Waldonnis

Agreed on the dislike of a loot council, but if done properly, it works well enough and should never add undue delay in anything. Most successful loot councils that I've seen determine rules and priorities well in advance of EVER seeing the items drop, so there isn't a question when trying to get loot distributed. The poorer ones seem to stop at every item as it drops and bicker in whispers. The one thing that all loot councils seem to bring, though, is drama. People that disagree with the determination of the loot council often end up leaving the raid (or guild) explosively. It can work, but it's really not a good fit for this raid anyway, as it's more oriented towards guild-only raids....which this is not.

Eigun brings up a good point, and a contradiction that's irked me. We're constantly being told that an incremental upgrade is still an upgrade and to take what we can when we can...but it's also being suggested that doing so isn't proper gear planning and is a mistake? I've been in the situation before as a paladin where a cloth piece dropped that was better than something I was wearing. It wasn't ideal, but it was still an upgrade. Was taking it good or an example of poor planning? Taking it was good overall, both for my own performance as well as any raids that I was in, but DKP systems punish me for doing so by putting me that much further down for a more suitable upgrade. If we're to take incremental upgrades, even if they're not "ideal" (and not offspec), then it's a double-edged sword in the current dkp system. Going back to my previous post, in a 10-man, this isn't much of an issue, as there are less people often vying for the same loot proportionally, but as raid size increases, this becomes a bigger sticking point with traditional DKP systems (and why many go to loot councils or priority sytems). Personally, I do a certain amount of planning and hold out for the better item rather than taking the "less than ideal" more often than not. Others do things a bit differently. What should matter is what's good for the raid overall as a priority. To use myself as an example, if I'm DPS on half of the fights in Naxx, why do I compete on an even playing field with a holy paladin for DPS "offspec" plate? I don't have a problem with it, but it seems contrary to what we're always being hammered with.

Raiding and gear acquisition are synonymous for those who want to continue down the progression yellow brick road. Gear isn't the goal or "ends" of raiding, it's the method used to make present and future encounters easier (or doable). Getting "phat l00tz" should never be the end-goal of a raider, since there are always "phatter l00tz" out there (there's no winning an MMO). That being said... There are a number of ways to prevent or minimise hoarding of DKP and other such problems. It seems like DKP hoarding and gear acquisition continues to resurface as a hot topic, so perhaps it's time to look into some other way to handle it beginning with Ulduar. Whether or not you reset DKP for Ulduar, it's bound to come back to this same subject when the next content set is released and, frankly, the same situation would exist...and people would be saying DKP should be reset AGAIN for the same reasons. One idea that I saw, explained in very rudimentary terms: Bosses have a fixed value Time may/may not have a value Items have a percentage cost rather than a fixed cost (e.g. tier items are 50% of your current DKP) Negative DKP isn't possible Zero-sum or modified zero-sum works okay if you're in the position to rotate players in and out of raids or frequently encounter replacement scenarios that use the same pool of people in that capacity. Having a fixed roster negates the need for zero-sum and, honestly, zero-sum was much more useful in 40-mans than 25's simply due to raid size/probability of requiring a replacement. Also, zero-sum was created to solve the problem of a frequent replacement or new regular having absolutely no chance for loot for awhile (they'd have to accrue enough, which may have taken a month or more, and would become disinterested if they weren't getting jack for that long)...again, not really the situation here. I don't think it's working too well with this raid, given the posts before this. DKP should persist ideally, not be reset at every tier...if it's being reset, it's not working. There are tons of other loot systems out there as well. If this one sucks or the "concerns" continue, trash it and try something else.

