First things first: Zangarmash is pretty, but a pain in the ass to navigate in. I was excited to be there and out of HELLfire Peninsula, but it's like "out of the frying pan, into the fire". My first impressions of Zangarmash was that I was that I wanted to hang out there more, but that lasted about an hour or so. It reminded me of the Sporali Cavern in Everquest with the large mushrooms everywhere. Traversing large lakes and not having any real landmarks made navigation tough.



Telredor is a nice little town, but it has this annoying elevator which glides a few feet from the platform before levitating up or down. On the lower end you can just jump to it, but on the top end there's a 10 foot gap that you can fall off of if you're not paying attention. It didn't happen to me, but I saw people misjudge the distance and SPLAT.





The coolest part of the zone is this spire in the center of serpent lake which has some energy vortex spinning up into the sky. Very impressive.

I was able to score a decent PUG for The Underbog. We went all the way to the last boss without a healer, our DPS was that impressive. We burninated our entire way to the last boss when one person had to leave and we replaced him with a priest.





After finishing all the quests there, I made a run for Terokkar.


First entering Terokkar

The best way I can describe Terokkar is a "beautiful nightmare" if that makes any sense. The greenish tint gives a sense of gloom, while the landscape is mesmerizing.

I had an "oooooooooh!" moment when I first entered The Bone Wastes - there's a rather large, destroyed building which gives you the same sense of scale as I felt when seeing the Spires of North Karana for the first time in Everquest.





Last night I spent some time just running around finishing quest after quest. I started burning down spiders for Netherweave Spider Silk for 18-slot bags which I can now make (woot!).

63.5 now, I plan on getting to 64 tonight, and 66-67 by the end of the weekend.

This is damn impressive. Someone turned their basement into a Macintosh shrine.

Click Here

As everyone knows, I'm a Mac guy. However, there is a need for me to run Windows, at the very least on my gaming PC which is what I use to run WoW, EQ, EQ2, Dreamfall, Guild Wars, BF2142, etc. I need to keep the machine running smooth all the time, and I have to be confident that it's going to run well every time I turn it on.

Back in the days before Windows XP, I hated Windows. I friggin' hated it. It was a necessary evil because you couldn't play EQ on a Mac, and Unreal Tournament sucked on a Mac. When Windows XP came out, I loved it because MS finally moved away from that Windows 3.1-type architecture and moved towards an NT-like one that was much more stable. To this day, I've had less blue screens since XP's release in 2001 than I have fingers on one hand. I love XP for what it is. It's no Mac OS X, but it does its job and does it well.

So what about Vista? I couldn't give a crap about it. For one thing, there's no guarantee that all my games, devices, and drivers will work with it in perfect harmony. It seems to me that Vista's biggest competition is XP. Not to mention all the security bullshit which will someday disallow me to play my own podcast on my PC. Could you imagine?

So, no Vista for me, at least not for now.

Oh, and here's a picture of the box, just to keep the place pretty:

After 12 days, 7 hours /played, 32 days real-time, I dinged 60 in Ramparts. I was 59.3 when I started last night, and ran around getting my tailoring up while recording episode 33, so after Renata and I finished I went right back to Hellfire and finished up enough quests to get me to around 59.5. I did a <jae> run of Ramparts, which went very well and got me to about 59.6. So, off to grind out more quests real fast until 59.8 where we ran Ramparts again and I dinged 60 just as we made the second turn near the first boss.

My third level 60 toon, and in personal record time. I don't think I'd ever run a toon to 60 that fast ever again.

Well, I finally did it. 25 minutes in Silithus killing air and rock elementals with rested XP and I dinged 58.



After selling off a bunch of junk and putting stuff in the bank, I went to the Dark Portal. No sooner did I get on the grif than I realized I forgot to get my level 58 spells. Checking Thottbot, I really wasn't missing much, so off I went.








Since I had been in Outlands before in beta, I didn't spend a lot of time looking around, I just flew as fast as I could to Honor Hold and started questing. The first thing I wanted to do was get the Staff of the Twin Worlds to replace my Illusionary Rod.




The entire night was spent grabbing as many quests as I could, and banging them all out. At 6600-12000XP per quest (yes, you read that right), I dinged 59 in very little time. Not only that, but I replaced half my gear already.

