World of Warcraft

I finally got my human priest to level 60, the old maximum level. Now I just have 10 more levels to go to reach the new maximum level. I’ve been following Jame’s leveling guide to gain levels as quickly as possible so I can catch up with my friends who have been level 70 for months, now.

The leveling guide is great. Because I don’t play very often (just twice a week on average), my priest always has rested bonus for experience points, so I leveled even faster than the guide expected. I reached level 60 while still on level 56 in the guide. But I figured I’d continue the guide till it reached level 60 and then I’d move on to the new high-level Outlands guide.

I took one foray into Outlands while waiting for my friends to show up online one night, and I discovered an interesting little gimmick Blizzard put in the game to entice players to move high-level characters on to Outlands when they reach level 60 in Azeroth. Monsters in Outlands give more xp for their levels than do monsters in Azeroth.

For instance, at character level 60, in the Eastern Plaguelands, level 60 monsters give 690 xp. But in Outlands, level 60 monsters give 1,070 xp. There’s similar differences for monsters level 58 and 59. So it would be a waste to continue in Azeroth at level 60 — much more xp are available in Outlands at that level.

So I gave up on Azeroth adventuring. Fortunately Jame has a leveling guide for levels 60-70 in Outlands, and I started following it. My human priest is now level 61.

It still kind of bugs me that all my friends switched from Horde to Alliance characters. I haven’t played my level 70 orc hunter in some time now.

We had some great horde characters. But the player with a tauren druid and a forsaken priest switched them to another server, following his guild. (He’s now back on our server, but on Alliance side.) The player with an orc rogue deleted his characters and canceled his account. (He’s now back in the game, but on the Alliance side.) The player with a forsaken warrior stopped playing that character and switched to Alliance characters to play with his girlfriend.

So if I wanted to play with my friends, I had to go Alliance, too.