No, no, don’t laugh. It isnae funny. It’s a good helm, see? Better than some o’ the crap ye can pick up aboot the place. Whit dae ye mean it makes ma hied look like a watermelon!?

The raid had a laugh at me the other night when I announced I’d probably see Wrath of the Lich King before I got a new helm - a silly looking one which has become a running joke/mockery between myself and the raid lead (a paladin with the t5 helm).

I currently have the [Helm of the Claw]. Yes, I know, sad isn’t it? My secret shame - raiding BT / MH with a blue helm! I kept putting off buying the badge reward one ([Mask of the Deceiver]) in the hope I’d pick up something better. 5 months later… Bah!

I’m just not sure the Mask, at +12agi, +2hit, +15sta, -2AP is worth 50 badges. In saying that, the only other upgrade I can get, at the moment, comes from Archimonde or Illidan (since we don’t run SSC / TK any more) who we’re not going to be attempting for a while, so I may well have to suck it up and buy yet another ugleh helm.

Of course, if I hold off spending my badges I can grab [Tunic of the Dark Hour], which is a much bigger upgrade over my [Netherblade Chestpiece] and overall with +1agi, +15hit, +7sta, +28AP - including sockets - so it’s a tough choice… I might even have to see if I can throw Aurik in for Prince on a Kara run. Bah.

Still easier than bloody shaman gear…

2 comments

Well, ken, sometimes ye dae somethin’ fast ‘cos it’s got tae be done then and there - but it’s never the best job, is it? Well, if ye have time ye can go back and maybe shore up a botched job tae be a bit more stable!

When I first started /hug it was a bit of a rush job - I wanted something vaguely presentable so I could begin writing now. I quite liked the old design but it had a few problems - it wasn’t really wide enough for my wall-of-text ’style’ and was not widget enabled - I added them manually but it was a bit of a mess. So, this weekend I sat down, grabbed a widget-enabled style, and had at it! I quite like the result.

If anyone has any specific browser related issues please let me know as I could only test it on Firefox and I.E. 6.

I’ve also now added a page with all of the WoW art which I’ve scanned to date.

Upon learning to speak to the wind one must also, apparently, learn to wear the appropriate vestments. There is so much choice, though, and so little of it within my grasp. One must still work to attain that which will increase ones inherent spirituality - though I am still not sure why putting more layers on brings one closer to the elements…

Kara
Over the past few weeks the guild has started running up to two Kara runs - usually a mix of alts and mains for badges and gear. I’m often not often able to go on Wednesdays (or Mondays and Fridays) as I duly give up the computer so the other half can play Oblivion but the past two weeks things have ended up so that I have been available.

Last week the guild needed a healer for the second run or it was a no-go. ‘Sure’ said I, and dashed onto my shaman, respecced (I’d been elemental for Magtheridon, I think) and grabbed all the consumables I could think of. I posted about my phat lewts.
This week I wasn’t expecting to be on but the other half was late home. I figured I’d nip on, patch up and do my transumtes / glass / make pots and flasks for Thursdays raid. I logged on to Aurik. “You are invited to a group by G”. Eh? *DECLINE*.

I hate being ninja invited and never accept unless someone tells me what I’m getting myself into - even from guildies. A few whispers later and I hear that there’s a sort-of competition going on - two groups are getting together and each thinks they can run Kara faster than the other. I was feeling a bit headachey but I didn’t want to say no when there were such high stakes *ahem*. I jumped over to Avarix, joined a team and then proceeded to run around like an idiot, respeccing elemental, grabbing different food buffs and joining TeamSpeak whilst being disconnected from the game a few times (patch issues, I think).

We ran through Kara, finishing in about two and a half hours. Although we were slow in doing the bosses we managed to actually finish before the other team despite starting about 15-20 mins later! Ahaha. Ah well, was all fun and we even managed to 9-man Netherspite when one of our mages had to go offline. Not bad for an almost completely alt character team!

My dps was terrible but I’ll excuse myself this once, hehe. My totem bar, Yata, suddenly stopped working with the patch (no surprises) so I had to relog and configure totemtimers and was still tweaking it until after Moroes!

Totem Timers

As much as my GM and the shammie class-leader recommend totemtimers over Yata I just… don’t like it. I’d tried it before and was willing to give it another shot but I’ll be going back to yata as soon as it’s working (got it working using the pre-update files) - if for nothing else than auto-totemic recall on a right click. I also prefer its timers - which are a lot bigger and include totems other than the four you have in your bar - so I can see when my elemental and mana tide totems come off cooldown - I also like the quickly configuarable and lockable buttons!

