Re-Roll

So, I re-rolled a new character on World of Warcraft. I have heirloom items for cloth casters that were gathering dust, and just frankly needed to take a bit of a break from work stuff yesterday. Consequently, I have rolled a gnome mage, Gnimsh, named for an old D&D character that eventually went insane and tried to destroy the universe.

Hopefully things turn out better this time.

I've blown through the first twelve levels overnight, demonstrating that early leveling now, particularly if you have heirlooms, is frankly ridiculous. I get that they're trying to bring new people into the game and hook them, but I did notice almost immediately after I hit 11 that, suddenly, I was having mana problems since that's the points where the new, newby friendly areas of the starting zones end. If nothing else, there is an extremely bizarre change in the dwarf area where the mobs (monsters, for the non-mmo initiated) which used to be hostile are now neutral and will now give you a nice smile and a wave as you walk past them, pick up quest items, and go assassinate their leader at the bottom of their cave. They sort of remind me of these guys.

Decided to do alliance this time since I seem to be getting bored at the top end of the leveling scale with Horde fluff (even though it tends to be more compelling, I've heard it before.) I've always wanted an engineer since that tends to be the profession with the most goofy items, and I'm easily amused. Also, I've often been jealous of the whole mage "you want to be in Ironforge now? Oh, ok, I'll summon a portal for you" thing. Thus the character choices (with mining, of course, to feed the engineering.) I'm thinking of trying out the battlegrounds on the way as I'm leveling, as well as using the dungeonfinder to try some of the lower level dungeons. This last will, of course, force me to put aside my innate terror of terrible, awful, really bad PUGs (pick up groups), but on the other hand will hopefully break up some of the mind-shattering monotony of "Go gather ten bear asses" quests.