I didn’t really feel like starting anything new, so I wound up back in WoW last night, and I took the opportunity to finish off the Blackfathom Deeps and Gnomeregan dungeons and prepared for Uldaman by finishing off the quests that could be done just outside the instance.

It was actually the first time I’d been to Gnomeregan, and the layout of it is a bit confusing at first. I managed to stumble into the end boss earlier than expected, skipping a big chunk of the dungeon, but it seems to be meant mainly for Alliance players anyway. I’m still missing one quest for there, since a ring I need didn’t drop, so I’ll have to come back at some point

And since I still had some time to kill this evening, I popped back into WoW just to take care of the Zul’Farrak quests I had queued up. They were, unsurprisingly, fairly easy at my way-too-high-for-it level, though the pyramid fight did get a bit hectic just due to the constant stream of enemies.

That completed seven quests in my log, and I only picked up three new ones as chained quests, so I’ve freed up four quests slots, at least.

And of course, right after I say I’m taking a break from WoW, I go and spend all day today in it… It was the start of the Lunar Festival event though, and these quests are only available for a limited time, so I had to do them soon anyway. I wound up getting all but two of the achievements for the event, and those will have to wait until I’m level 80 anyway since they involve Northrend.

And along the way I wound up picking up a couple pieces I needed for the quests in Zul’Farrak, so I’ll probably head there first whenever I return in earnest. I’ve still got a half-dozen or so quests to finish up there, that have been in my quest log for ages now, and it should be easily soloable.

I popped into WoW briefly today, just to buy a new mount after the 3.0.8 patch went live:

Unfortunately it’s a bit taller than my wolf mount, so I get caught on doors and arches more often. Oh well, I’ll mostly be sticking with the wolf anyway.

WoW has been nothing but yet more clearing out of low-level quests, and a couple days ago I finally hit Stranglethorn Vale. It took two full days, but I finally cleared all of the quests there, including the damn Nesingwary ones. I still need to do the ones in Outland, though…

But more importantly, through all of these quests, I managed to squeak out the last little bits of faction needed to become ‘exalted’ with Silvermoon City. That got me an achievement, my first title (Ambassador), and I’ll be able to buy a chickenhawkstrider from them when the next patch goes live. I’ll probably just get the cheapo one though, since it’s just for show and I’ll prefer the wolf for actual riding.

(And I also got a few other achievements along the way, like one for hitting 1500 quests, completing a few instances, etc.)

There are still a bunch of other low-level quests to finish off, including some I’ve picked up for Zul’Farrak, but now it’s time to take a bit of a break, I think. I feel the same kind of burnout coming on as when I abandoned WoW after BC came out.

And it wound up not taking very long at all to finish off the Blade’s Edge quests tonight, so I also worked on blacksmithing a bit (up to 346), finished off a couple quest lines I’d forgotten about in Terrokar, and bought the riding skill level that lets me use flying mounts.

Now I just need the money to buy a flying mount. And I won’t be able to use it in Northrend for quite a while anyway…

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.