Maybe I’m just missing something with totemtimers (or any other totems + timers addon) but… I really don’t see why it’s so much better? I would be happy to be edumacated!

Gear Mathifications

Managed to pick up a few shinies but two pieces of the healing loot I got were really druid pieces ([Forest Wind Shoulderpads] and [Mitts of the Treemender]) - which takes me to three bits of leather armour! It would be four, except that I also grabbed the [Belt of Gale Force] from Moroes!

I have a habit of grabbing any loot noone else wants if it might, possibly, be useful - I hate seeing stuff sharded when the guild bank is full of void crystals - but on second look my [Gauntlets of the Tranquil Waves] from Magister’s Terrace seem to be on par with the druid leather Mitts for me. The higher int and stamina on the mitts is tempting, though… Time to look more closely!

I use Skyhoof’s shaman healing gear thread as a base list but it’s all calculated at t5 level which puts less emphasis on int and a bit more on haste - both represented unequally on these peices of gear. Using the t4 stat weights she gives irecalculated their values:

Mitts:
+25 Stamina - 5
+22 Intellect - 22
+14 Spirit - ignored (as is socket bonus)
+64 Healing - 64
= 91

Gauntlets:
+12 Stamina - 2.4
+10 Intellect - 10
+1 mp5 (socket bonus) - 3.4
+55 Healing - 55
+24 Haste - 16.32
= 87.12

As I suspected, for my level the mitts come out as higher base but there’s not much in it. However! Each still has two gem slots.

1. (+2 x Living Ruby - 36)
2. (+2 x Royal Nightseye - 27.6)
3. (+1 x Royal Nighseye and 1x Luminous Topaz - 26.8)

Mitts with 1. = 127, 2. = 118.6, 3. = 117.8
Gauntlets with 1. = 123.12, 2. = 114.72, 3. 110.52 (would lose the socket bonus)

The reason I’m calculating the last set of gems? I have myself an [Insightful Earthstorm Diamond] which needs to be activated and it requires two yellow gems (I have another in my bracers). The value of an ISD is around 63 (at conservative estimates of it’s worth being 15mp5) So - adding the 63 to both mitts and gauntlets assuming taking the Nightseye and Topaz combination they come out as, rounded down:

Mitts: 180
Gauntlets: 173

The Magister’s Terrace loot is really nice but the stats on them are preferable for higher level content. My main gripe at the moment is lack of mp5 / mana so I think I’ll be enchanting then wearing those leather mitts and banking the gauntlets until I have higher mana regen and a bigger mana pool. Druid-shaman hybrid ftw! *ahem*

Rogue gear is so much simpler…

I was also lucky enough, though, to grab my t4 helm (hence the new meta-gem)! My alt now officially has better headgear than my main… /cry as well as some nice off-spec gear - [The Lightning Capacitor] (passed to me by a very kind warlock whose main is a shaman and insisted that I take it as he could get far better - Thank you A!) - and something for enhance-spec… though I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. I’m so enthusiastic about enhancement… *cough*.

Badge Loot Decisions

The actual point of this post, when I started it, was to look at the fact that I now have lots of badges - more than I ever expected to get on Avarix - and to figure out what I could get with them. Last week I had figured that would be my last Kara for a while and was leaning towards picking up an [Essence of the Martyr] but now I have 73 badges. That puts me an awful lot closer to some really nice, shiny stuff.

But, once again, I’m torn… I could do the badge-giving dailies for the next few days and hope for some badges, get 75 and grab myself some [Natural Life Leggings] or wait and get the [Wave of Life Chestguard] / [Runed Scales of Antiquity]. If Avarix were my main it would be a no-brainer - wait for the big ‘uns - but I cannot be guaranteed badges on my shammie. The last two weeks have been fun but I might not be in Kara for a while now. The other thing which bugs me is that a new chest would be a bigger upgrade, too, but there isn’t a 75 badge chest /cry.

I could, of course, also go for the boots, gloves or belt badge upgrades but I don’t really need those at the moment. I think I’ll maybe try a bit harder to grab myself one more Kara run if possible and then a heroic or so - that chest piece would be the biggest upgrade to my current gear and, unless they added more badge gear, would not be upgraded before WotLK.

Once again a post has spiraled out of control into something way bigger than it was meant to be, whoops.

