I’ve been level 70 in World of Warcraft now for a couple of months.  Since then, my time in game has dwindled to the point where I think I played for maybe three hours total over the last two weeks.

Most of this has been due to a plain old lack of time to play, but there is a part of me that’s not finding a whole lot of things to do in game.  There are the dailies to do, but those to me are the very definition of a grind.  Battlegrounds don’t really appeal to me, nor do the arenas given how badly I get slaughtered by the super twinks.  That leaves running through instances, which I love doing, but generally don’t have the time for on a daily basis.

So what does someone in my situation do?  If I were any sort of rational thinker I’d quit playing MMOs altogether of course, but that’s just crazy talk.  So how have I been spending my limited play time?

For the most part I’m working on my blacksmithing skill, which has proven to be an unending source of pain.  I’ve maxed my mining skill but of course I never kept any of the stuff I mined, so now I’m forced to go back and re-mine the materials I need or buy them off the auction house.  Buying them off the auction house has dwindled my savings to third world levels.

So it was, that I found myself out in Badlands looking for Iron Ore.  I soon stumbled upon a Horde party of three, all in their mid-thirties.  There was a Priest, a Warrior, and some other class I didn’t get a chance to see, whom I’ll call Brave One.

I walked up behind them and with the Priest targeted, cast my chain lightning.  Brave One obviously saw me in my casting animation because he immediately turned and sprinted in the opposite direction.  It was quite hilarious to see; he just bolted off into the distance.  The Priest, taking the full brunt of my chain lightning was down to just a sliver of health, and the Warrior was at about a quarter.  The two of them just sat down and waited for me to finish them off, which I didn’t hesitate to do.

I then continued on my mining excursion and two minutes later came across the same party of Horde.  I walked up behind them, not intending to attack.  Brave One again took off like a shot of lightning.   I guess he doesn’t like dying.  The Priest, in a futile act of defiance cast a fear on me, then mounted up alongside the Warrior and took off.  Once the fear wore off however, I was able to catch up to them easily with my faster mount.  I one-shot the Priest with Frost Shock, then caught up to the Warrior and killed him with an Earth Shock and a few whacks of my hammer.

I used to hate it back when I was lower level and some level 70 knob came around and killed me.  I never understood why they would do it.  Why waste their time?  What were they trying to prove?  Now I am that knob, and I have the answer.  Boredom.  Plain and simple.

Remember last night while running through Scholomance and I ninja-AFK’d causing the group to wipe due to lack of heals?  Remember when I apologized after, informing you that I had to attend to my baby daughter for a  second?

Yeah…  I was actually alt-tabbed out of the game fooling around with my Ventrilo settings trying to figure out why text-to-speech wasn’t working.

After hearing Kuarlos say, “Don’t let me die!”, I flipped back to the game only to see that Kuarlos had indeed died, and so did everyone else.  I then just sat there, making it look like I was AFK.

But I wasn’t.

I just sat there and watched you die.

Then lied about it.

There she was, just lying there, almost peaceful. The anticipation was killing me. We were just moments away from engaging the broodmother of the Black Dragonflight, Onyxia.

When I started playing World of Warcraft six months ago, the one goal I set for myself was to kill Onyxia. I wouldn’t quit playing the game until I did so.

For whatever reason, even without ever seeing her, or even playing the game, I have always considered Onyxia to be the ultimate encounter in WoW. There’s just something epic about a big dragon designed to take on forty level 60 players. Of course, times have changed, and the world has moved on. She’s not the dreaded beast she used to be now that the level cap has increased, and the gear has gotten better. Nevertheless, she’s a symbol of old-school badassery, and I was on a mission to kill her.

The plan for the evening was for our group to finish the final attunement quest in Upper Blackrock Spire. Our group consisted of myself (70 Shaman), Kuarlos (70 Warrior), Insect (54 Warlock), and Anoco (53 Rogue). Our target was General Drakkisath in order to retrieve the Blood of the Black Dragon Champion. We got off to a pretty slow start. Insect and Anoco proved to be very appealing targets for the mobs in the zone, which meant we had to kill everything even remotely in our path.

