As it does, time has progressed, and the time has come again for an entry detailing the grind to 40 (My current goal – Mount, obviously.).

To begin with, some progress on Faulsey.

At level 20, I wrapped up all the quests I had remaining on Bloodmyst Isle, including one to capture the leader of the Blood Elves there, Matis the Cruel, which had some of the coolest dialogue I’ve seen so far.

After leaving my homeland, the Azuremyst Isles, I trecked down to Astranaar in Ashenvale. My first task was wiping out a number of Naga on the isles on the extreme west of the forest for their heads and a ring.

Unfortunately, I didn’t survive this fight. I managed to take out Ruuzel, but the naga spellcaster that accompanied her overpowered me. Fortunately her body didn’t despawn whilst I was on my way back, so I still finished the quest.

I then had to haul ass all the way down to Stonetalon mountains for a quest to kill Wyverns. I HATED that quest. The drop rate for the item sucked so badly, and my meagre packs (damn quiver!) were soon overflowing with leather and crap item drops

On Ilthiran, who hasn’t been recieving much attention, I committed genocide against the centaurs in the form of the Centaur Bracer’s quest, and killing thier leaders. They then launched a scary counterattack.

The whole defence force of this outpost started getting obliterated Soon, their leader joined the fray.

He utterly annihilated me. Damn elites Also, having actually leveled my Maul and Regrowth abilities first might have helped In any case, I need to get my ass in gear and level Ilthiran more, I want cat form!

Me and Kazu(ra/me) returned to our Blood Elves tonight to continue questing. This is where the cruelty of the blood elves was exhibited again. In discovering the Ironforge Ambassador was a spy, instead of slamming him in jail or deporting him back to Ironforge, they sent me and Kaz to make him go away.

Poor Dwarf didn’t stand a chance. Especially not with my sword. I got a really snazzy Training Sword of the Bear from an enemy, and nothing I’ve seen as a quest reward or at a shop is even close

Still swamped with quests, we began some more genocide, this time against Murlocs, wiping out a whole beach of them and collecting their heads. As you do.

We then made a sidetrip to Fairbreeze village, where, we were swamped under even more quests. I highly doubt we’ll be out of these woods until like level 15 at this rate

As a little note, Blood Elf dancing is hilarious. I think I timed this screenshot rather well

Whilst my realm was down for a while, I also went to visit Kaz on her main server, and this little exchange occured

I feel sorry for womans on tah intarwebz. It must be so distressing being accosted by sweaty 14 year olds who’ve never touched a girl in their lives. /comfort.

Not every day that you make your main character a month after your alt, but hey!

C’est moi! (Yes, I am TERRIBLE when it comes to making characters. As you can see, I HAD to have one of each class -not made a warrior yet, but will get round to it!-)

Obviously, starting out isn’t very interesting in any game, but quite a few of the Draenei newbie quests are a load of fun, for example, there is a quest involving following totems, and at various points you are given : Ability to Fall slowly and walk on water, super fast swim speed, and an invisible cat form for racing through the forest.

Another quest has you making a run to talk to a number of local leaders on the back of an Elekk – I found this somewhat ironic, as the main cost of a mount is paying for the riding skill… yet a level 11 can ride an Elekk he got on loan? Hmm…

When I reached level 10 and had learned the tame beast ability, I set off for Ironforge to : 1. Pick up a Snow Leopard for a pet and 2. Get presents!

The presents were nothing exciting, just a wierd wand thing, a toy robot, and some food, which was promptly fed to my pet, who is, in what has become tradition, called Erethia. (I still have NO idea where that came from.)

With level 10ish came the time to move to a new stomping ground… Bloodmyst Isle.

Bloodmyst Isle actually has, in my opinion, a sort of… dark beauty about it, caused by the taint of crystals from the Exodar. Everything is, as suggested by the name, overcast by a red tint, which really makes you feel uncomfortable… It’s one thing being lost in a normal forest, nevermind one that looks like it’s about to devour you.

One thing that does irk me about Bloodmyst is the quests. There are so many quests! That is, in many ways, a good thing, but it’s also a bad thing, as my leveling, even in the course of questing, has at times outpaced the gear I was getting from doing the quests! I still enjoy doing them, it’s just a bit of a handful, when you are someone who wants to do every quest available

I’ve also picked up Skinning, which is generating a rather nice cash flow, however, I am stumped as to what to take for my second profession ; I don’t want to do a crafting one, and Herbalism and Mining interfere with my tracking (I -love- my tracking abilites!). I think just picking up mining would be a good idea, as unlike herbalism, it’s pretty easy to figure out where the points will be, keeping tracking interference down to a minimum. Plus, it doesn’t take long to get 20 copper nuggets which sell for roughly the same as a stack of Light Leather which can take ages to get

At the moment, I’m sitting at Hunter 18. A few more levels and I’ll be out of the shiny expansion areas and into the dreary old world areas I’m considering an extended stay in Darkshore, questing, as I really don’t like the Elekk mounts, and would kill for a white Nightsaber, but, we’ll see how far my patience stretches.

A surprise character I ended up concentrating on (great, a fourth XD) is Numinator, a Blood Elf Paladin. Kazura, an RL & FFXI friend got given the game for Christmas, and has started playing as well, so I decided to level one of my numerous “mini characters” with her. Her character (on my realm, her main realm will probably be the one the friend who bought her the game belongs to.) is a Blood Elf Priest, which makes for rather easy fights. With both a Paladin and a Priest, theres more than enough healing power to go around.

