Caught up

I knew it would happen, just sort of hoped it wouldn't be so soon. I caught up with my rested XP bonus on my hunter. I have always had a rule ever since starting my first alt that I would switch to a different character every time I got out of the blue, and while sometimes I'll finish that one quest first, I never keep playing long enough for it to matter much.

What I did manage to do was make it to level 56 first, which means I went up 5 levels in a couple weeks, not bad. To recap, I finished what I had left of Tanaris, went through Un'Goro, did the few quests available in Azshara, made my way thorugh Felwood and am now sitting pretty in the Western Plaguelands, ready to start it up again. Actually I better find an inn to stay at so I can get back to it sooner.

On to my next character in line, and that's the shaman. I'm not sure exactly where she's at, but I'm thinking there are a few quests in Feralas I need to do before she's ready to continue on. What I'm looking forward to is going about her progress very differently than with the hunter.

If you notice my questing listed above, you may see that there are a lot of zones that were left out, which wasn't done because I don't enjoy those zones, but just that I outleveled them and won't need to visit them before being ready for Outland. What I plan for my shaman is to pretty much go the opposite route of my hunter. She will go to places such as the Blasted Lands, Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes and make her way through the levels that way.

Leveling exactly the same on each character would get boring, especially since the shaman is only starting a couple levels behind where my hunter started from. Many of these quests I can do in my sleep now, and while of course I've already been to the other places listed, it's been a while and will be a change of pace from what I've just seen.

Other progress to make is my crafting skills. My hunter has slowly been supplying my druid with rugged leather and he may have enough to level his leatherworking to the point where he can use knothide leather. In the process, I have also managed to collect a pretty good amount of runecloth, and with my priest at 295 tailoring already, she's in a good position to go over the 300 mark and started crafting with netherweave.

I've been stuck on both of these professions for a while now, and while there are some of you out there that change professions every week and have no problem getting to max level, I am trying to be self sufficient and use my leveling characters to supply as much as they can.

After seeing how many more useful craftable items were introduced in the last expansion as compared to what we had at level 60, I'm hoping they will continue that trend and provide us with some very good craftable armor in WotLK.

Before TBC we had nothing that even compared to epic quality craftables. Now, with items such as the Frozen Shadoweave set and the Planar Edge, there are really some raid viable gear we can make. I'm hoping that with the next expansion there will be craftable gear on par with this stuff for every class to give us some more ways to get geared up.

If you read this blog, you probably know that I don't raid or do much of any end-game stuff, but I do like to think about what other people would enjoy as well.

Right now the clothies have some great craftable gear, and while they are only three piece sets, it's enough to gear them out for a good amount of raid progression. Now how much this helps you really depends on where your guild is in their progression. If they are just starting out it may not matter much since nobody has much gear and the raids are made for that.

On the other hand, say you join a guild full of friends so you can play alongside them, but they are much further down the line. It's hard to convince them to go back and gear you up, but how else will you get there? With a few craftable items that can bring you more up to speed you will be able to get there on your own, and while still not totally caught up, it's enough that you will be able to make your contribution.

I'm sure with the success of the current craftable gear we will be seeing more of it in the future. Obviously it isn't meant to replace raiding to gear up, but enough so that those few slots won't need to be filled right away and you won't be left behind.

I know I wish we had some decent craftable gear like this for pre-TBC raids. I never had a chance to go on any of those because of my lack of gear. So after a bunch of frustrating PUG runs where the drops never seemed to go my way, and watching my guild progress through, ZG, MC, and BWL in guild chat, I sort of gave up.

If there had been some craftable items to farm for I probably would have stuck with it, at least then I knew I would get there eventually instead of relying on random drops in instances that more often than not I couldn't even get a decent group to run.

I guess I sort of got off topic, but the point is I'm hoping that crafted gear becomes available for every class and spec in the upcoming expansion so we have a way to catch up to our guilds without making them run us through lower content to gear us up. For us casual players that would be very nice.