HURRY UPS PERSON HURRY

OH GOD I SEE THE ORDER IT'S BEEN IN TOWN SINCE 4:25 AM WHY ARE YOU NOT HERE YET?

So maybe I'm a bit more anxious for WotLK than I thought ...

EDIT: I rolled a mage on VeCo out of entertainment — a guildie made a 30-39 twink guild and I think a mage would be fun in PVP, so why not? I'm literally the lowest-level person on the server right now at level five. Aside from a level 9 hunter, there is no one under level 45 on. It's bizarre.

*clings to Nagrand*

No midnight release for me (closest was about 30 miles away and I'd have had to ditch work), but honestly, I'm not really that upset. Getting to hear my guildies' impressions of the expansion was cool, and it'll come soon enough.

I am rethinking my whole anti-death knight stance, after running about with two of my awesomest guildies and their DKs for a couple minutes, and then listening to them over Vent. But really, it gave me some time to get a bit closer to 69 on Ahami (four bars to go!), which reminded me that I needed to get my Consortium payoff still this month, which reminded me that I need to pay the electric bill.

So it works out.

And honestly, I love Azeroth and love parts of Outland, and probably won't be back to either for a while, so it was nice to kind of cruise around, check a few places out, wrap up some unfinished business (like Ambassador Ideale's exploration — oh, and ambassador title), etc.

So hopefully my copy of Wrath will come tomorrow, but if it doesn't? I'm not too worried.

I am sleeping on the couch tonight, though, so as to actually hear the postman/postwoman when s/he comes. Just because I won't be upset to miss it doesn't mean I'm going to risk it!

Expansion plans

Thursday: Ha, like the servers will even be up. Will probably head to the movies and see "High School Musical 3."
Friday: Morning, see above. Evening, none, because I have to be up and ready to leave at 8:30 a.m. and my normal bedtime is 4-5 a.m. Already working on resetting myself.
Saturday: None; family reunion of pure awesome, followed by sleep the moment I get home.
Sunday: Hit Blade's Edge Mountains with Ahami. Maybe do some Skettis dailies with Ideale FOR XP NOW WOOT. Or the Sporregar Naga-genocide quest. Or just work on Consortium rep — I'm getting close to Exalted with them!
Monday: Venture into one of the Northrend start zones to train professions. Work on leveling my Alliance shaman/Daj with BFF, and Onashne with roomie. Check Honor Hold for Operation: Death to Death Knights.
Tuesday: Ha, like maintenance will be over before 8 p.m. Might hit the movies again, but it's unlikely, since nothing else I want to see opens until Thanksgiving week, and probably won't play in this craptown anyway.
Wednesday: More BEM/Skettis.
Thursday following: Venture forth into Northrend. Return to Outland if it is too crowded and start working on Shadowmoon Valley.

Now, where to go in Northrend first? Since I have a short attention span and two characters of a level to go in, I will send one to the Borean Tundra and one to the Howling Fjord. Lore-wise, Ideale would be more likely to hit up the Howling Fjord while Ahami could go either way — Ide's more likely to head out with the Forsaken than the orcs when it comes to fighting the Scourge.

And at this point, I'd like to note that druids have the joy of earning rep for two druid-centric factions and will now have the D.E.H.T.A. questline. Well, I want to be able to earn rep with the Farstriders and the Earthen Ring! Why can't there be more class-related factions? That would be kind of awesome.

Professions blogs?

Just out of sheer curiosity, are there any profession blogs out there? I can't imagine that there'd be that much to write about, I guess, but I'm curious.

One of the reasons I can't roll on a server without several alts is that I like to have professions that complement each other on all my toons. For example, when Daj gets to end-game, someday, I'm going to drop skinning for herbalism so that I can drop herbalism on Ahami and pick up alchemy. That way, I can transmute gems for myself, create vellums for myself (Daj is also an enchanter), and take care of all my inscription, enchanting and jewelcrafting needs as well as stock up on potions and flasks and whatnot.

Onashne will probably beat Daj to 80, since the BFF and I have been playing our Alliance alts rather than our Horde ones (by which I mean we frantically loot whatever her fiance and our other friend kill in whatever instance they are running us through repeatedly, and occasionally she sheeps a stray mob while I keep her healed until one of them can come kill it). This was unplanned — I didn't know if I'd like her or keep her, and would have picked up engineering and mining instead of leatherworking if I had — although now I can max out her skill when I get some spare cash and make PVP gear for my other two.

And the Alliance alt I mentioned? The guild needs an alchemist and that goes nicely with her eventual healing role, so I'm picking that up. But wait, if I have a healer, I'm going to need a toon to do dailies and farm with, because doing that stuff on a healer is an exercise in frustration. So I transferred Tshaya to Blackhand — she will be my miner — and rolled a warlock. If the warlock can make it to a decent level, she'll be my eventual herbalist, and M. will pick up engineering. If not, we'll see how far along Tshaya is with enchanting — the guild has an enchanter, so I could drop that and pick up herbalism with her instead.

I don't have altitis, exactly, so much as professionitis and a dislike of shelling out gold on the AH for mats I could easily gather myself.

EDIT: Oh, and I now have five mounted characters, and am really close to having a sixth. :-O

FOR THE HORDE!

If you are not in the Valley of Honor in Orgrimmar right now, you are missing out. The Scourge is attacking and that fool Garrosh Hellscream is going to get himself killed.