It’s somewhat different doing things as a duo. In some ways, it’s a bonus, in others, it can get in the way. For example, in quests that involve killing X amount of enemies, it’s great, as the kill total is shared. In quests involving gather X amount of item, however, it’s a bit more meh, as we have to kill twice as many monsters in order to supply the quest items.

However, overall, it’s been fun so far. At level 5, we both learned Skinning (I swear by skinning.), I took mining and she took Herbalism. Which has, so far, made leveling interesting, with us both dashing off in different directions to harvest items

My only not-previously-mentioned beef with WoW is the people… People in WoW are even worse than FFXI players in some ways. Thank god theres no general channels in FFXI, even passing through a city and hearing some of the stuff in trade chat (OMGWTF DUTCH PEOPLE ARE FAGGITSLOL!!!11 – What? Huh?) makes you worry about the state of the world, as do people who come up to female players and ask them “do u want to fuck me.”

…

Hey, kiddies, that’s just.not.done.

Now, excuse me, I really need to sleep, I’ve been up for like 40 hours! Yay! -dies-

Before I started playing WoW for real (it’s a christmas present), I downloaded the free 10 day trial, for the second time.

This time, instead of focusing on Hunter, as I’d already played Hunter to 20, I tried to focus on Ilthiran, my Tauren Druid.

As usual, levels 1 to 10 were largely uneventful. Wrath, Wrath, Moonfire, melee, loot. Rinse, repeat. Complete Bear Form quest. WIN!

After level 10, I travelled to the Crossroads in the Barrens. On the way I ran into a number of WoW’s equivalent to NMs and got a few snazzy drops.

The last time I played the trial, I was on a realm that started a day or 2 before I had, so I didn’t see any Alliance –> Horde PVP. This time, however, I got to witness a few (coughtonnescough) of Alliance raids on the crossroads.

I’m on a normal world, so I’m not going to see much PVP probably, but it’s something that looks a lot of fun. And quite dangerous

More questing lead me to interesting places, such as Dreadmist Peak, where I couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead of me, and from which I threw myself to near death after 4 Burning Blade enemies spawned to kick my ass after I filled a vial :3

Eventually, I reached level 16, which meant… Aquatic Form!

First, I had to get a Bauble thing from the bottom of Lake Elune’Ara, which was fairly easy. Then, a return to the barrens for the first half of a pendant, which was easy enough to get. After that, however, I had to trek up to Ogrimmar, and take a Zepplin to Undercity, and from there work my way far out to sea to find the second half.

After a return to Moonglade, and from there back to Thunder Bluff, I was given the ability to transform into an angry sea lion! Gripped by wanderlust, I decided to see how far I could go up the coast of Kalimdor… The answer was… not very.

Oops! XD

Apart from the Druid, I did make another Hunter character, a Night Elf again (At this point not expecting to decide to buy the game :3), and once again went through the rigamoralle of getting to level 10 and getting a pet, again, a nightsaber (this time striped!), again, I named her Erethia :3.

Deja Vu struck, and at level 13, a crawler dropped an awesome two handed axe that gave an agility bonus, so… Once again, to the Eastern Kingdoms! This time, however, I did better research and didn’t trek through horde territory to get to Stormwind. Hehe. Instead, took a boat to some wetlands place, and from there ran like crazy to Ironforge, where I learned to wield my snazzy axe, and made a detour to Stormwind for the hell of it.

Since I’m now getting WoW (and Burning Crusade), I’m making a Dranei Hunter… so I rather regret going to the effort to learn how to wield that axe, as, of course, it’s bind on equip. Would have been a good weapon for my new hunter. I plan to finish all my current quests, sell all my gear, and send the money to my Dranei, and then recreat Numiphira as a Priest :3 (I will have a char for all the classes, just for fun. I won’t play all of them much past 10. Just 3 or so )

A THIRD character I want to put some effort into (though not so much as my Hunter or Druid) is Elitret, a Troll (Trolls have AWESOME accents!) Shaman. Not got too far as him, but will put some time and effort into him at some point.

So there we go. What I did on the trial, which is going to be the base on which my actual serious playtime will continue on from.

So, you clicked the link.

Welcome to “What do you mean ‘there’s an octopus on my face’?”, my -shudders to say it- World of Warcraft Blog.

Firstly, a note on the title : Male Draenei say it… apparently. I don’t actually have the game yet, I’m being pre-emptive, since I want to play Draenei and I have messed about on the Trial. I was thinking about “I don’t speak Common”, but since I do want an Alliance character, that’s not particularly fitting. So, I googled. -cringe-

Those (Very few ) of you who read my FFXI blog, don’t be shocked.

I’m not quitting FFXI.

Dear God, no

To my mind, that would be somewhat akin to dropping out of University in year 4 : You’re nearly finished the boring grind, and you’ll (hopefully) open up so many opportunities when you finish, but you go and toss your chances away.

No.Way.In.Hell.

I merely get bored of FFXI sometimes. I get bored of EVERY game sometimes. Lets take a look at the MMORPGs I’ve played and how many times:

FFXI : 4 periods of major playing.
Runescape (lol): 3 Periods.
Tibia : 4 Periods
Phantasy Star Online (Lol, admittedly not on online mode… yay gamecube multiplayer! ): 3 times.

Generally, I play a game for a few months, then get bored for another few, then come back to it. So, my plan is… whilst bored of FFXI… WoW! When bored of WoW.. FFXI!

See? It’ll work perfectly.