I remember in the months before Burning Crusade came out that a lot of friends and guildmates started to feel very jaded with WoW and many of them stopped playing for a few months, re-activating their accounts when the expansion was released. A similar thing seems to be happening now and I’m feeling a little jaded myself although I probably won’t go as far as stopping playing…I’d have to catch up on all those little jobs I put off if I did that.

For me, some of it down to feeling that most of what I do ingame at the moment is pretty useless.  I could grind rep…some of my characters are only into honoured with most Outland factions but then I find myself thinking “what is the point?”, in a few months (hopefully) the new expansion will be out and there will be a whole new set of factions to grind rep with. 

I could grind the mats to make my hunter’s epic set but then I only use her for grinding mats and most, if not all, of her gear will probably be replaced on handing in the first few quests in Northrend. 

I could grind mats to sell on the AH to get epic flying mounts for my 2 remaining level 70s but then do they really need them?  The hunter rarely has to fly far to reach whatever she is grinding; she’s a skinner so she doesn’t fly around looking for nodes.  Hulan doesn’t have any gathering skills at all (she’s a tailor/alchemist) and only flies from any Flight Point to the instance she’s going into.  In addition, once the expansion comes out flying mounts will be unusable in Northrend until level 77; there’s also the thought that 5K gold might be earned much faster in Northrend than in Outland, like 1K gold became easily achievable in Outland compared to the long slog it was in Azeroth.

I could get my arse in gear and level my gnome warrior the last 6 levels to 70 but I’ve never enjoyed playing her that much.  I got her to 60 on the company of friends; we all levelled together and instanced as a group from The Deadmines to Scholomance.  I am now on a different server.  I don’t much like tanking with her and even spec’d for DPS I don’t find her great to do anything with at all.  The only reason I haven’t deleted her yet is that I have a lot of stuff in her bank and I occasionally use her Blacksmithing skills.

What I am left with is doing instances with Hulan (priest), Winífred (mage) and Ravenwynd (druid).  This isn’t as great as it sounds, although I love running instances.  Hulan recently joined a large RP raiding guild as a casual member.  On the whole they seem a nice bunch of people but joining them hasn’t been all that I’d hoped.  I applied to them because a close friend is a member; although I have no desire to raid anything more than Kara he assured me that there was still alot of RP and instance runs but I can’t say this has been my experience.  To complicate matters only Hulan is in this guild; until I pass the initiate stage (an unspecified amount of time) I can bring no alts into the guild and was told it would be preferable not to have them join the custom OOC channel either.  This meant that I either logged in as Hulan and spent a lot of time just hanging around waiting for something to happen ( her fishing is now 375!) or logged onto an alt and missed things when they did finally happen.  I have spoken to an officer who agreed that I can bring my alts onto the OOC channel but I can’t say it has made a lot of difference as there don’t seem to be many people running instances at all.  A part of me is wondering whether to just leave the guild but a part of me is wondering how much of this is just due to other people also suffering pre-expansion blues?  There are some really nice people in this guild that i like a lot and I suspect that when WotLK levels the playing field again there will be a lot more activity and there will be a lot more fun to be had once we all start levelling again.

Finally, there is Dimity to level.  I must say that I’m enjoying her much more than I expected to.  I have always wanted to try tanking but didn’t enjoy it on either the warrior or the druid.  This isn’t because of tanking itself but rather the problems I have with my neck and my shoulder.  I have a slight curvature of the spine and get a lot of muscle spasm as a result.  I found that trying tank meant a lot of manouvering (and a lot of tension anyway!) that basically left me ina lot of pain the next day.  the thing I’m liking about Paladin tanking is that it’s much easier to stand in one place and tank, I don’t have to move a round a lot.  I’ve only tanked twice with her (Uldaman and Zul’Farrak) but I did OK.  I’m still not very confident and am finding the limits of what she can and can’t do but I can see myself taking her all the way to 70.  I am trying to promise myself that she will be my last alt but of course there will be Death Knights to explore so I’m not making any promises I might not keep

Posted by Hulan on 30th May, 2008