Six days to go and vengeance will be mine

And I hit 68. So I can happily go into Northrend with my guild, even if I do not manage to get another level before Thursday. This makes me superhappy.

Not that I couldn't have gone in on Ideale, of course — and I will be DPSing for the guild as well as healing, I'm sure. But Ideale I can solo to 80 with without many problems — having mostly (but not entirely!) soloed to 68 as resto, I'd really, REALLY like to group up as much as possible with Ahami.

However, I forgot how ganktastic Nagrand was to non-70s, and I am glad that I was reminded, because my first act in the expansion will not be to head straight to Northrend or to pick up the leveling game again. No, my first act in the expansion will be to chill outside Honor Hold, where I will wave and salute all of the new 60s and then gank every death knight who comes out of the doors.

My reasoning? A 60 hunter or shaman or priest or druid might be someone's first toon, and I don't want to ruin it for them. But death knights can't be made without having a high-level character already — and I don't discriminate, so I'll have to just kill them all.

Why I have not blogged this week

1. I'm about halfway through 67 on Ahami, and think I might hit 68 by Saturday. So instead of writing about WoW, I've mostly been playing WoW.
1a. Also, achievements are horrible, addictive things that should be removed (oh God please ignore that I will cry if they go away).

2. For some asinine reason, I decided to inflict NaNoWriMo on myself during U.S. election season/Wrath of the Lich King release month. OH GOD WHY

3. Those of you in the U.S. know that this week is election week. Because of my job in the evil elite liberal media (only so totally not), this means that this week has been CRAZY ASS BUSY WEEK FROM HELL WEEK OF DOOM ELECTION WEEK '08 for me. And as I am a masochist (I play a hunter in PVP, like you didn't already know that), I am clinging to it, sobbing "Please never leave me, CRAZY ASS BUSY WEEK FROM HELL WEEK OF DOOM ELECTION WEEK '08, please please please PLEASE."
3a. The 5 a.m. Wednesday no-sleep-yet, adrenaline-fueled Denny's run o' joint elation-and-despair kind of tuckered me out, too.

4. My cat has felt neglected due to NaNo and CRAZY ASS BUSY WEEK FROM HELL WEEK OF DOOM ELECTION WEEK '08 and has made it quite known by doing things such as playing on top of me or eating my fingers/toes/face to wake me up after I've had no more than four hours of sleep, sitting by the door and yowling for 20-minute stretches, and laying down on top of my hands and keyboard and staring at me with the expression of a child in a World Vision commercial while I'm in the middle of AV. She needs love a bit more than both the blog and the pixel-cats — and can punish me more effectively if I don't give her attention.

5. There is no spoon.

And here I go!

I have finally, finally made it past the low-60s slump. When Ide hit 62-ish, I didn't play her more than a bubble or so of XP at a time for weeks while I leveled all of my lowbie alts (including my priest!). Around the time she hit 64, I was spending most of my playing time running Ahami all over Azeroth to put out fires.

But when she hit 66, end-game was within reach, and even grinding mobs instead of questing (and I was, because I wanted that damn talbuk!) I was hooked and could not stop playing. I think part of it is that I went to Nagrand at 66 and the quests there are just a blast.

Poor Ahami was 63 when the patch hit, and even though I was unable to play for nearly a week, she was still only 65 yesterday.

And last night, at 65, I did not want to play Ahami at all. At all. I ended up running my roommate through the Scarlet Monastery and Gnomeregan on Ideale instead (we both wanted to play but were sick of killing skull-less Hillsbrad farmers and bloodless and tongueless bears and mountain lions, and I'd not gotten the achievement for SM or ever been in Gnomer). And then I went and killed scourge for a while, even though there is nothing I particularly want from this but Argent Dawn rep, and if I get Ahami a little higher in time, I could get her a couple of decent pieces of gear.

This morning, I logged on her intending to do nothing but inscription research. But I was three bubbles from 66 and sick of Terokkar, so I told myself that I would do a few more quests to get there, then abandon the rest and head for Nagrand.

And the second I dinged, I swear, I couldn't bear to log and switch to Ideale again. I kept questing in Terokkar for five or six more quests, then went to Nagrand, picked up everything, and did several of those quests. Now I'm halfway to 67 and ready to come home and buckle down tonight and get there. And since tomorrow is my day off, maybe I can bribe some guildies to go kill the Scourge with me — that'd get me to 68 pretty quick, I bet. I'd like the tabard, but I'd REALLY like the shoulders and gloves, since I'm not going to have time to gear up at 70, probably. And maybe I'll even get lucky and a couple of useful leather or mail purples will drop in the process. *crosses fingers*

Please tell me I'm not the only one who stalls out badly between Winterspring and Nagrand?

I raided!

Sort of. My guild was in SSC today and downed either Tidewalker or Lurker, I don't know, and someone had to go right before Vashj. So one of the guild leaders whispers if I want to come.

Now, I am not at all geared for that on Ide. Hell, I'm barely geared for HEROICS on Ide — I am half in greens and rep blues and half in PVP gear. I don't even HAVE a PVE set. And I said so, but he was like, "We don't care, come on."

So we got Vashj to phase two, apparently, but wiped on all the adds. It was still pretty cool up until then, though!

So ... yeah. Sheer madness. And despite only being in for the last 20 minutes or so, it was a blast; not at all what I expected based on the sheer painfulness of five-mans. Definitely something I'd like to try again.

Alliance finally scores a point with me

I have to say, the draenei Call of Elements quests are WAY cooler than the Horde ones.