North

It was a busy weekend, both IRL and in-game. My wife and I celebrated our 18th anniversary by heading west and taking a little road trip on Monday. Aeven celebrated reaching level 70 by heading north, looking for new lands to explore and new foes to smite. For the light, of course!

On Friday, I took Aeven to Shadowmoon Valley, where the questing was... different. If I had to guess, I'd say that there were at least two different teams at Blizzard doing quest design for zones. One of those teams (Zangarmarsh, Nagrand) seems to like short, co-existant quest chains. In those areas, you can fill up your quest log and run around the zone like a madman, sometimes killing one mob and getting credit for three different quests. The other team (Shadowmoon Valley) likes long, epic questlines that take you across the zone and back multiple times. Questlines where each piece needs to be done in order, just so you can run across the zone again... and again... and again, like some sort of deranged bicycle messenger, just to accomplish one task.

I'll give you three guesses as to which one I like more.

I did a couple of the shorted quest chains and solo quests in Shadowmoon Valley, but pretty quickly realized that I was going to be there a while, doing epic quests to forge the Staff of Foobar and the like. Stuff that is interesting, sure, but which I'd already done once before... and I wasn't really interested in re-reading those novels.

So Aeven looked around, called it finished, packed her bags and headed off to Netherstorm to finish things up. That zone follows the "lots of little quests" philosophy, and there was plenty to do. A quick flight around the area, and she had a quest log full of nice little XP-bearing jobs just waiting to bloom.

In an odd twist of fate, though, that prooved to be entirely unnecessary. Logging in on Monday night, I found a couple of guildmates who were leveling alts, and who were interested in running some BC dungeons. Another guildmate offered to come along and heal, we used the LFD tool to pick up a random DPS, and an hour or so later, we had plowed through the Slave Pens and the Mana Tombs... with Aeven hitting level 70 just before Nexus-Prince Shaffar. I was keeping an eye on her XP bar, and she was literally one experience point shy of hitting 70 when we hit the top of the stairs before Shaffar. It would have been nice to have my level 70 ding come from the prince himself, but that extra level before hand was nice, too. So we'll just call it even, shall we?

Hearth to Dalaran. Portal to Ironforge. Train a bunch of new abilities for both retribution and protection. Empty bags of a bunch of lower-level potions and food, and hit the aution house to grab a couple of stacks of Runic Mana Potions and Runic Healing Potions, as well as some level 70 battle and guardian elixirs. Take a deep breath, hop on the griffon, and head for the Stormwind piers. Get there, realize that the Stormwind boat goes to the Borean Tundra, and mutter curses at myself for forgetting that I needed to go to Menethil Harbor if I wanted to catach a ride to Howling Fjord. Head back to Ironforge, pop over to Menethil Harbor, finally board the boat for Howling Fjord... and get disconnected during the trip, so that when I log back in a few seconds later, I'm 20,000 feet in the air over the Hillsbrad Foothills. On my charger. Plunge to my death, rez at the spirit healer, fly back to Menethil Harbor, jump on the boat again. Huddle, unmounted, in the center of the ship. Nope, no insane little Dwarven pally here, no no no. Just some... cargo. Yeah, cargo. Heading north. Nothing worth smiting here, no, not at all!

Then, finally, she stepped off the boat in Northrend. Gorgeous scenery, beautiful background music, and within a minute of her arrival, she was at the gates of an Alliance fortification surrounded by slavering worgs who thought she was a new chew toy and and gigantic humanoids who thought she was some sort of pinata. You know... you know... the Aliance recruiting brochures don't nearly do Northrend justice. If she had know it was going to be this much fun, she would have headed here two levels ago.

Along the way, Aeven picked up a few minor upgrades. She's sporting a Deteriorating Plate Chestpiece and Deteriorating Plate Boots now. She had a matching belt to go along with them, but ditched that as soon as she hit Northrend, in favor of a shiny new Heavy Aldor Belt. She'll be replacing her bracers and breastplate as well (with Heavy Draenic Bracers and a Heavy Draenic Breastplate) as soon as she can get scrolls to enchant them.

Tonight: raining death and destruction on the Vrykul! Presuming, of course, that you're talking about some sort of magical rain that falls up from the ground. And really only reaches their kneecaps. And which is made of sharp, nasty pummeling death instead of, um, rain. So, ok, yeah, it's going to be less like walking through a gentle summer shower and more like jamming their foot into a titchy cuisinart with a taste for blood.

Whatever it is, it'll be fun :-)