We eventually arrived at the Rookery, or rather, The Leeroy Jenkins room. I’m not going to lie; I was very tempted to charge in headfirst and run through every single egg. We were already tight on time however, so I decided I’d save that for another day. The room ended up being bad enough even without a tribute to Leeroy, as we were soon overwhelmed by Whelps.

Not long after we received reinforcements, as some other members of the guild had caught up to our point in the attunement quest chain. Joining us were Kalistor (70 Mage), Choober (70 Paladin), and Emer (70 Priest). As a result, the rest of the zone went by rather quickly and we were soon looting the corpse of Drakkisath.

We then headed off to Winterspring to receive our Drakefire Amulet, the key to Onyxia’s Lair. I figured our night was done and was planning to log off, but then I saw “let’s go get Onyxia!” in group chat and we were off to Dustwallow Marsh.

As we zoned in I couldn’t keep from smiling. I was pumped. We blew past the Onyxian Warders and were soon looking down upon Onyxia herself. Kuarlos rattled off a quick summary of the encounter and we charged in.

I was in awe. The entire encounter, from start to finish, was a fitting climax to the entire quest chain. It felt epic, it felt heroic, and it felt like this was the battle to end all battles. It felt how a raid encounter should feel. The only thing that would have made it better would be to do it as part of a 40-man raid of level 60s. That would be amazing.

As it was, the fight went smoothly. Anoco and Insect, the only non-70s in the raid unfortunately did not live through the entire fight, although they managed to stay alive much longer than anyone else predicted. They also managed to stay alive longer than poor Kuarlos, our fearless raid leader. I actually died towards the end as well, but thanks to Insect’s Soulstone, I was able to get back into the fight. Thanks Insect! See… you do have a purpose!

Onyxia eventually fell and dropped some nice loot for the lowbies. My highly regarded status as MMO Blogger Extraordinaire meant I got to have the privilege of looting Onyxia’s head and taking it to Stormwind. Once again, I and my friends were the heroes of Azeroth!

Now that I’ve accomplished the one thing I wanted to do above all else in WoW, what’s next? Well, that one encounter has renewed my interest in WoW like I wouldn’t have anticipated. I’m now even more pumped to hit up some of the old world content, particularly Molten Core and a little elemental named Ragnaros. It’s kind of funny that I’m more excited about doing this “old stuff” more than I am Wrath of the Lich King.

After a very busy week I was finally able to spend some time in World of Warcraft. Our quest for Onyxia attunement continued with a couple forays into Blackrock Depths. Once we had everyone in our little group caught up, we initiated the Jail Break! quest which had us escorting Marshal Windsor through a section of the zone.

I imagine that “back in the day” this quest would have been a colossal pain in the posterior. Being level 70 however makes the whole procedure quite trivial however, and it didn’t take too long for the Marshal to make his rounds and for us to head to Stormwind for the next part of the quest.

This is the kind of quest chain I really enjoy, starting out small and inconspicuous, only to reveal itself as an epic, world-changing event. Best of all, is that the results of our actions weren’t just limited to our little group. The next quest had us walk with Marshal Windsor as he traveled from the gates of Stormwind, through the city to Stormwind Keep. It’s a slow walk through the city which anyone around can see. When Marshal Windsor passed by any of the city guards, they would stop and salute him and emote what an honour it was to be in the presence of such a legendary figure.

As we approached the Keep, a couple other players obviously recognized what we were doing and started to follow us. One of the observers applauded us and said how great it was to see someone “actually doing the Onyxia chain”. It had been years since he’d seen it.

So now we’re off to Upper Blackrock Spire which I got the key for a little while ago. Hopefully we’ll be taking on Onyxia herself shortly.

So… how do you think Kuarlos feels about my new role as healer?