Post three; or "Land, Ho!"

Finally made it to the 20's and out of the x-myst isles, which were a bit of a let down overall in terms of greediness. Having previously played the first two Blood Elf starting zones, and walked away with a blue ring and blue weapon, (plus reputation rewards including blue back piece) the rewards for the major storyline quest of the Draenei felt a little...lacking. I would have thought that a fanfare reception of the "heroes of the Draenei" would come with something a little better than a couple rings our leader fished out of a gumball machine. Rasaiel is a jewel crafter and had both her and myself in better rings and amulets at level 20 than that quest could offer.

Well, at least we got saluted by an Elekk. *yay*

interruption: this conquest was halted for several days due to my PC deciding it didn't like to power up any more. A new processor and motherboard later, I'm now playing the game on a dual-core PC and can't manage to get the framerate to dip below 60 fps. This game is gorgeous.

So last night saw our escape from the ridiculously red island (with quite a flashy story-driven quest to wrap it all up, I really hope more quests are like that in Outland as well) and a return to familiar territory, Ashenvale. For grins (and my final level 20 xp) we poked our heads into the Black Fathom Deeps entry cave and killed several elites, proving to ourselves that we can handle 2 same-level elites at a time. With my current skillset I feel well-equipped to heal a dungeon run, having tested this on a leather-wearing tank and her furry pet :) My only concern would be whether I had enough mana for longer-length fights, but I feel it's all a bit trivial anyway as I haven't seen enough people in the zone to ever have enough for a dungeon run. Unless I wanted to be the sole healer for a 4-hunter attack party...

On the general subject of "how the game plays for a lowbie," I wonder if the level 70 playerbase isn't taking some of the fun out of the game for any new players that might happen to wander into this giant machine of a game. Specifically, I've noticed the AH prices of fairly low level (10-14) items being set ridiculously high (in the 2-3 gold range), which I presume is priced for alts of level 70's with plenty of gold to burn. As Rasaiel and Pathos have no level 70 mains to fund their adventures, almost all gear upgrades have to come from quests or random world drops (or crafting, my cute little jewel crafter is awesome), as it's not very feasible to be spending 3g on a weapon you'll ultimately upgrade again in 2 days' time.

As other players and bloggers have done before me, I generally lament the state of old-world low level dungeon runs. I see posts (both offering and requesting) for 2-man dungeon runs with a level 40-60 and an appropriate-for-the-zone level character. This feels like such a bastardization of the enjoyment my wife and I used to have as we leveled through the game. Back in the day, I remember having two or three different groups queuing up for Deadmines and BFD, Stormwind was always abuzz with people looking for more Stockades members, and soda only cost 5 cents. Also, there wasn't any sound on the movies, they put the speech in separate frames they would flash you after any dialog happened.

I'm secretly hoping that we'll see more and more people per zone as we level higher, given that there's more of a time requirement at each subsequent level before you can move on. The peace and quiet is very helpful for gather and kill quests, but if we never see anyone else, nor run any dungeons with surprisingly decent players, it'll be hard to ever make any new friends in the world of Azeroth.