To answer my own question of “Now What?“, I have given my freshly level-capped Frost Mage the cold shoulder and started a new character, this time an Orc Warrior.

The highest that I’ve leveled a Horde character is 23, so I haven’t seen a whole lot of the Horde side of the game, and I suppose with the Cataclysm coming soon, this will be my last chance to see the “old world” from the Horde perspective.  I’m guessing I’ll have about two months before Cataclysm comes out, so I don’t think I’ll get too far with this Warrior before I’m re-rolling yet again to see the Cataclysm stuff.

This new character of mine is level 17 as of this writing.  I’m actually on vacation at the moment, visiting with my sister, and in what must count as one of the saddest things I’ve done in a while, I downloaded the WoW client to her MacBook Pro within minutes of arriving here.  Like a junkie I just need my fix.  My excuse is that I’m an early riser and I’ve been able to play while waiting for everyone else to wake up.

The hardest part has been playing without a mouse, using only the touchpad.  That has taken some getting used to.  I’ll be back home in just a couple of days however, where I will eagerly await the arrival of my new PC.  I ordered an Alienware from Dell and the tracking information tells me it should be arriving the day after I get home.  WoW may actually take a back seat once the PC arrives, as I’ve been wanting to play Dragon Age for some time, but couldn’t bring myself to do it on my aging PC.  There are a few other games in my pile that I’ll be looking to check out on the new hardware as well.  Should be fun.

My Mage hit level 80 last night in World of Warcraft, marking the first time that I’ve had more than one character at the level cap since I started playing MMOs.

I haven’t been playing my computer much these days, contributing to the complete lack of updates to this site, but I’ve been pecking away at my Mage’s levelling here and there.  The climb from 75 to 80 actually took much longer and felt more grindy than I had remembered with my first character; all those Northrend quests start to blend into each other and feel the same the more you do.  Last night though, thanks to a friend playing his level 80 Paladin, I whipped through a bunch of quests and did a couple of Argent Tournament events and finished off the final three-quarters needed to hit 80.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do now though.  I think for a little while I’ll try to gear up as much as I can, but I can see that getting old for me really fast.  I could also try going back to my 80 Shaman who’s been neglected ever since I started playing the Mage, but I’d be doing the same thing: grinding for gear.  I’ve never levelled a Horde character… but do I really want to do that now?

Cataclysm needs to hurry up and get here.

Deep in the bowels of the storage area under our basement stairs I have three cardboard boxes that were tucked away when we moved into our house seven years ago.  Within these boxes are smaller boxes of computer games that I purchased many moons before that.  I was struck by a bit of nostalgia the other day so I burrowed my way into the storage area and dug out those boxes and found some great stuff.

Sometime around the mid nineties, the Office Depot near me had a constantly revolving bargain bin of computer games.  I visited the store almost weekly just to check out what they had.  Often there wouldn’t be much of interest, but just as often there’d be a real gem in there.  These three cardboard boxes are full of games I mostly bought on the cheap from Office Depot.

Pictured above are some of the role-playing games among this old stash of mine, some of which I’ve got some very fond memories of.  Included in the picture are:

• Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra
• Might and Magic V: Darkside of Xeen
• Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven
• Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos
• Entomorph: Plague of the Darkfall
• The Summoning
• Eye of the Beholder
• Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon
• Eye of the Beholder III: Assault on Myth Drannor
• Daemonsgate
• Unlimited Adventures: Fantasy Construction Kit
• Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant
• The Complete Ultima VII
• Dungeon Hack
• Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny

One thing led to another and I soon found myself installing these games on my PC with the help of DosBox.  I’m kind of curious to see if I’ll be able to bring myself to play some of these again, or if their time has long past.  I never did play Ultima VII and that’s one game that I’d definitely like to check out.

The one thing that immediately stands out for me is how awesome most of the manuals are with these games.   You definitely don’t see manuals like these any more.  They’ve got pages upon pages of lore, followed by detailed references on the game mechanics, and some even include designer’s notes, which is something I really miss in games these days.

I’m going to try and spend an hour or two with each of these games and post my impressions here over the next little while.  Should be fun.  I hope.

I’m writing this post on March 29, 2010.  I’m just three days away from telling my friends that I’ve been secretly playing World of Warcraft since January.

As I write this, my Mage is just half a bubble away from level 71 after doing just over half of the quests in Howling Fjord.  In a previous post I talked about how fast the leveling has been since hitting 58 and entering outland.  Since hitting 70 however, my progress seems to be moving at a snails pace.  I can feel my motivation waning as I turn in quest after quest.  I’m sure that part of it has to do with the fact that in relative terms, it wasn’t all that long ago that I quested through Howling Fjord on my main character.  I can remember each quest as I receive them, and it seems the further along I go, the more I’m saying to myself, “ugh, not this one”.     The Dungeon Finder hasn’t been much help either because after using it four times since level 70, each time it’s put me in Utgarde Keep, which I find to be a fairly boring dungeon.  I’m looking forward to finishing up the quests there and getting the heck out of dodge.  I’d really like to avoid Borean Tundra but I suspect I’ll head there for a level or two.

It’s funny though, because throughout this whole leveling process, I kept telling myself, “just get to Northrend, and everything will be gravy”, but now that I’m in Northrend, I’ve found it harder to motivate myself to continue.  The leveling pace seems to have taken a dramatic drop and I really miss seeing that experience bar quickly moving to towards the right of my screen.

I’m writing this post on March 22, 2010.  I’ve secretly been playing World of Warcraft since January.  In just ten days I’ll be making it public that I’ve been playing.

I moved on to the Howling Fjord at level 68 as I had planned and quickly steamrolled my way to level 69.  A few more quests later along with a run through Utgarde Keep and I hit level 70.  I must say, it feels good to get there because I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Just ten more levels to go.

Aside from the levels, there are a few other goals I want to achieve which will serve as carrots to lead me on.  First of which is getting the gold necessary to purchase my artisan flying skill, followed cold weather flying.  The two of those will cost me 6000 gold, of which I currently have about 350.

Speaking of money, I made quite possibly the easiest 20 gold I’ve ever made in WoW.  While leveling my crafting skills in Ironforge I noticed a call in general chat from someone in Stormwind looking for a port to Theramore.  He was paying 20 gold.  I immediately grouped up with him, portaled to Stormwind, met up with him, collected my 20 gold, and opened the portal to Theramore.  This to me, was ridiculous.  I could understand if he was a low level character who wouldn’t otherwise survive the trip, but he was level 80.  Also, Theramore isn’t that far from Stormwind really.  Just take the tram to Ironforge then fly to Menethil Harbor.  Once there, Theramore is just a quick boat trip away.  I guess he just wanted to save himself five minutes.  Lucky me.

I’ve also started leveling up my Leatherworking profession, mostly because my bank was full of leather that I’ve skinned since I started this character and I needed to free up space.  It didn’t take me long to realize that once again I can potentially profit off other peoples laziness.  I was short a stack of Heavy Leather so I checked the auction house and it was selling for 38 gold for a stack.  That seemed insane to me.  I took a quick trip to Dustwallow Marsh and started killing and skinning everything I saw in the Wyrmbog area.  Not long after, I had all the the heavy leather I needed (and more) along with seven pieces of Heavy Hide and five pieces of Thick Hide.  The Heavy and Thick Hides also sell for crazy amounts on my server.  A stack of ten Heavy Hide is listed at 100 gold on the auction house.  I would guess I could have a stack in less than an hours time, maybe slightly more.

My adventure leveling may take a bit of a hit over the next few days as I try to farm and sell all this stuff.