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.

For the first day since I resumed playing WoW, I failed to gain at least one level tonight. It wasn’t entirely unproductive though, as I gained four more exploration achievements (and would have had a fifth had a suicide run into the Draenei newbie area worked) and got the flight path points to Felwood, Moonglade, and Winterspring.

I think those will be my next hunting grounds anyway, before I finally move on to Silithus. Or I might just skip Silithus entirely and head straight to the BC areas once I hit 58.

I know I’ve said I will be slowing down, but I wound up gaining two levels in WoW tonight, putting me at 54. A lot of it was from turning in a whole bunch of Un’Goro quests at once; I first went there tonight, and I think I’ve done most of the quests in the zone already, with just a few stragglers left.

I’m also finally making a decent amount of money, with 60 gold left in the bank even after buying a couple more bank slots. I’m probably going to need it for keeping blacksmithing up…