There’s not really much new to report on the WoW front, other than hitting level 71; I’ve been working through the quests in Blade’s Edge without too much notable happening (I’m already a bit overlevelled and overequipped for it, and probably should have done Blade’s Edge before Shadowmoon Valley), and made a brief detour to Hellfire Peninsula to finish off some of the leftover quests there. It shouldn’t take much longer to wrap up in Blade’s Edge and then there’s just Netherstorm to go as far as Burning Crusade content goes.

I’ve been feeling my interest in WoW starting to wane a bit again, though. I’ve reached new (to me) content, but I’m still going it alone all the time, all my friends are already busy off doing their own things in worlds far removed from mine, and I still don’t really feel prepared to act as a tank. I really should be grouping up and practicing, but dealing with the constant parade of morons spamming me with guild invites or “want 2 tank DTK plz?” has made me rather wary of pickup groups. It feels like I’m just going through the grinding motions, much like it did when I quit shortly after BC first came out.

Maybe I’ll just finish off the BC content and then take a bit of a break and work on some of the single-player games that have been languishing lately before coming back for the WotLK content.

As usual, it was an eventful weekend in WoW. As expected, the starting area of Northrend paid off in terms of equipment upgrades, and before long I’d replaced those ugly old shoulders and acquired a new sword that was a huge DPS jump over the old one — my measured DPS jumped from around 280 to 340.

After that it was time to get back to blacksmithing in earnest, and I scoured Silithus for thorium ore for a while and eventually got enough to raise it to 300, at which point I could start using all the fel iron ore I’d saved up. That quickly got it up to 330 before I ran out, though now I’ll just work on it as I go.

I stopped in Zangarmarsh for a bit and finished off a few old quests and got up to Honored with the Cenarion Expedition. That gets me the heroic dungeon key and a couple blacksmithing plans that should be useful. Well, once I hit 350 and can learn them… And then it was off to Blade’s Edge, where I’ll be questing for a bit. I also stuck my nose into Netherstorm to finish a couple quests that ended there and grabbed a couple flight points.

I headed to Shadowmoon Valley and worked my way through to levels 69 and 70 fairly quickly. Not much notable here aside from some of the quest chains being really looooong, and getting a new pair of shoulders that make me look even more ridiculous than I normally do.

I’ve mostly finished off the quests in Shadowmoon Valley, except for the ones that require groups. Blade’s Edge would seem to be the next logical step, but I think I’ll pop over to Northrend and at least fool around in the starting are a bit, just in case there’s good equipment there like at the start of Outlands.

I celebrated New Year’s Eve by, uh, getting my warrior in WoW to level 68. Lately I’ve just been doing quests in Nagrand, nothing too particularly exciting other than finally being able to afford my level 60 mount (a white 100% speed timber wolf).

Now that I’m 68 I can head to the new Northrend areas, and I made a run to Dalaran starting from Howling Fjord just for kicks to see the new areas. It was an interesting journey, including dodging a lot of much-higher-level monsters and a 100-foot-tall elite with over 630k health. Unfortunately I didn’t realize that you can’t actually get in to Dalaran without assistance until you’re level 74, but at least I picked up a few flight points along the way.

I still have plenty to finish off in Outland first anyway, and next up I think I’m actually going to return to the old world and work on my blacksmithing (and perhaps some old quests along the way). I’m running out of room in the bank partly because of all the bars I’ve been collecting, but I can’t use them yet until I get my blacksmithing up out of the thorium range…

I didn’t have time to write before leaving on an Xmas trip, but as promised I worked on my fishing skill for pretty much a whole day and managed to get it up to 300 along with a handful of achievements. And I got a fishing hat-style helm from some quest recently, so now I’ve got the complete outfit. A Tauren with a fishing hat looks…odd…

Otherwise, I just wrapped up the rest of the quests in Terrokar forest, so I’m finally off to Nagrand. My priest did a handful of quests here, but I forget which ones, so I basically consider myself caught up now. I also ran around Shadowmoon Valley and got the flight points there, but still need to gain a couple levels before I feel comfortable questing there.

I’m up to level 66 in WoW now, equalling what my priest had reached before. I’m still slightly behind him though, as I’ve finished off Zangarmarsh and a big chunk of Terrokar Forest, but haven’t started on Nagrand yet. But soon…

Looking back, it’s amazing how much you progress in the BC areas. Even though it’s only been six levels, I’ve gone from around 4000 hp to over 7600 now, almost all of it due to equipment. I’m sure my DPS is a lot higher, too. I’ve also been getting useful weapons often enough that I’ve been switching between the different types a lot. Right now I’m using a sword, but for quite a while a dagger was the best DPS and rage generation I had.

And I took yet another diversion back to the old lands to work on some newbie quests in the Orc area, just to gain some more faction and completed quests. That was enough to bump me into Exalted in Orgrimmar, and I quickly replaced my dumb kodo mount with a nifty new timber wolf.

I’m going to have to start practicing playing in defensive stance and going for threat generation rather than DPS though, in preparation for working in groups. I’ve been doing far too much soloing to get here, and I don’t want to be completely unprepared when I do start doing instances in earnest.

But for now, I’m off to…fish.

I’m up to level 63 in WoW now, and just finished off all of the quests in Hellfire Peninsula that I could do on my own, so I’m off to Zangarmarsh now.

My priest made it as far as Nagrand when he was level 66, so it won’t be long before I’m caught up to where he was. When I get there, I’m definitely going to have to slow down and relish the quests and environments a bit more; my rapid pace lately is probably largely due to having already done it all before.

Well I’ve already hit level 61 and am halfway through it, so maybe leveling in the Outlands isn’t so slow after all. It helps that there are a lot of go-over-there-and-talk-to-that-guy quests for 10k+ xp, though. And as happened with my priest, I’ve already replaced half my equipment and boosted my armour, HP, and DPS considerably. You need it in the Outland though, and I’m already burning through bandages like crazy.

Since I’m already familiar with the starting areas, I ran around and tagged the flight points in the rest of Hellfire Peninsula, Zangarmarsh, and Nagrand, and made Shattrath my home city.

But I’ve popped back to the old world for a little bit though, partly for the Winter Veil quests that just started today, and partly to finish off a couple of the Un’Goro quests that would have been difficult before (killing the queen and the Zelda-parody quest).

I finally hit level 60 in WoW over the weekend, so now it’s off to the Burning Crusade areas. I could have headed there at level 58, but a lot of other people have mentioned that they felt that was a bit too soon and too many enemies were orange or red at that point. I’ll be glad to have Shattrath and its portals back as a home base, anyway.

Along the way I did most of the major quests in the Winterspring and Silithus areas. I also spent a while farming in Hinterlands trying to get the last robot chicken quest, and I didn’t have any luck the first time but did manage to get it on another pass through on the way to some other quest turn-in. There are still a lot of old-world areas I never really got around to doing, though: Azshara, the Plaguelands, Desolace, The Burning Steppes, the Blasted Lands, and even Stranglethorn. I’ll have to come back later for faction and achievements.

I also finally finished off the armoursmithing quests, so I can make special armour now. I’ve only made one item so far, a set of Earthforged Leggings that were a bit of an upgrade from my old ones. There’s plenty of faction-specific blacksmithing plans, but it’s probably not worth worrying about them until I get to the WotLK areas or they’ll just become obsolete fairly quickly.

And this is the point where it will definitely slow down, as I will no longer have the help of the sub-60 xp bonuses they added a while back.