The morning after

So, as you all know The Burning Crusade launched yesterday. Before I dive into my thoughts on that I'd like to catch you with what I've been doing since my last post.

I've primarily focused on my hunter, Laic, I manage to get him up to 51. Ran an AV for the spear, dropped some coin at the AH for new gear etc. Laic is sitting on several Sunken Temple quests so I'm hoping that one run through would get him to 52.

Picked up my druid, Azariah, who I'd parked at 12 many months ago. Levelled him to 18 so that I could group with my wifes Warlock. I've been fortunate that I've been able to get her to play a lot more recently, so that pair has made it up level 23/24. I've got to say that I really do enjoy the druid in a group. I can already tell though that this is a much more difficult class to master than the rogue and hunter. Not that they were easy, but with the druid you have to balance each of their very distinct roles.

Sakuran was parked in front of the Dark Portal for several weeks waiting in anticipation.

So, back to the Burning Crusade.

Install went smoothly on all my machines. Stormrage was a fairly large queue (> 500 when I logged on), which isn't entirely surprising given that it was expansion day. First thing I did was roll my Dreanai. A male Paladin name Zydari and a female Shaman named Zodari. My wife also rolled a female Shaman named Zydaria (original FTW). So we spent much of the evening levelling my Paladin and her Shaman to 5. Yeah, that's right, 5. There were so many other Draenai there that we had to camp spawn points for the quests that required you to get so many drops due to the insane amount of competition for kills. I'm sure that in time it will ease out, but man, that was a long time to get those first 5 levels.

After my wife went to bed I logged on Sakuran and gathered quests in Honor Hold. Upgrade my Leatherworking, Skinning, and First Aid to the new cap (10g each!). Worked on three quests, kill 20 Fel Orcs, gather 1 tailsman for other orcs and light smoke signals at 4 towers. The lag in the Outland was nearly unbearable. For a class that depends on timing it made it very difficult. Sneaking up behind and enemy mob is one thing, but with the lag it was very easy to walk through the mob blowing your opening. Competition for kills was pretty intense here also. An Tauren Shaman with the Hand of Ragnaros and I ended up sharing one spawn point, he got the casters and I killed the melee. On a PvP server I'm sure it's a blood fest.

After not thuoughly enjoying the lag I decided to mount up and find Shattrah City. This gave me more of an opportunity to appreciate the upgraded graphics. Zangermarsh and Shattrah City are simply beautiful. Hellfire Pennisula has an amazing sky to look at, but the former zones are more environmentally appealing.

Interestingly, I didn't feel rushing through quests or grinding XP on Sakuran. Now that I'm able to level again, I intend to take my time. I really did rush a lot with her to get to 60, but I think I might focus more on enjoyment this time around. Do some quests, work on some professions, run some instances... You know enjoy the game.

This AM Stormrage was down so I rolled a Blood Elf Rogue (Chairi, Female) on Twisting Nether. I was curious to see how broken their racial ability is, and I"m here to say that it isn't. Yeah it's better than other races racials, but not by much. For a rogue you only get 10 energy per manatap, which is on a 30 second cooldown. That amounts to 3 seconds worth of extra energy every 90 seconds. I'm sure there will be a few PvP instances where it will be useful, but no more than the orc racial stun resist or the dwarf stone form. Mechanincs aside, the Blood Elves are pretty. The Draenai are certainly attractive in a alien way, but I do like the blood elves. And after reading all the QQ about the beefed up male Blood Elf, I certainly wouldn't have guessed it. They don't look like the male humans. They're still idealized, but not to the extreme that the other males are.