyes but I had finally got into keyboards spell-casting. 1,2,3 then another 1 or a 4 if they're nearly dead. Lovely. This was making Druid play much easier but, boy, does it pay off for Mages.

Grexel was back, and better than ever.

Better and better she found some new content; The obvious thing to do with a new Blue Skeletal Horse is take her out on the Shimmering Flats and let her rip, right? Turns out I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Somehow when Paronymous came this way he just found the Sithilids and, to coin a phraze, bugged out. Missed the whole Mirage Raceway thing completely. A great bunch of quests for Grexel to flex her atrophying muscles on.

And a couple of extra levels so I can be Mr Know-It-All about Mages for a while longer.

Read Users' Comments ( 0 )