I’m writing this post on February 19, 2010.  My friends still don’t know that I’ve been playing World of Warcraft again.

As soon as I hit level 58 (three days ago) I marched on through the Dark Portal and entered Outland.  It’s been a while since I’ve been there, but I remember liking the levelling experience there on my main character and I’ve been eagerly anticipating my return.  So far I haven’t been disappointed.

I actually like Hellfire Peninsula; it’s got a nice theme to it and it’s nice and open and full of quests.  The XP has come in bunches and after just a few short play sessions there, I’m already level 61 as of this morning.  I’ve also managed to replace a decent chunk of my gear in the mean time.

The main difference I’m seeing now in Outland is that the open world PvP is much more active.  I’ve been ganked more times in Hellfire Peninsula over the past couple of days than I had been all the way from level 1 to 58 in Azeroth.  I’m still trying to figure out exactly what level 80s are doing hanging out in this zone, but whatever the reason, my little Mage doesn’t stand a chance against them.

The other night a group of Horde characters were continually attacking Honor Hold.  I was just returning to the inn after completing some quests when I walked through an area of effect spell going on.  My water elemental immediately went off and attacked whoever it was that laid the AoE down as I sheepishly crawled into the inn and hid.  A couple seconds later, thanks to my elemental, I scored a killing blow on a Death Knight, giving me the honor kill, and also scratching off Death Knight on the “touch of class” achievement.  All while I was cowering behind the counter with the innkeeper.

The Dungeon Finder has once again come in handy.  I’ve run through Hellfire Ramparts twice already, both times getting some nice gear upgrades.  The first time through was with a power group and we steam-rolled through the place at a crazy-fast pace.  The only problem with the group was the presence of a stereotypical “uber player” who knew everything and kept pulling his own mobs regardless of what the tank was doing.  When others in the group called him on it he responded with any number of vulgarities.  I was surprised not to see a kick-vote.  The second group was much better, despite taking much longer to work our way through the instance.  Everyone was very friendly and there was a lot more chatter than is normal for a dungeon finder group.

I’m really enjoying the pace of levelling so far; three levels in just over three play sessions.  I hope I’m not being overly optimistic in thinking I’ll be 70 in about two weeks, depending on how much I get to play.

I’m writing this post on February 15, 2010.  My friends still don’t know that I’ve been playing World of Warcraft again, although for a brief moment I considered letting the cat out of the bag.

As I was leaving work today my friend stopped me to say that he was going to be running a couple of my other friends’ lower level alts through Molten Core.  For a brief second I thought about telling him that I’ve been playing again so that I could bring my Mage to the party.  Ultimately I decided to let it go, thinking I’ll have more fun revealing that I’ve been secretly playing when my alt is closer to level 80.  It sure would be cool to get the Molten Core achievement on the Mage though, not to mention any possible epics that would drop.  The XP would probably be crazy as well.  Ah well.

I’m just about to log in and hopefully I’ll get into a good dungeon finder group.  I’m currently just a few bars away from level 58, which means that Outland is just around the corner for me.  The levelling has definitely gone faster than when I first played through to 80.  I can remember spending time in Western and Eastern Plaguelands, Silithus, Un’Goro Crater, as well as Blasted Lands and Searing Gorge.  This time however, I haven’t set foot in any of those zones except for a few quests in Blasted Lands and Searing Gorge.  Once I hit 58 (tonight hopefully), I’ll say goodbye to questing in Azeroth for a while.

I’m writing this post on February 11, 2010.  My friends still don’t know that I’ve been playing World of Warcraft again, although one of them is getting nosey.

I was chatting via email with the friend whose Warrior is on the same server as my Mage.  He was stuck at work on the night shift while I was happily questing in the Blasted Lands.  I asked him how his shift was going and he says, “not bad… have you resubscribed to WoW yet?”, which seemed totally random.  Why was he asking that?  Does he know something?  I replied, “yes, in fact I’m playing right now” which wasn’t a lie.  I followed it up with, “I just solo’d Arthas” which, of course, would be a definite lie, but it helped throw him off my trail a little bit.

As for the game itself, I managed to ding level 55 and even got three quarters of the way to 56.  I’m hoping by the end of this coming weekend I’ll hit 58 so I can get into Outland.  I remember really enjoying Outland and also remember the journey from level 60 to 70 didn’t take very long at all.  If I can get to 70 before revealing to my friends that I’ve been playing I’ll be ecstatic.

I’m really having fun playing again, which only confirms in my mind that I enjoy the leveling process much more than the end-game.

I’m writing this post on February 10, 2010.  My friends still don’t know that I’ve started playing World of Warcraft again… could that change soon?

When my friend arrived at work this afternoon he mentioned that he logged into his Warrior character for the first time in ages.  That Warrior character resides on the same server as the Mage that I’m secretly playing.  I’m quite certain that the Mage is on his friends friend list.  He then proceeded to ask me if my Mage was still on that server…

He claims that he only logged on to that character because his normal server still hadn’t come up from patch day and that he doesn’t plan on playing the Warrior, but still.  If I happened to be playing when he decides to log on to the Warrior out of the blue, my whole jig could be up!  I’m getting increasingly paranoid that one of my doofus friends is going to look my mage up on the armory for some stupid reason.

Fortunately my friend is currently working the night shift, so the chances of me being logged in while he’s on his Warrior is extremely slim… I still don’t like it though.

I’m writing this post on February 8, 2010.  My friends still don’t know that I’ve started playing World of Warcraft again.  I’ve managed so far to refrain from logging in to my main character at all (highest risk of detection), choosing instead to play as my Mage.  At the time of this writing he is level 55.  I had hoped to be 58 and into Outlands by this point, but I’ll have to push that goal back a week or so.

Ever since reaching level 50 I’ve been spending a lot of time in Blackrock Depths, courtesy of the random dungeon finder.  Typically, the groups haven’t stayed in the zone for long, choosing to zone out after clearing the prison area and killing High Interrogator Gerstahn.  A couple of other times the group has also done the Ring of Law, but for the most part, the groups have seemed content to get out of the zone as quickly as possible.  The other night however, I got put into a group that wanted to clear the entire zone.  We ultimately didn’t make it, stopping after killing Watchman Doomgrip in the vault.  It was late at that point and once one of the party members left, the group disintegrated.

It was still nice to see a lot more of the zone, which I’d rank right up towards the top of my favourite dungeons list.  Everything about it feels very epic, from the size of the zone itself, to all of the bosses, and of course all of that lava, which movies and games have taught me is the hallmark of evil zones.  It’s clearly not as difficult as it once was, as our group of low fifties players tore through it without much difficulty.  I’ve read comments from a few years ago that talk about the difficulty of bosses like Bael’Gar (pictured above), and how you’ll need to be prepared for a “long fight”.  For us, he went down in under a minute.

Once again, it would have been nice to see the zone back in its heyday, but the XP was still great, and that’s good enough for me at the moment.  I gained an entire level during our extended foray into the dungeon.  It would be nice to finish the entire zone at level though, I’m just not going to hold my breath on that one.