Exploring, Crafting, and Friends
stargrace 
Last night was a quiet night. My shaman reached level 10, which means she was sent back to her homeland of Azuremyst Isle, to do a quest for a fire totem. The quest itself was fun, but involved walking from one end of the continent to the other. Twice. Not so much fun. I suppose at low levels games don’t really have much for you to do except be involved in the length of time it takes you to travel from place to place. One thing world of warcraft has done wonderfully (even more so then Vanguard, but on a smaller scale I personally think) is make the world feel like an actual world. I lamented often over how EQ2 feels like zones. Lots of little zones all smushed together to make a world. You zone from one end of the city to the other, you take bells to get to areas, and yes the newest expansion does have some wide open areas, but you still have to zone to get to any of them. World of Warcraft and Vanguard attempt ‘seamless’ zoning. Vanguard stutters a bit as you cross ‘chunks’ and isn’t exactly seamless, but they still do a wonderful job. World of warcraft still has zone lines as you cross continents, but the realms aside from that (and instances of course) are pretty smooth. In an mmo that is one huge factor that draws me in.
In any case, I did my level 10 quest, Daegon did his level 10 warrior quest (obtaining his defensive stance as well as a new shiny weapon) Gozad did his level 10 hunter quest (now being able to charm pets, one of the key rolls of a hunter) and Rumorr took some time away to work on wife faction which none of us could fault him for.
My 47 hunter and 44 priest both reside on the Uther server now along with my level 11 shaman, and so as Daegon and Gozad ran around doing their level 10 quests, I figured I’d go farming some lowbie instances for loot to pass off to everyone. One of my favorite zones in the game, Deadmines, was also one I’d not been to in a very long time. It was my first experience with an ‘instance’ in World of Warcraft, way back when and I remember it fondly. By the end my bags were stuffed with wool, macaw cages, swords, and various other goodies. I swear every named dropped their rare blue, something I don’t remember them doing so easily in the past. I regretted not having the group along with me, to take all of the BoP blues that kept dropping since my hunter is a 300 skinner, 212 leatherworker.
I actually had to look up some crafting guides last night, which was new to me. Things in WoW are pretty simple – but I had no idea if skinning or leatherworking went up over 300 now with the release of BC some time ago. Turns out they did. I need level55 though in order to raise my skinning any higher, as Master skinner is only obtainable in the Outlands. I need to raise my leatherworking a little higher first before I become too concerned with where to go for that. It’s nice being a higher level, as I can make leather items for my shaman, Gozad’s hunter, and also Rumorr’s druid. The 44 priest is also a tailor / enchanter combination. Though I recently sold off most of her mats in order to bring in a little coin. There was no use for me to be carting around so much stuff that I couldn’t even use right now. I’ll have time to gather it all later.
All in all it may have been a quiet night, and not a whole lot was accomplished, but I still had a lot of fun none the less. I plan on running the group through Deadmines when they have the quest chains, and today may farm Stockades. Another old zone but still lots of fun. I’d still like to do WC and even SFK, but those are both in Horde territory, so it’ll take a little work not only to get there, but to make sure we’re not all going to turn into Horde fodder along the way. Certianly good times though, good times.