Two things I've learned

1. I hate Azshara. A lot.

I'm not really sure why. It has naga, and I love taking out naga. Maybe it's that the entire time I was there, I ran into one other player, also Horde. I don't really mind being in a zone without a lot of PVP — Hillsbrad was actually pretty scary, with all the Alliance 10+ levels above me — but I at least want to see people, even if they're on my side, you know?

Or maybe it's just that the zone is mad boring. Ideale dinged 50 on Saturday night and Cinnamon wasn't even there yet, but we were handling 3-4 mobs ranging in level from 53 to 55 at a time without breaking a sweat. The mobs in the Hinterlands are tougher to take down, and they're all late-40s.

I didn't even bother to get the flight path. I have the Sunken Temple hunter quest, but I don't know if I want to bother with the reward since neither trinket seems especially wonderful and I found out, while browsing Thottbot, that there's a better spear in one level that I can get by PVPing instead of ending up in some awful pug full of ninjas who wipe us 7984759567 times, roll need on everything, and then leave before we're halfway done.

I had planned to get this spear and the crossbow from the Alterac Valley quest, but thottbot people also claim that there are better bows once you hit Outland, and mine isn't too much worse, so I may just skip the "Hunter's Charm" quest and never return to Azshara again.

Because really, the only zone I hated this much before was Stranglethorn Vale, and at least there was PVP there, and stealthed mobs to make things interesting.

I left Azshara and went to Orgrimmar after turning in the wavethrasher scales, and actually had more fun grinding my cooking and fishing skills a bit for the rest of the morning. And I hate fishing. But apparently, not as much as Azshara.

2. It is possible for instances to be fun.

I had gotten in with a decent group once before for some of the group quests in the Ghostlands, and hooked up with the priest from that group for Scarlet Monestary Library, and both of those groups were pretty fun. SM was especially fun — two hunters and a priest and we 3-manned the whole library.

Aside from that, the only good group I've been in, both Alliance-side and Horde-side, was an Uldaman group, and they merely didn't suck — everyone was polite and we didn't die, but that was about it. I've skipped nearly every other instance while leveling unless I needed something, and then I usually got run through by someone super nice. (They offered, I didn't ask, but still. It's like the gaming gods knew how tortuous instances are and blessed me.)

But then, on Friday, I ran into a nice orc shaman doing the Jintha'alor quests in the Hinterlands, and we joined up and kicked some ass, and it was really fun.

And then all that was in my quest log were quests for the Temple of Atal'Hakkar and Zul'Farrak, so I gritted my teeth, entered LFG, and ended up in a very good ST group. When one guy dropped out less than halfway through, I suggested that the nice orc shaman join us, and that group? Was so awesome. SO AWESOME. I had more fun in that instance than any other. So we all friended each other and vowed to do more instances together. I hope it actually pans out.

Now I can see why people like raiding and running heroics at 70. If you're in with a decent group, it's way more fun than the dentist.

I still prefer PVP, though. Which is bringing me a somewhat difficult time, guild-wise. :-/

I'm going to focus on my itty hunters for a day or two while I decide whether going into ST again (and Azshara again) is worth it, or if I should move on. (Although if the ST group wants to go back, I will so be in, and then I'll suck it up and get a Devilsaur Eye.)