Life in a Northern (Barrens) Town

So after Mulgore I headed out to the Northern Barrens for a spot of adventuring.

I can honestly say that after levelling before it is REALLY hard to make yourself stop and read the quest text...and actually it is pretty fun when you do so.
The caravan quest line was fun...and there was enough diversity in the quests to keep it fun.
Ratchet is a great diversion after all the barrens, well barren-ness.

I still spent time wandering around a bit a found the entrance to Wailing Caverns...and for old times sake I did have to climb on top of the entrance and drop down into the right hand "eye-hole" to see if any NPCs were there...sadly not...I would have quite liked a plaque of remembrance in there so that the old classic WoW adventurer had something to smile about...makes me wonder if the bottle at the bottom of the Thandol Span is still there....what a quest find that was!

I didn't even mind walking around really...but I had forgotten how much easier a mount is.

The Northern Barrens definitely has an Us against the environment feel. Very PvE feel.
Also I was able to level my skills pretty well...although fishing and cooking are still well ahead...and Deviate Fish are still pretty cool.

Add-ons and letting my heart rule my head

Having cleared the starting zone for the Tauren my first real decision was to choose professions.

Now my head says that on a first character and new server it is two gathering professions to generate the cash...probably skinning and herbs...as from my gold making days these were always goldmines.

But what I have never done and always wanted to do was Engineering so I grabbed that with Mining so that hopefully the mining would take me more of the beaten track and allow me to enjoy more scenic routes around things.

Also Fishing....I need to find out what that is about and to really see if it improves my cooking skills much more easily.

So a bit more that ten minutes of fishing later, a 50 fish achievement, and I get my first off-hand fish too.

Some habits die hard and I know that in the Tauren village near Thunderbluff there is a nice cooking recipe which I could sell for about 10g on the Auction house to kickstart my characters gold...add to that some Small Eggs and I thought that this would be a good start. After all  the fishing had pushed my cooking way past 50 after some spice bread.

So off to the Auction House and my first pang of loss with "Vanilla" WoW Interface design. I found it so tricky and un-intuitive to use the Auction House on its own...so it got me thinking about Add Ons.

In the past Bartender, Sexy Map, Recount, Omen, Auctioneer, Postal, OneBag, etc, etc had been staple diets for me and I have to admit to starting to struggle without some of them.

In the end I succumbed to just adding OmniCC and Auctionator - as I missed the numerical cooldowns on things and at least I could easily see the minimum buy prices/sell prices with Auctionator.

It reminded me of how hard it was to use the AH when I first started. In fact I made the same amount of gold on my main in the first 18 months of playing Wow as I did in 4 weeks staring a new character from scratch when I used to obsess and play the WoW Economy/Gold Game.

I also wanted to enjoy all of the content in the zone and decided that I would try and do all of the quests in a zone before moving on...and I would try and level professions and skills at the same time.

Can I fall in love with World of Warcraft again?

This blog is a more of a diary to see whether or not that I can rekindle my love for World of Warcraft and recapture some of the awe and wonder of when I first played it.

To set the scene my experience with World of Warcraft has been as follows:

My first character (A Gnome Warlock) took me about 1.5 years to level up to maximum (with a gap of 6-8 months)...I started in The Burning Crusade just before Wrath came out and I loved the world...Wrath seemed to much slog at the beginning and I stopped half way through the first expansion level for 6-8 months.

I then became hooked/addicted on the WoW Economy and learning how to make money on AH and I was very successful at this but it dominated my life way to much to be healthy.

I love content so I set out to score my Loremaster Title before Cataclysm so that I coud honestly say I had seen the world.

I went back to my Gnome Warlock with the intention to join a guild and raid. I did my first and farewell raid downing Halfus Wyrmbreaker and failing for several hours on the Twin Dragons.

Then I quit World of Warcraft as it was just devouring me and I was being driven by making gold and endless daily reputation quests. So I tried to give away all my gold - got banned - got reinstated with all the gold I gave away. So just deleted all of the characters that I had.

I came back briefly and levelled a Prot Warrior and solo'd as many old raids and content as I could...and this was the most fun I have had for a while (well maybe not the Chess even in Kara) but rewarding and a great challenge.

But I needed a break again and have left it a while.

But like any good addiction you cant leave it alone, but this time I wanted to do something different to try and find the fun of soloing old instances, leisurely discovering areas again...and perhaps playing the game a fresh again.

So I decided to roll a Tauren Paladin as I have never really played on the Horde side before. Obligatory screenshot added. Also I wanted to do it without levelling guides (I have always used Dugi's in the past which were excellent).

So this is a tale of my journey to discover if the love is there or it turns to obsession again...and will I ever join a guild and embrace the Multiplayer part of the game!