Getting Worgenized

It's been a funny couple of days.

To allow for new Cata characters I've split my Alliance and Horde characters onto different accounts (which made for some interesting interaction with officers of the Horde-side guild I'm in as the account-move removes guild affiliation). All done now though, so space for a new Worgen (and A N Other, who may be a dwarf Shaman - I'm still deciding) and for sundry gobbos.

I finally got the last of my Vanilla characters to 80 at about 9:30pm on Monday (so about 90 minutes before the Cata launch). This young lady, Muirrin, began life as a Tauren male - Eben - but he got lonely and race-changed. He's been kicking around since the summer of 2005 (when he reached level 35 and got stuck in a rut) so it's one of the longest climbs to the level cap of any of my toons.

My Cata boxes didn't arrive on Monday (but more on those in a mo) nor did those of several other guildies so we decided to hit various dungerons for rep, reward and quest completions. We were in Drak Tharon Keep when the masses in Stormwind were asked to log off to allow Cata to be activated (only to not get on as the longin servers were swamped) and weren't booted off. As such, we emerged from DTK (having noticed Guild Rep starting to appear) to a fairly quiet Steamwheedle Cartel.

My door buzzer rang at about 10am on Tuesday morning, announcing the arrival of my CE, and as I was walking to pick up the doorphone and hit the unlock, the postman pushed my normal copy through the letterbox. Given the standard copy was posted on Friday and the CE on Monday, what are the odds both would arrive within 30 seconds of each other ... :)

Andro (and Muirrin) spent a while wandering round Vashj'ir on Tuesday afternoon - I knew of a particular bottleneck that I wanted to get them past before the ravening hordes came out of school in the late afternoon, and once that was done (and Muirrin hitting 81, ironic given she'd just dinged 80 ...) Muirrin headed back to the peace and quiet of the old world to complete quests in Grizzly Hills and Storm Peaks; while mob-kill XP has been reduced to 10% of what it was, quest XP hasn't so she netted another half-level completing Grizzly Hills and Storm Peaks. It was nice to get the achievements (and gold) for this but the main reason was rep, specifically Alliance Vanguard as she wants the chopper schematic. She's almost there - just 8k left, which hopefully can be sorted with dailys, Tournament quests and some "retro" heroics.

The population shift to the new zones has had another effect: Less competition for rare spawns. Andro netted Old Crystalbark, Griegen and Dirkee (in all three cases Muirrin spotted them first and I switched to Andro to hunt them down). Maebh, my hunter, has continued her quest for pets (specifically Aotona and Skoll), and while Aotona still eludes her (save for finding the bird dead on Saturday) she finally bagged Skoll, completing her set of all four Northrend spirit beasts (now the two Cata ones to get ...)

She's been making various sorties around Storm peaks looking for him (since I know the spawn points) and noted they were camped solid all weekend. Things were quieter yesterday, but still no joy. I decided on one last pass before bed and turned up zip. I contemplated logging off in an inn but thought nah, I'll do my usual trick of the last fortnight and log at the spawn point overlooking Brunnhildar Village. I was just landing and pop. He appeared in front of me. Addrenalin kicked in and I made a hash of the first tame attempt but took a deep breath and dropped a trap and managed to grab him at the second try. Heart pounding and hands trembling was probably not the best thing at bed time ...

So I decided to push my baby Worgen through the first few levels, reaching the point where she was in the village and thus had access to the mailbox (and heirlooms) and to profession trainers.

I'm in two minds about pushing towards 85. Yes, Muirrin is 81 and we have a couple of 82s (and one 83) in the guild - the Realm-First 85 was about 1pm, 14 hours after launch, so I expect some in the guild will be there before the weekend. I saw much of Vashj'ir and Hyjal in the beta so the explorer in me isn't chomping at the bit and I'd like to savor the zones (and the other three) rather than rushing through them. I'll probably take two 80s through each of the starter zones (initially at least - Andro will aim to do them all, achievement junkie that she is) but given they'll be mobbed, I (well, Muirrin at least) may continue to lurk in the old world for a little while, making the most of the peace and quiet.