WoW Journal - 15-November-2007

Hadn't had one of these WoW journals for a long time, and I'm not sure they'll become a regular feature again, but I thought I'd tell you some stories about my first week back in World of Warcraft.

I haven't done much with my level 70 characters. I do log them on every day to do the egg destruction daily quest. I've paid €35 for 90 days of WoW, and with two level 70s each earning 12 gold per day just with that daily quest, I'll make over 2,000 gold in that time. That is actually cheaper than buying gold, I think, although I haven't checked prices recently. The daily quests are relatively fast, especially with my warrior who has an epic flying mount. The priest first needed to do the pre-req ogre killing quest, and is slower in destroying eggs due to having only a slower mount. But apparently the new cooking quest requires killing the birds that guard the eggs, so the priest is now less likely to be interrupted by angry mother birds.

My "main", in the sense of being played the most, is currently my bloodelf mage. I reached level 20 with him, which is a major milestone. Not only do you gets tons of new spells at level 20, but also a mage gets the first three teleport spells. Thus I can now easily travel between Silvermoon, Orgrimmar, and Undercity. I don't quite understand the logic why Thunder Bluff needs level 30, but that isn't the most important destination anyway.

Another big change at level 20 is that at this level you can raise the cap for tradeskills from 150 to 225. My mage is tailor and enchanter, so I bought lots of silk and made azure silk stuff, which I then disenchanted and recycled the dusts for raising enchanting as well as tailoring. I also disenchanted another batch of old jewelry, that my priest had made when TBC came out to raise jewelcrafting. Enchanting is a great skill for recycling. The only problem is that I can't enchant the gear of my other characters.

I reached level 20 mostly by soloing. I teamed up with single players at one or two occasions, but only had one full group. And that was the pickup group from hell, where the leader thought that if he got a group of 5 people together with levels from as low as 12 to only 19, we would be able to kill the level 21 elite "end boss" of the Ghostlands and his minions. Of course the boss wiped us out in seconds, and I didn't want to try again with the same team. But as low level players on the Horde side on my players aren't numerous, I couldn't find a better group for the three elite quests in the Ghostlands. So in the end I used a level 49 warrior from the account of my wife for a little dual-boxing event, and got the quests I couldn't solo done that way.

I still haven't finished all Ghostlands quests, so I'll stick around there and finish them. As I had lots of rest xp after my restart I probably leveled faster than intended, so the Ghostlands will at least get me to level 21, if not 22. I'm not quite sure where I will go after that, maybe I'll do the level 20ish quests of the Barrens next, to get better faction with Orgrimmar, and then on to Thousand Needles. I'd love to do some dungeons, like Wailing Caverns and Shadowfang Keep in my 20s, but the prospects are not looking good, unless I dual-box again. That would give me the rewards, but not the real fun of grouping in a dungeon, and so I'm not sure I'd want to do that. Chat is full of low-levels asking for high-level characters to run them through dungeons, but I think they are missing the point by doing it that way. I'd love to play in a group with players of my level to start learning about how to control my aggro as a mage, and be prepared for future groups. Having a high-level character run you through a dungeon teaches you nothing.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:26 AM Permanent Link