When a giant bloody Abyssal stomps all over ye sometimes it’s best to just lie and pretend like yer died. It certainly gives ye a different angle on a fight when yer takin’ a little ‘rest’ on the floor…

I don’t often post much about raiding or post many screenshots but I got some nice ones this week due to an unfortunate accident involving me, Supremus and a wall bug.

Sometimes ah try ma hand at a wee bit o’ drawin’… Ah’v always liked doin’ it but I’ve gotten a bit rusty lately.

A long while back I asked for some help - I prefer drawing people’s characters instead of random ones and needed a few screenshots. Hulan and the newly renamed Wolfrider obliged and since then I’ve been sketching on and off. It took me a few shots at each before I got something workable but it really did help - I’m getting at least a bit more confidant about drawing trolls now!

Female dwarves seem a little harder to draw - there’s a lot of subtle cues which I don’t think I got into the picture of Hulan - a lot of female dwarflyness shows when their whole body is visible as, then, their short stature is more apparent.

Wolfrider

Wolf - I know you gave me reference pics but I ended up ignoring them, slightly. I had been using them but then I noticed you’d dinged 70 and got yourself some spiffy season 1 gear and I just had to draw you in that! I hope you don’t mind - I really did have fun drawing those shoulders hehe… I sorta threw some monochrome colours at it as the lines themselves were a bit messy.

Hulan - I went for something really simple - just keeping the dress part of her outfit as, hey, she’s out having fun, right? I really love Hulan’s stories and I hate the fact I don’t feel I did her justice! I gave her right hand a little darker colour but I wasn sure how badly her burn showed so I didn’t want to make it too extreme. I managed to throw some colour on it because of it’s simplicity, though, so I hope I can be forgiven *grin*

I’m working on a page with the few wow-doodles I’ve done which I’m reasonably happy with, should go up over the next few days. Be gentle…

1. What is Starting Over?
2. Reasons and Implications
3. Practicalities
4. What now?

What Now?

You done it. You’re starting anew on another server but… nothing’s the same. Maybe you’re lucky and it is ‘the same’ or luckier still - it’s better. It may be all you hoped for, the spark which fires up your passion for the game again but, maybe, it’ll be a disappointment. I can’t add much here, most of this is personal and there are too many factors which can make a difference for any one person but there are a few pieces of advice I’d give.

Even if it isn’t a disappointment straight away be aware that you may feel, whilst readjusting, that you wish you hadn’t made the change. Keep your mind open, though! It takes a while to build your social networks up again and you may find things eventually turning out a lot better than they felt at first. You need to actively get out there and build up new networks, contacts and friends - they won’t come to you and until you do this, you may find it hard to compare the old to the new fairly.

Take a step back, breathe, evaluate. Is it really as bad as it seems? Is it just because everything is new? Is it any better or worse than what you left behind? Consider that before running back to your old server / characters.

Do not delete characters! Although they can usually be recovered they will often be left with un-gemmed / enchanted gear. Why not leave them, let them rest just in case you decide, one day, to go back? If you transferred a character remember that you can always go back in a months time if things don’t work out!

It takes time to get back to where you were - I’m only now, after half a year, getting settled with my new server, new role, new people. I miss my old friends, my old characters, but not so much that I have to go back to them. I sometimes ‘visit’ my old character and server - pop on to say hello to anyone who happens to be online at the same time - and catch up on what’s been happening but I have no urge, now, to go back and build things up again on that server.

Good luck to anyone who makes the leap and starts over, I hope my last few posts can be even a little helpful!

1. What is Starting Over?
2. Reasons and Implications
3. Practicalities
4. What now?

3. Practicalities

Ok, so you’re decided. You’re going to server transfer / roll a new character on a different server etc. etc. and so forth. You’re all set but.. where do you go? The last post talked a bit about what to expect from different server types but what are the basic practical limits? Your first decision, server-wise should be: Normal, PVP, RP, RP-PVP? Each of these realm types is different from the other and will greatly affect how you play. Blizzard has a little page describing what differences you can expect to find between the realm types.

Secondly, you should have a look through the realm forums to see what you can expect if you’ve decided on a realm or to decide which realm you might fancy rolling on / transferring to. Be sure to check out the population of a server as if a realm has a high population it may not be eligible for transfer!

Thirdly, if you’re transferring a character you can usually find a guilds list on your new (to be) realm forum - if you want to get into one right away once you’ve moved you can usually post applications prior to transfer!

Guilds not your thing? You maybe want to get down and try your hands at some of that ‘rp’ stuff? The RP realm forums are usually brimming with the latest events and goings on of the realm and usually full of helpful ‘how to get started’ links.