The bombing runs were a lot of fun. Very little ganking as I said the other day, all everyone wanted to do was just get to the next level. Alachia said that if you have a <jae> tag over your head, you're pretty much dead meat in Zangarmarsh, but I ran there anyway just to get the flight point, and I got through it unscathed.

So will tonight be 60? Probably. I want to do Hellfire Citadel as soon as I can. I have my eye on a particular item.

When I was around 7 or 8 years old, my dad would bring home these 16mm cartoons from school of Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, etc. That's where I got my appreciation for humor. Anyway, for many years I tried to find this one cartoon on DVD with no avail. I still have the 16mm print, but I have to pull out the projector to watch it.

For the hell of it I searched on youtube a few months back and nothing. Well, someone finally posted it. The only part I really like of the whole cartoon is up to the crab playing the piano. After that it's meh.

In a mad attempt to catch up with the rest of <jae>, I decided to push real hard and get to 58 as fast as I can. That meant 4.5 days of WoW. I took time off from work to get things done around the house that were neglected over Christmas break, but the rest of the time was nothing but WoW.



It's going to take time to absorb the last few days. I started thinking "if I can make 1.5 levels after work, I could do 3+ levels a day". With that in mind, I just busted my ass and sure enough, I made 4 levels in my first day. From there on, XP slowed a bit. My biggest problem was BAD GROUPS. You get a bunch of quests for an instance like Zul'Farrak or Sunken Temple, you get there, and people don't know how to do squat. There was one ST group I was in where nobody would pull; they'd just stand there like friggin' morons. I'd say "we pulling?". I'd get answers like "oh, I though the hunter was pulling" or "sorry, I was watching TV". /sigh.


My favorite "weenie moment" was when we had a level 60 paladin in a ST group. "Do we need BC for this?" "Where is ST?" "Where is Swamp of Sorrows?". How does a guy get to 60 and not know these things? Once inside, he aggros the entire dragon room, falls down the hole, dies, and wipes the party. His response? "That was cool. Want to do it again?".

The best groups I was in were guild groups. Unfortunately, there were only two that I was in (Sunken Temple and Undead Strat). It's nice when everyone knows what they're doing. I hope to group with these people again soon because pickup groups SUCK. There was only one group that stood out from all the PUGs I had and that was a Zul'Farrak group that was so good and did their job so well we ran it twice.



Here's what I found about my playstyle: I hate to stop moving. There's no need to stand around and figure out what to do with each group of mobs. Sheep one, sap the other, pet on one, kill the one tagged with a skull. People don't use mob icons and I think that slows down a group tremendously. A perfect example was this Blackrock Depths group I was in. Smart people, good DPS, but bad coordination. So, I asked for leader. A few days ago I researched how to create a macro to set the icon for a mob. I found that the macro /run SetRaidTarget("target", index) works, where index is the icon you want (0=star, etc). So I have icon macros on my hotbar marked "Skull", "Sap", "Sheep". This way, I click the mob, click the macro to set the icon and I make sure I do my sheep icon last so I don't have to reselect a mob. I found that the dropdown menu from the GUI is too slow. Once I started setting mob icons, the party moved through BRD much faster. So fast in fact that we cleared all the way to the second boss with Marshall Windsor's information, and I was able to run back to Windsor with no respawns. That was a damn good group, we got all the way to Molten Core attunement. I did it for the 6600 XP; it's a shame my mage on Boulderfist will probably never see action in MC.

My biggest problem with finishing up my pre-Burning Crusade leveling was the lack of support from other players in the zones I was in because they all had mains in Outlands. Right now, a lot of my quest log is filled with Dungeon or Group quests. I was lucky enough to finish the Linken's quest chain with a guildie, and I plan on helping him finish it up later tonight.



I didn't particularly like soloing, but I really didn't have a choice. I like soloing sometimes, not always. I soloed on my last mage on Whisperwind mainly because it was my "vacation" toon away from my uber raiding guild. This time around everyone in <jae> was at level 35 minimum so there was no way I was going to get help for Hogger. I'm looking forward to grouping up in Outlands.

