Panda Thoughts

Pandaria is gorgeous - even my wife thinks so.  The style reminds me quite a bit of Northrend, in a good way... the land seems to be much more real, and less cartoony, than some of the old world zones.

Well.... to be honest, the Jade Forest is beautiful.  I'm pushing level 87 on Aeven, and I still haven't gotten out of the first starting zone!  I'm actually looking forward to the other zones, even the ones I visited briefly in the beta.  I can't wait to meet the Grummles, the Klaxxi, the Tillers, and figure out what beasts Hemet Nesingwary wants me to slaughter this time.

I credit Aeven's rapid advance, in part, on the incredible abundance of herb and ore nodes in the zone.  At level 86, she's still getting 15k XP per node.  Last night, just questing for a couple of hours - not even farming - she managed to hit about 50 nodes in an hour.  That's about 750K XP over and above what she got from questing, and roughly the equivalent of completing an additional six quests on top of the ones she'd already done.  Whoa.

The XP gains from the nodes helps make up for the leveling pace that Aeven's at, though.  Leveling on a protection paladin is much, much slower than I'm used to... but man, she is un-freaking-killable.  I've gotten into the habit of trying to collect at least 3-4 mobs at a time, just because fighting a single mob is so slow that it feels painful.  At one point last night, I managed to collect and burn down a group of about 8 mobs at once.  Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory keep her up, and in the few instances where things start to look a little hairy, there's always Lay On Hands.

So far, I'm having a lot of fun.  The laid back nature and practicality of the Pandaren is absolutely  delightful.  When I completed A Humble Offering and Pei-Zhisays commented on the mushroom offering I collected, "Also, they make a pretty fine stir-fry"... that made me chuckle.  Those Pandaren certainly keep their feet on the ground, as the Dwarves would say!