It may be worth checking if there are any free transfer windows up to realms from your own and seeing if any of those suit your taste. Doing it by this method means you may be able to take multiple alts with you as well!

You might want to do content whilst not joining a guild? Why not take a leaf from Anna’s book and taka look for some raiding alliances on the servers you’re considering moving too?

What about all of my epix pixels?

More so for those who are transferring than re-rolling, there are a few things you need to do first.

• You will need to empty your mail-box and finish up any auctions you have going.
• You must not be a guild leader or Arena Captain when you transfer and so will have to disband or hand over the reigns.
• You will need to have 10,000 gold or less if you are level 70
• You can only move PVE>PVE/RP or PVP/RP-PVP>Any.

Blizz’s F.A.Q on the transfer process can be found here.

You will have everything which is in your bags and bank with you. If you have a bit more gold than the allowed limit it may be worth checking out the economy of your new realm-to-be. Are they behind in progress and would appreciate you buying a few patterns/vortexes etc. and reselling them once you get there? Or perhaps you can buy up things which you know will likely sell anyway to give yourself a boost back to your old cash-levels like some nice gems or BoE blues / purples, maybe even void crystals or large prismatic shards which stack.

Personally I could, at the time, only transfer one character and so also went through all of my alts and removed anything of decent value to take with me. Bag and bank space is at a premium so you may have to say goodbye to some things. When chucking stuff out you should weigh up it’s personal worth to you (sentimental value etc.) versus how easy it may be to obtain - For example leaving behind a [Piccolo of the Flaming Fire] because even though it’s fun and you absolutely love setting it off in front of the Ironforge Bank you will, probably, be able to get another relatively easily.

Say your goodbyes! Make a post on the realm forum if you’ve been active there, tell your friends, and, for goodness sake, don’t transfer without mentioning it to your guild if you’re part of one! Try not to be over dramatic or take the chance to be mean etc. as if you ever decide to come back you don’t want to be on bad terms with people. Also, as mentioned in the previous post, a bad reputation will often follow you!

Wait!

Unfortunately there can sometimes be quite a lag between pressing ‘Transfer’ and actually getting to your new realm. If everything is sorted and you’ve met all the conditions you should be on your new home within 24 hours. I was lucky in that my transfer was instant but sometimes, especially when using free transfer windows, the wait may be much longer.

Now What?

….Ohcrap, what did I just do? What was I thinking!? WHY!? WAAAAH! If you are experiencing any of these then hold on just a little while longer as post four deals with the ‘What Now?’ aspect of Starting Over!

My brain is a bit dead at the moment due to cold-full-ness so if you think I’ve missed anything give me a poke and I’ll add it. /hug!

1. What is Starting Over
2. Reasons and Implications
3. Practicalities
4. What now?

2. Reasons and Implications

First things first. Why do you feel the need to start over?

• New lease of wow life
• Different faction / realm type
• Friends moving server / leaving wow
• Bored with current character
• Falling out
• Bad Rep

All of the above are reasons I’ve seen for people starting afresh either on a new character on a new realm or moving between realms. The need to experience something new is certainly an attitude I can understand - I have altitis, I like to see the world in a different way, through a new character’s eyes but not all reasons are necessarily good ones for starting over.

Is it worth it?

You’re leaving everything behind. It’s all just pixels but remember how you ground ore for three months to get your epic mount? Remember that pug group where you finally got the Necklace of Infinite healy-goodness and made good friends with the tank / healer / that cool dworf rogue *ahem*? You’re going to be leaving behind all of the good things as well as the bad so judge carefully how much something irritating you is worth giving up all of the good things for. Starting over with a new character means giving up more than transferring but both will lose something in the move.

You may, of course, not be leaving behind much - maybe you just got to 55 and decided, blah, this isn’t the character / faction / server for me in which case it may not be such a wrench but you should consider that you may still be doing it for the wrong reason - some classes have a period which is a little dull. As a rogue, for me, this happened from around level 58-64. There just didn’t seem to be much new and I felt a little powerless at times. Come 64, for some reason, things started to pick up and I was happy being a rogue again. In other words, don’t decide to move too quickly - give it time and analyse whether it is the character itself or WoW / the server / the faction which is irritating you.

If you are thinking of leaving your server for one of the ‘social‘ reasons you should ask yourself if it’s really a good idea to leave. If you’re being picked on, griefed or otherwise having trouble then I can understand why you might want to leave but there may also be people who help you, are your friends, and will work with you to resolve the issue(s).

