Wow.

Somebody made a character on Silver Hand to say hi to me (and give roleplaying a shot)! I'm quite honored. I've gotta thank you all again for your comments and support. It never ceases to amaze me that I've got an actual readership, especially because I started this blog mostly to have a place to ramble to myself and provide occasional advice to newbies.

Speaking of which, I'm going to try and provide more guides and "newbie advice". I'll definitely keep posting stories and anecdotes though, since a lot of people seem to enjoy them. But I'll try to sprinkle some guides in here and there too.

Anyways! Level 70. I have to admit, the first few days I actually seemed to come down with an odd case of a Post-70-Funk; that is to say, this whole time I've been looking forward to 70 and I had all this stuff I wanted to do at 70, and then I got there and after the initial excitement wore out, I thought about the stuff I'd wanted to do and none of it sounded appealing anymore. However, I think it might have just been some exhaustion over the whole thing; because now after some rest I'm quite happy about being 70 again and I've made some goals to work on:

- Grinding marks/honor in PvP: For the Gladiator's Pursuit set. Yes, it's just the infamous "welfare epics", but they are definitely not a bad start to a good set of PvP gear. I've already snagged myself Gladiator's Chain Helm and I'm working to complete the set and get them all gem'd and enchanted up.

- Karazhan Key Quest Line: I've started this one already, got some instances ahead of me though.

- Getting Enchants and Stuff: The ever-so-illustrious BRK posted a list of good post-70 pre-Kara gear and enchants. Now I'm probably not going to follow this list 100% to the book but it's definitely going to be my guide for the time being-- and yes I want to work to get the enchants even on my fresh-out-of-Outlands-greens, because I want to be prepared to do my best if asked. First on my list is Glyph of Ferocity, which requires Revered with Cenarion Expedition. I lucked out here in that a.) I loved Zangarmarsh and spent huge amounts of time here; b.) I ran Underbog more than any other Outlands instance; and c.) I still have a lot of Cenarion Expedition quests to do in Blade's Edge and elsewhere. And I'm already halfway through Honored. So hopefully this one won't take too long.

- Work on getting Sonic Spear: My Survivalist's Pike with +25 agi has served me long and well but it's about time for an upgrade.

- Last but not least, Leveling the Pets: Tux is level 66 and Locke is level 68. I'm rather proud of my ability to at least keep them decently close in level with me in the final stretch, though obviously I'd like to get them both to 70. I figure I can do a lot of pet leveling while working on some of my other goals, such as the rep grinding/quests.

I've probably got some other stuff to do, but this is the list for the time being! Posted here so I can keep track of them... =P

Do any of you have any other advice for a newly-minted level 70 hunter? Or a newly-minted level 70 in general?

Ten Random Thoughts

I sort of have a lot to talk about, but most of them aren't things I want to make full-blown posts about. However, here is a random sampling of what has been on my mind and in my WoW lately:

1. The Dead Zone is gone and I still unconsciously back up to "get range" even if I don't have to. I can't help myself. It's months and months of hunter training that I don't know if I can undo. Heehee.

2. The Hellfire Peninsula music really has a very Holst-like feel to it. It feels right out of the Planets Suite to me. It makes me wonder if that's where the game's composers got some inspiration, or if I'm just being a geek. My money is on the latter.

3. I got my Epic Mount!


4. What's with all the shaman-inspired Outlands gear? I keep finding myself choosing the leather rogue quest rewards over the mail shammy ones. Yes, my armor is taking a bit of a hit, and yeah I like Intellect, but come on... if you give me a choice between a +30 agi, +30 stam, +attack power leather piece, and a +12 agi +12 stam +12 int +magical damage/healing mail piece... I'm gonna take the former. I've heard other people say that shamans have an unusually high amount of Outlands stuff, but wow, I had no idea they were this prevalent.

5. I have been challenged! Namely, my guild has put forth a bit of a friendly challenge for those among us who are in our early-60s: to get to 70 by Christmas. A few people have even taken it farther and have a 100g bet on the line for whoever gets there first. I've agreed to participate in the challenge but at the same time, I don't want that to be the sole reason I'm leveling. I'm playing the game for fun, afterall, not to see if I can beat my guildies to 70. So I'm going to maybe kick up my leveling just a notch, and then not worry about it after that. I'll get to 70 when I get there.

6. Speaking of my guild, I really like it a lot. When I first started this blog we were this tiny little guild of about 20 people; somehow we seem to have exploded recently to nearly 100 characters and almost as many accounts. Some people have their tiffs, as you will see in all guilds, but other than that our guild is full of friendly and intelligent people who willingly donate money to others' mount funds and run newbies through instances on a daily basis-- seriously, we seem to have an abnormal number of high-level members who love running lowbie instances. It's kinda funny really... watching the guild's higher-levels all scrambling to be the chosen one who gets to help someone through Deadmines, which once culminated in a Grand Deadmines Race which involved people pairing off and seeing who could run through the fastest. Yes, I do love my guild.

7. I have transferred my tauren hunter to a new realm: The Venture Co. It's an RP-PvP realm. See, I know I often mention how I find PvP realms to be irritating because of all the ganking that goes on. However, I recently got this little dream in my head of being able to say I've leveled to 70 on a PvP server, and being able to experience that and broaden my knowledge that way. But being on a regular PvP server, I really missed the RP, so I've compromised and moved to an RP-PvP server. I'm really happy with my new server so far, though admittedly I've only just transferred-- but it makes me so dorkily giddy to see real roleplay going on, and it's already made my little tauren about ten times more fun to play.

8. Right after the transfer took place and I hopped onto my tauren alt, I noticed something unusual... track humanoids not only shows humanoids on the minimap, but beasts as well! Has anyone else experienced that? I sent a ticket into Blizzard and a GM had me do the whole "disable-all-your-addons" dance, but it didn't change anything so I have been informed that it's being looked into as a bug. In the meantime... it's, um, very handy for contested zones, so it's staying up... *hangs head guiltily*

9. My main is now a Scryer. Aldors had a decent ring, but Scryers had an alchemy recipe, and I'm a bit OCD when it comes to my professions. Gotta catch 'em all!

10. I'd completely forgotten how difficult it is to keep two pets leveled up with you simultaneously, especially since I seem to be perpetually rested these days so I'm always getting double XP while my pets aren't. I fear I may have to soon make a decision and have one pet stay with me to 70 and then come back and grind the other one later. On the other hand, at least leveling a pet that is 7 or 8 levels lower than you shouldn't be quite as bad as leveling one that is several dozen levels lower than you... hopefully that's the case, anyway.

*glances over list*

Hmm. I think I write too much.