Spamming holy light is not necessarily a bad idea and, depending on gear, may just be better these days. It comes down to properly selecting heals for the situation. Should a standard holy paladin be spamming HL on every slight bit of damage? No, but if they're geared well enough now, there's hardly a reason to go back to FoL spamming in many situations, including 5-mans. Either way, it's largely unimportant as the changes are targetted towards raids rather than 5-mans, where healer mana isn't an issue currently with the amount of buffs and replenishment flying around. Does it impact 5/10-man holy paladins without the gear? Absolutely, but Divine Plea wasn't designed to be a "use on every cooldown" ability and that's been well-stated, so it's being changed to an ability that you'd have to think about before using for a change. This is pseudo-true. DPS can and will run out of mana in certain situations. High amounts of AoE will drain a mage dry pretty quickly, and judging on AoE situations is a tad ridiculous, if not prohibitive. Those situations are often offset in 25-mans by the fact that buffs, replenishment, other AoE'ers, etc are all present, but in 10-mans, it's really not as hard as you think to run out of mana. A mage in full T7 is less likely to run out of mana even in a 10-man, but if they're already wearing the gear, they probably wouldn't be running non-heroic Naxx. I'll concede that it's not typical to run out of mana as a damage caster, but it's more likely that is the result of the large amount of practice most of us have had with managing our mana in the past (nobody likes to wand). The changes to mana regen had nothing to do with dps in actuality. It's a well-known fact that encounters are balanced around healer throughput and mana...and if regen/efficiency/throughput is too good right now, then future gear and encounter scaling become much more difficult to accomplish from Blizzard's end. Untrue in many cases. It may benefit YOU more, but what does it do for a mage? A small amount of health, a very small amount of crit, a tiny amount of extra mana, and...that's about it. Most of the stat boosts do zip for us. As a FFB mage, spirit is useless to me, so ignore that too. Is it a good buff? Sure, but it's hardly superiour in every case to the collective amount of mana that wisdom will provide over the course of a 5min fight. Circular argument. You can't say a holy is selfish if they don't pick up kings and not say the same about ret. In fact, spec'ing for Kings *HURTS* a PvE raiding holy spec a great deal...unless you don't think 5% more spell crit is worthwhile by comparison. The reason ret is often the spec to pick it up for PvE is simply because of their talent distribution and what benefits them for PvE (unless you think it's okay for them to be capable of spec'ing for PvP for a raid, but holy has to lose PvE effectiveness and spec for Kings "for the good of the raid"...yeah, okay). Frankly, they have extra points, holy usually does not these days. This isn't BC... I at least agree that Kings is one of the top two buffs in the game overall (Mark of the Wild being the other) simply due to its versatility and effectiveness for most classes. The misunderstanding about managing buffs came from something that Jas didn't know about Pally Power...I explained how to handle single buffs with it the other night, so that part of the argument is largely solved, in my opinion. Anyone can go into a long-winded discussion about which buffs are superiour in which situations, but as I explained to Jasena, it gets pretty complicated sometimes. Lots of "if you have a <class/spec>, then this is better, otherwise.." in those discussions and frankly, none of it matters in the context of this discussion. Which buff is superiour isn't the relevant factor: it's a matter of whether or not Kings going baselines helps or hurts paladins as a whole. Personally, I believe it helps. One thing I didn't mention about the exorcism change was that it has a secondary effect: shutting ret up. Glyphed, exorcism can also serve as an effective silence from range, which is what ret's been dying for. Short of introducing a new spell, which would arguably overpower some of the other specs, or adding yet another talent (which wouldn't be good for reasons I won't go into) in the ret tree, this was the best way to accomplish this. The druid change is complicated and while I have no doubt that it will go through, I also have no doubt that it'll be tweaked a bit. I'm curious to see how it works out, but I'm concerned with what it will do to druids at various levels of gearing below "top end". Suffice to say, discussions continue on the forums. As for Bacon...it's nice, but it's also not hugely useful for many raiding holy paladins (most are *just* on tank duty, so meh). The HL glyph is far more effective in many cases and that's also why it's a heavily "hated and debated" glyph....and another reason why HL spam can be more effective and efficient at times (going back to the first part of the post).

