Back to basics

I never read blogs over the weekends. It's more of a 'do in your free time at work' thing. Usually I end up with a bunch of new posts to read as I do read quite a few other blogs, some of which will have multiple posts per day.

Today was a bit of a surprise as my normal barrage of new blog posts to read was a lot smaller than usual. Many bloggers didn't post this weekend, and the ones that did either kept it short or just had one new post. I'm not sure what the deal is. It doesn't seem to be people getting burnt out, more like with a new expansion coming most people just aren't as motivated since most of what they accomplish now will be obselete in a few months.

I guess I'm lucky in that respect since pretty much all the leveling I do will only further my characters along in the game, I'm just holding off on my level 60+ characters in hopes that Outland leveling will be accelerated in the expansion.

This weekend I got to relearn how to be a hunter again, although not for much longer as I can already see the end of my rested XP bar. It actually feels a little strange gaining two levels in the amount of time it would take to get about half a level in Outland. Really makes you notice how much faster the leveling is before you hit 60 now.

To recap, I finished up Tanaris pretty quickly with my hunter, then moved on to Un'Goro crater. I'm really starting to remember what made being a hunter so fun. I can pretty much solo anything within 4 levels of me, maybe even more, I just haven't tried it yet.

I started out at level 51 at the beginning of the weekend and am now most of the way through level 53 and should be 54 very soon. The only drawback is when you level this fast you run out of that rested bonus fast too. I'm already closing in on it, and since my strategy is to level characters only when they have rested bonus, I may be switching over to the shammy sooner than I may have liked.

One advantage with my hunter is that she is a dual gatherer, with skinning and herbalism. The drawback is she never really leveled herbalism much and I can't really pick any of what I see in the areas I'm questing in. Good thing I have no alchemists that need farming, but I'm not really looking forward to farming a bunch of zones to get to where I need to be.

The plus side is I haven't managed to level my druid's leatherworking past 300 yet so he is stuck with lots of knothide leather that he can't use. Well now that my hunter is far enough along he's getting heavy and rugged leather from all those dinosaurs and gorillas in Un'Goro, meaning he can give it over to the druid and maybe I'll eventually push my leatherworking into the higher levels.

If my leveling keeps going at this rate I could very well have 5 characters over level 60 by the time the new expansion comes out, and I might even be able to find some time to level my little Hordies a too.