Another part of my success these last few days is the lack of horde in every area I was in post-BC. I'd sometimes pass horde that were higher than me, the same level, and lower, and 95% of the time, we just leave each other alone because we know we're all burning our way to Outlands. In fact, I was doing Chasing A-ME in Un'Goro crater and this horde mage the same level as me came up to me, we sort of stared at each other for a minute, and he pointed at me and did /no, pointed at the apes and did /yes. So he helped me do the escort all the way back. I returned the favor in Winterspring with a horde having trouble with the yetis. Mind you, I got ganked as well, but very, VERY infrequently. It was like I had all of the game to myself. I realize that in Outlands things will be different and things will be back to normal, but until I get there, I'll leave them alone if they leave me alone.

Having a pet is badass, even if it's for 45 seconds at a clip. Even though I manage my mana so that I can get out of bad situations, sometimes there are REALLY bad situations. Pulling out my pet to finish off a mob, or to help do two mobs at the same time really helps.





Alachia and her friend Felix in <jae> were a tremendous help. They knew which quest lines to do to get the best XP, and Felix ran me through a few things at the end that I couldn't do myself.

I'll pass some wisdom along:

Do the Stranglethorn Vale pages quest.

Consolidate your quests, do all the quests in one area and then move on to the next.

The Arei escort quest no longer requires you to escort his ass all the way to Ashenvale. Now you just have to go to the road next to Irontree Woods.

The Linken's quest is badass, and the questline alone gets you 5-digit XP. You'll need help for Blazerunner. It starts by clicking on a boat in Un'Goro Crater. It's a Secret to Everybody.

When you get to Western Plaguelands, make sure you do All Along the Watchtowers. This leads you do having to kill Araj the Summoner which is also part of Alas, Andorhal. The watchtower quest is a chain that eventually allows you to make a key for Scholomance. The great thing about the Scholomance key quest is that not only do you get the XP for the chain, but you get 9950 XP when you finally get the key! Make sure you have 15g and two thorium bars BEFORE you go to Gadgetzan or you'll have to make a trip to the AH.

Turn in wool/silk/mageweave/runecloth to all the cities you can. You get XP for each, 6600 XP for the runecloth turnin alone (note: you only get XP for the first turnin, after that it's rep only).

The quest in Ironforge (and I assume Orgrimmar) for Alterac Valley gets you 6600 XP just to talk to the guy.

As Alachia mentioned, do the Elven Legends quest. 8000+ XP just to talk to a dead guy in Dire Maul.

As for instances - if you think you're in a bad group, leave. Find an excuse, pull your network cable out, do SOMETHING to get out of it. I've even booted people so that I can replace them with better ones to keep the group moving. The alternative is to ask to take control of a group if you're not the leader and you see potential in the group. If you're the leader, or want to be, know the classes you're with and what they can do (sheep, sap, seduce, shackle). I've been with warriors that don't Sunder Armor because "it doesn't do anything" /smackforehead.

So how does it all end? I was pushing hard on Monday. I got through to 57 around 6:30pm and did the last push to 58 by finishing up all the solo quests I could. I got a summon into Outlands actually, but there were no quests to get, so I had to go back. The end result was missing 58 by 15%, 2.5 bubs. I couldn't push any more without sacrificing sleep time so I had to get to bed. Tomorrow I'll have most of it filled with rested XP and I'll get to 58 in no time.

Whisperwind has become terribly overpopulated (I blame The Pod People). Because of this, Blizzard offered free server moves to Ravencrest. I passed, but some friends of mine didn't so now I have to create a toon on the server just to talk to them. A few days later they offered another free move to Zangarmarsh. Now things started to get dicey because Blizzard said that if not enough people move off Whisperwind, they'll force a server split.

Both my 60s are unguilded but I wanted to keep them together. I would have rather stayed on Whisperwind but Lindyen's guild is moving to Zangarmarsh, so even though I'm not in his guild (yet), if I wanted to join in the future, I had no choice but to move both toons and their bank alts.

The move went well, but I'm not happy that I have friends in three servers. Blizzard, it's time you created cross-server chat. Now.

http://www.mmognation.com/2007/01/18/wow-player-housing/

Remind me to post pics of my house in EQ2

Landshark...