Alcaras' Blog

Back in early October, I resubscribed to WoW after a summer away.

I had left my Warrior, Alcashi, at 79.5 or so. Once I resub’d, I painlessly leveled to 80 in just a few wins of Alterac Valley, while questing to unlock the phase for the Ebon Blade tabard. Queue-from-anywhere is truly a wonderful thing (though enabling it to work from within battlegrounds would seal the deal).

A fresh 80, I took to running easy heroics right away, skipping any time in normal instances. After a bit of research and advice from friends, I decided it best to go Arms initially as it would provide the best dps with my craptastic gear.

I geared up quickly, almost stupidly quickly. A Naxx 10 kitted me out in better gear, and a bunch of Trial of the Champion runs on normal, along with consistent heroic runs soon had me sporting solid gear. All that eluded me was a decent weapon, as I still used my trusty Heirloom Arcanite Reaper.

A pug Uld10 that ended up wiping diastrously on Mimiron provided Stormedge, and soon after Edge of Ruin dropped in Heroic Trial of the Champion. With two solid two-handers, I respec’d Fury.

Since then it’s been remarkably smooth sailing — Mal’Ganis has a solid community of intelligent players thanks largely the presence of Elitist Jerks on the server, which makes finding groups far less painful than it would otherwise be.

I’m still a bit surprised how easily and painlessly I geared up, and how I’ve been able to experience the latest and greatest content so quickly (I’ve run both Trial of the Crusader 10 and 25 man several times). That said, I haven’t done the Heroic versions of either size raid instance yet, nor have I even finished a complete Ulduar run, let alone done a hard mode there (spent a rather amusing hour trying to help do Yogg+1, and just watching people walk into clouds over and over again). But I’m not an achievement whore, and could care less about nerd points (not that I wouldn’t do hard modes if I had a consistent group to do them, but it’s not something I care enough about to organize a consistent group for).

Diminishing returns on advancement means I’d rather level another character to 80 (I have quite a stable between 60 and 70) and learn a new class rather than perfect one character, especially as there’s just one major content patch (Icecrown) before Cataclysm, and with Emblems of Triumph set to drop from heroics next patch, it shouldn’t be too hard to get geared out enough to experience the normal versions of the Icecrown raids. Seeing Arthas won’t be restricted to just the hardest of the hard modes, thankfully.

All in all, I’m impressed by WoW’s continued polish and accessibility, even to a serious casual player like myself.

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