Friends leaving is always hard to take and was certainly why I moved, eventually, but I think even then you should consider if you are playing for them or yourself? Are you both looking for the same goals in WoW? Do you actually spend a lot of play time with them or is WoW just a fancy IM client? Their needs may not be the same as yours and transferring to follow them might not be the best choice to take!

You may not be moving to play with a friend - in fact you may be leaving some behind. Be sure to mention well in advance to them, let them know and have time to say your goodbyes. Make sure you’re not moving away from anyone who you enjoy playing the game with so much that not having them around will make things dull - often you only realise this after the fact, sadly.

If you’re looking for a new lease to your wow-life then maybe you could think about rolling an alt, taking up a new profession or maxing a skill / rep before taking the big step - you might find something which piques your interest and doesn’t involve going back to basics again.

Moving to a different server-type is a tricky one and I’d advise you to do plenty research before you do. I know, in particular, some RP-realm-ites can be quite untrusting of people moving from pvp and normal realms due to issues with them not understanding how to act within those realms. There’s also the basis in pve guilds moving to rp realms as they figure there will be less competition. If this is your basis for moving then I’d certainly tell you to think hard about it. Moving from PvP to PvE is an odd change as suddenly things become a lot less dangerous. Yes, it’s nice to not have to look over your shoulder all the time but it can also, sometimes, be a bit dull. Going the other way is a hard decision, too, as you cannot go back to a PvP realm from a PvE one.

Implications

You may know no-one or just a few people, you won’t have your old network of acquaintances who you can rely on to help you, you don’t know if that guy selling Mongoose in the trade channel is a scammer, either.

‘Local Knowledge‘ as stated, is the key to success in a new environment. For example, when I switched realm to Bloodhoof I was introduced to their ‘unofficial’ looting system - pass on any blues. I didn’t and still kinda don’t get this if you’re not with a guild group as, to me, it seems as though it’ll make a ninja’s job easier but every group I was in seemed to resort to using this method of loot distribution and ignoring the games’ own need/greed one. This was never used on Eonar or Sporeggar and if I hadn’t become used to it very quickly I might have become known as a ninja-looter! (luckily my friend on Bloodhoof explained things to me beforehand). Even though all servers have the same world within them, the people shape it differently and the game can be so very different dependant on the people within it.

Moving to a lower progress server has multiple issues associated with it. Even if you’re only interested in pvp or lower-end pve you may find life a little bit harder on such realms - unlike some busier realms you may not be able to snag excess patterns and, with the recent change of vortexes / primal nethers to BoE, you’re more likely to have been able to craft these items if you stay on the high population server.

However, if you’re looking for peace and quiet and not having to share grinding spots, perhaps you just don’t want to have to muscle past thirty bank alts in Orgrimmar, then moving to one of the lower population servers may well be the thing for you. Remember, though, that Blizzard does like to even out the server populations and may, in time, open a transfer window to the low-population realm you’ve chosen.

Moving to a higher progress server, in search of greener pastures, will also come with its own problems. Gear may be easier to get but often lower level items and basic ingredients come at higher prices (a general rule and not always true). Your lack of experience might mean it’s hard for you to get into a guild which is doing the higher content you crave but, if they’re worth joining they’ll likely give you a chance if you’ve strove to be the best you could for that content you did experience.

If you’re one of the gits running away to another server to hide from people and a lifetime of scams then understand that you will most likely be found and your whole realm will know about it. There are plenty of ways for people to ‘follow’ you and a similar number of examples on the forums where past scammers have been ‘outed’ on their new realm - sometimes before they’ve even logged in - this is especially true where a guild leader / officer has ninja’d the guild bank and done a quick server transfer.

Summin’ Up

I know a lot of this may seem biased against you moving but please understand that it is not meant to be so! I think moving my rogue was one of the best choices I have ever made and would never want to take back the experience I gained re-rolling with my druid. I simply want to convey the importance of thinking through your new start as I’ve seen so many people make the decision and then regret it later. More on that in part IV, though, hehe.

Homework..

The next post, part III, will deal with the practicalities of moving but I’ll end this one with a small thing you should do or, at least, think about. Pros vs. Cons list. The technique is as old as a very old thing but works! List what you’ll be missing and what you’ll be gaining - weighing them based on importance to you - and consider if, really, what you’ll be giving up is worth what you’re going to gain. This is a simple way to weigh things up and may tell you if you’re basing your decision too much on one small thing at the expense of the whole.

