Pet Battles, iLevels, and Pandas – Oh My! #WoW
stargrace 
This weekend I spent most of my game time in World of Warcraft – something I had not intended on but seemed to just happen. It began innocently enough, with me working on pet battles. At this moment I have 151 pets in my collection. I joined Warcraftpets.com some time ago and forgot just how much I love the site. I managed to get my first team to level 11, and completed a bunch of quests for pet trainers. I won an item that allowed me to upgrade any beast pet to rare, then learned later you can trade them if you don’t want to upgrade a beast pet. My team (so far) consists of Lil’ XT, Scooter the snail, and the Onyxian Whelpling. The weak link in the team is Scooter but I base that on the fact that he’s weak to the encounters I’ve been facing. When he’s fighting flying creatures he does quite well, and he has a lot of HP in order to survive encounters. Lil’ XT is my tank, as long as the encounter is not something he is weak to, chances are he can solo it. I’m trying to work up to the current pet level cap (25) on at least 15 pets so that I can partake in the celestial battles. I have a ways to go yet.
Speaking of celestials. When I returned to the game I was sitting on an ilevel of about 476, that was back in March. This weekend I spent a lot of time on the Timeless Isle, and am now sitting at 508 ilevel. It’s still no where near where I would like it to be, but it is a start, and I’m having a lot of fun. I really like the fact that I can ‘farm’ loot and gear for my alts by playing my main character. Of course none of my alts are even slightly close to level 90 yet, but one day I hope to get them there, and it’s comforting to know that I won’t necessarily have to grind the exact same quests to gear up that I’m currently doing. I like this process a lot, and to be honest it’s probably also one of the main issues I have with EQ2’s latest expansion, Tears of Veeshan. Unless your alt happens to use the exact same gear as your main character you are forced to complete the exact same quests in the exact same timeline that you just did on your main. When you have as many alts as I do, this makes for a painful experience.
I appreciate the fact that I don’t HAVE to raid in order to earn Valor points. I did partake in the first Siege of Orgrimmar that was unlocked to me, but I didn’t feel like dealing with LFRaid over the weekend, so I did my dailies, some scenario, and earned my valor that way. Choices are great.
All in all it was incredibly relaxing, very fun, and I’m surprised. WoW gets a bad rap from a lot of people that I know but it’s not ALL bad and sometimes it is exactly what you’re looking for.