Bearback Mountain
And now I'm a bear! \o/
So yeah, I've started a Druid alt, to level in the times in between raids when there's naff all to do on my mage.
To be honest, it's pretty much EZMODE. You have your tauren caster form, then at level 10 you have to do this pain in the ass quest chain to get your Bear (tank) form, as you can see above. Other shapeshifting forms include Aquatic (for speedy travel in water), travel (cheetah), cat (dps) Moonkin (laser chicken DPS. Bwark!) Healing Tree (caster heals) and finally flight form, which saves on buying a flying mount tbh.
The good thing is you can collect herbs while still shapeshifted, so nipping about in flight form collecting herbs in Northrend will be a damn sight quicker than on my mage. So I'm dumping Herbalism on the mage, and switching to engineering on her, purely for the haste buffs engineering can give you. And I need more haste. If they sold it on street corners, I'd be there, gaunt faced, with a well used fiver in hand, looking for a hit.
As for the EZMODE comment - Fire off a couple of DPS casts in tauren form, and when the mob approaches instantly hit bear form and tank the mob the rest of the way to 0hp. Piece of piss. And you can self heal. Easier than a mage tbh, who can't tank whatsoever, and has to be constantly on the move kiting mobs. Which is a contradictory play style to the mechanics of playing a mage, who, for the most part, needs to be stationary to cast.
As for the guild, we've finally managed to get to the Lich King in 10 man.
Note I say get to, not kill. That's still a bit off as yet, but we're getting there!
So 25 man tonight, and we're off to Valithria Dreamwalker. Another boss I've never downed in 10 or 25. But most of my time raiding seems to be spent in progression fights - last 10 man was Putricide progression for a lot of people who'd never been to him before. I think I've maybe had 3 nights farming since I began raiding last month. I don't mind, but I am still trying to get a lot of my level 232 gear shot of, and replaced with more level 264 gear via Frost Emblems. Better gear = easier & faster progression.
Either way it's still fun! 
Level 80 – To Icecrown!
The Lich King awaits...
This has been a while in coming this post.
I hit 80.
About 3 weeks ago infact 
After months of playing, about 530 hours of lazily levelling and farting about, I finally saw the final yellow ding glow in Utgarde Pinnacle with my guildies running in a 5 man dungeon.
Since that I have managed to massively upgrade my gear, so much so that I think I'm about ready for the hardest and highest level raids in the entire game: Icecrown 10 and 25 man raids.
I also spunked 4,000 gold on epic flying, which really hurt my wallet, as all I had was 4,181 gold :p
But I made up 1,000 gold in a couple of days through selling my alchemy produce and grinding out quests, so back up to respectable levels, although each new piece of gear needs re-gemmed and re-enchanted, which runs into hundreds of gold per item.
So thought is being given to dumping Herbalism, especially as the ability to find Frost Lotus for Flask of the Frost Wyrm is extremely low and taking up mining again or maybe jewelcrafting, as alchemy will allow me to produce the raw gem through transmutation, which I can then cut and socket myself. Saving me thousands of gold potentially, especially if I'm going to level another character to 80 (which should be a lot faster this time round!).
So I'm finally at the level cap, at least until Cataclysm hits, which looks to be in November of this year.
Merrymaking in the Fungeons!
Because Dungeons are Fun!
So it's been a month since the last post, and WoW wise I've got on a fair bit. I've hit level 77, done the Merrymaker meta-achievement (the first step towards the biggest Meta-achievement in the game: What a long strange trip it's been), got the title Merrymaker, got Cold Weather Flying meaning I can use my flying mount in Northrend now, and hit the 1000 spell power level!
I also started using the random dungeon tool last night, and it seems to be a very quick way of levelling your character up. I did 2 dungeons last night and got 10% of the way towards 78! 20 randoms and you'd level! That's fast going, but the fact is it takes you about 20 minutes of queuing as a DPS role in order to get into a dungeon. But I suppose if you use in while you're questing and levelling up otherwise, it'll help give me a big hand in the grind towards level 80, Icecrown Citadel and Heroics!
Also, 10 days ago Quake 3 celebrated it's 10th birthday! I remember making a similar post to this when Q2 hit the decade mark, and it doesn't seem that long ago (it was 2 years ago). Time flies eh? TBH I've not played a lot of Quake Live since the closed beta ended, mainly due to playing WoW, but once I hit 80 and I don't have to grind all day for XP then maybe I'll have a bit more time for other games...
Speaking of which, it was Christmas the other day!
I had a good one, got 60 bottles of Budweiser from various people in work, Batman Arkham Asylum (PC), Assassin's Creed 2 (Xbox 360) and the guitar pack of GH5 (360). Using that guitar is a mare, because it kills my left arm trying to use it. Ah well, more practice needed methinks 
Hope you all had a good Xmas! And as it's likely I'll not bother my ass before the New Year, have a happy New Year, and here's to more awesome games & gaming in 2010 (apparently The year we make contact)!
A bad ass Pilgrim at 70
I ain't been drinkin, honest officer...
I hit level 70 earlier this week, which leaves 10 left until I hit 80 and can begin gearing up for raids!
And I bought some new gear giving me an extra 2100 mana, which means I can chuck damage out permanently without running out of mana, as it takes 3 minutes to burn through the 12.2k mana I have, and with a 2 min cooldown on Evocation (a spell which refills 60% of my mana and health) that means I can sit firing out damage all day long
I've also been made an Officer in Thunder, one of 3 newly promoted Officers in charge of dealing with the Guild Bank, which was done shortly before completing all the Thanksgiving event achievements to earn the Pilgrim title. I also got a pet turkey along with the title
And as you can see in the screenshot above, my character is finally looking like a high level character, rather than looking like a pauper wearing a mish mash of different gear. Finally!