Sometimes ye just need tae git’ yer hied doon and get oot o’ town. Other times ye might just fancy a change o’ scenery - whatever it is make sure yer no just hidin’ fae a problem as that only makes it worse.

Quite a few days back I stared a small post and, as usual, it slowly accreted into a much larger post. It seems I wanted to share a lot about the experience of starting over in WoW - something which has, in a way, defined my WoW time - and perhaps ease others in the process by writing down my thoughts about the issue and adding a sprinkle of advice. I’ll go over what Starting Over really means, the reasons, the implications and the actualities. I hope it’ll help someone who’s thinking of starting over or who has done so and is not sure where to go next. If not I’ll at least have gotten the urge for essay-writing out of my system. So, say hello to /hug’s first multi-part post/guide thing.

1. What is Starting Over?
2. Reasons and Implications
3. Practicalities
4. What now?

1. What is Starting Over?

Starting over. It happens for a lot of reasons - maybe you wanted a change, maybe you left the game for a bit and came back, maybe you have a bad rep on your old server (deservedly or not), maybe some arsehole decided it would be funny to constantly corpse-camp you and you had enough of it. It can be a breath of fresh air, a daunting task, or both at the same time.

I’ve done it twice, now, sort of and both times it has been quite an upheaval for me. A quick rundown on how things happened for me, first, because I love having an excuse to tell you all stories. You can skip this if you want.

/cue flashback

I started, as a little Roguelet, on Eonar one summer. Uni started back, though, when I hit level 58 and I decided that, for my studies, would be best if I stopped playing WoW. TBC came out and I wasn’t going to play but a friend sold me a spare copy cheap (she had ordered two in case one didn’t come in time…) and a few more friends mentioned they were going to all reroll characters on a new server - Sporeggar. I started a druid, found I liked the class, and rocketed to 70. Most of them were slow levellers, though, and drifted away to their old characters and so I found myself playing solo for the most part - though I made a few good friends and my other half was still playing. We had great fun but, eventually, real life interceded and I had to take a month or two break from WoW once again.

When I returned everything had changed and I decided I wanted to play with at least someone I actually knew in real life. My best friend had an alliance character on Bloodhoof so I decided - Hey, I could transfer my rogue, level him and play with a friend again. Brilliant! So I did. Once again I was on a new server where I knew nobody - I was accepted into my friend’s guild and made welcome by the awesome bunch of people therein. It’s my home now, I’m kinda settled there and know more people than I think I did on either of my old servers. I miss a few people and I miss playing on an rp(pvp) server, I don’t miss Eonar that much, sadly, as I barely knew anyone there.

/end flashback

So, I’ve had a couple of ’start overs’ - Both rolling a new character on a new server and transferring an old one - sometimes with breaks in between and sometimes not. Starting over often includes leaving close friends and basically pulling yourself out of your comfort zone, it’s taking yourself out of a familiar situation in a way more complete than rolling an alt. It is a break which is akin, perhaps, to moving to a new town or out of home to go to Uni/College and something which can definitely effect how you experience the game.

What this isn’t going to go into is moving guilds (as a topic in itself) - it is similar in some ways - moving out of your comfort zone etc. but others have done far better are more informative posts than I could hope to. If you’re interested in them you might want to look at Matticus’ post here for a start on that topic.

A quick intro and not much meat, yet, but keep an eye for the next post which should be coming shortly.

Well, ah wis passin’ through Loch Modan, showin’ the weans the Dam, ken? and ah thought… shame, I’m hardly ever here these days, an ah don’t half miss the place. Outlands is nice and all but the lochs and hills o’ Dun Morogh and Loch Modan call tae me. So whit tae dae… well, take some pictures o’ course! At least then ah’ll have a wee something tae remind me o’ home.

I ran two of my characters through the gauntlet of the pre-60 Children’s Week quests in the end - Jhai and a baby Paladin whom I started a while back and had to run through Loch Modan as part of it, to visit the Stonewrought Dam and when I was helping Softi’s rogue grind through a few quests quickly. I really love that place but I’ve hardly been back there since I levelled Aurik! I nabbed a few screenies on the way through and one or two turned out not bad.

One of the random forts in Loch Modan’s hillsides, peeking through some pine trees.

A bottom-up view of the Stonewrought Dam. Dwarven Masonry at its finest!

As I level through on Jhai I’ll probably end up subjecting you all to screenies of lots of low level areas - Outlands is beautiful, has nice textures and skies etc. but some of the old Azerothian areas have beautiful, evocative scenery which, in some ways, makes them feel more detailed than some of the new Outlands areas.