Where to start... Shield of the Templar's effect is needed, period...and I wish warriors would have something similar on initial pulls. Dealing with groups of caster mobs is tough enough for any tank, including DKs, but at least a DK has some tools to help with it. Paladins do not. Warriors don't either on the pull, but at least they have a charge/intercept and shield slam (for during the fight). Line of sight isn't always available either. Paladins have nothing...well, had nothing. Their "shield slam" had no teeth aside from being a threat-builder while warriors had at least some damage mitigation/utility attached to the ability against casters. Again, good change and it makes protection paladins that much stronger as tanks rather than being the weakest against caster mobs. And seriously, use in PvP? How many paladins do you know that do serious Arena as protection? If anyone were to be grumpy about this change, I'd think it would be ret, who has been BEGGING for an interrupt outside of a stun for ages. Kings going baseline is GOOD. Right now, certain builds are almost forced to pick it up. Prot is much better off laying out BoSanc in many cases to the same classes that benefit most from Kings, and that puts Ret in the ugly position of having to dole out either Imp Might or Kings...both desirable buffs to many classes, making the buff assignments that much more limited. We have no details that I know of on whether or not Improved Kings will be baseline, but that's still out there as a potential talent point sink Kings-wise. Don't look at this as "oh wow, more buffs to manage"...we've been managing buffs since vanilla WoW, and it's not like we suddenly have a zillion new buffs to deal with. Having options is a good thing, not a bad thing. I'd think as a holy paladin that you would like this change since your untalented Might is overwritten by Battle Shout and you have nothing else to offer buff-wise to a non-paladin tanking class. This gives you more "buff depth" in smaller groups (e.g. 5/10-mans). Personally, only bringing improved wisdom to a raid is yawnerific and I like getting Kings back. As a tank, I like the change even more simply because I'd finally be ABLE to get Kings to begin with if the only paladin in the group is holy (I'd be happier with BoSanc, but it's better than the paladin not being able to offer me anything at all). As for exorcism, I've always felt that it's a silly thing that it only worked on undead targets at all (and demons, but that's splitting hairs). Bear in mind, the game is VASTLY different than it was way back when Forsaken were undead. I have no doubt that they'll need to alter the coefficient on the spell to not boost that aspect of paladin damage in Naxx, existing raiding paladins would've seen a rather large damage DROP once they got out of undead-infested instances simply because they couldn't exorcise any longer. If anything, they would've still likely seen this dps drop even after improving their gear in Ulduar. This also would've altered rotations, etc. It's a good change for PvE, but I'm unsure on its effect in PvP yet. It all really depends on what they do with the coefficient. Oh, and side note, it wasn't just exorcism that forced the Forsaken change...that was back when undead actually had a hidden vulnerability to holy damage and most paladin abilities did increased damage against them (which has also changed)....and I won't even touch Holy Wrath...you can fill in the blanks there. Take a step back and think about it for a minute. If anything, I'd expect you to complain about Divine Plea's healing reduction, but even that's not a huge deal since healer coordination effectively works around that (or a simple cancelaura macro). Right now, the changes look to only strengthen the class as a whole, while others (holy priests and resto druids, notably) are taking a big one on the chin with the nerfs to OOFSR spirit-based regen and the change to holy priests' Serendipity. Complaining about what can only be termed as paladin BUFFS is akin to the priest forum claims that having Divine Spirit as baseline is a nerf...it's just hard to fathom how gaining abilities that were confined to just one spec in the past can be anything but good. Other thoughts on changes: Warriors: FINALLY a priest or boss's damage-absorbing bubble won't neuter rage generation. Years late, but better late than never. Warlocks: Can we alter improved shadow bolt a few more times? I don't think the warlock community is confused enough and the theorycrafters certainly need more than just the incredibly complex affliction rotation to mull over *smirks* Seriously, though, some of the changes look interesting and I'm curious to see a full list when it's released (what they posted is too vague so far to tell good/bad). Still no clue how they're going to fix the PvP viability concerns... Mages: Looking into spirit usefulness? My suggestion continues to be to have it add either haste or crit in a spec-dependent fashion (mostly crit for fire and haste for frost). Arcane already benefits from spirit through talents, but they would have to move Student of the Mind and adding any of the crit/haste "boosts through spirit" boosts further down in the trees to avoid stacking the benefit. Pyromaniac was a nice change in 3.0.8, but I sure hope they don't think that's a solution for a fire-spec/spirit interaction. Shatter combos in PvE = good for frost, so no argument there assuming they can pull it off and making ice lance an attractive spell for it. And adding PvP survival to fire is ridiculous...I wish them luck, but if they don't understand why frost has it so well that way by now (and arcane to a lesser extent), they won't do a good job at this :-P Druids: *shrugs* Some of the changes look interesting for ferals, but no doubt that a further armour reduction won't sit well with existing feral tanks...even if it's been balanced out by a "shield" effect. The RNG nature of it makes it even less of an attractive trade-off compared to the stable mitigation benefits of armour. I really want to know where they're going with this in the long run. If the trend continues, druids will be tanking with rogue-like armour totals and about as much dodge. The mechanic of a feral tank used to be high mitigation and a certain amount of avoidance...now it's...I don't know....both of those have been reduced in Wrath with no compensating controls. Death Knights: Mixed bag, but mostly good. Without seeing the frost tree changes, I have no clue what to think that way. Personally, I can see a problem with the Blood Boil change that may not be very good in PvE...and the loss of damage from Pestilence will add another GCD cycle to AoE threat generation for unholy specs (which wasn't really needed). If the change goes through, expect the range on Blood Boil to be tightened to prevent proximity aggro problems. Ultimately the Blood Boil change is a good one for PvP, but there are some cases in PvE where it's going to suck. Lastly, I'm hopeful they didn't shuffle the frost tree too much...I'd hate to lose a few of the things that I use regularly from the frost tree tanking-wise. To answer the other posts: Much love for the ammo change. Ammo cost is honestly what kept me from leveling Kelani (silly, but I have a ton of expences with a "large family" like mine and it really adds up). The change to add Divine Spirit as baseline is certainly part of the mana regen changes and is no doubt part of their attempt to buff regen to spirit-based-regen classes in a post-nerfed-OOFSR world (mainly holy priests, since playing the OOFSR game is part of what we had to do; druids not so much due to the large amount of IFSR casting they do). Gord: Don't you mean bijous and coins rather than loot? :-P

A few tips for ya: Loatheb Healers: You have a limited window of time to heal, but PW:S works all of the time, as do many other damage-reduction/shielding abilities, so use them to help offset some of the incoming damage if you can. Even if you can prevent 3-4k worth of damage here and there, it's easier than having to heal it, especially since you have limited time to do so. Plus, you're out of the five-second rule for a good chunk of time, so you may as well use some of that mana in the meantime. Also, this goes without saying really, but be sure to queue up your heals to land as that healing window opens up. Three seconds is...short. Spores: Don't cleanse or remove the debuff from the spores. It increases your chance to crit immensely and is part of the fight. It also prevents the person with the debuff from generating threat at all. This is great for dps, but horrid for the main tank in most cases (for obvious reasons). If the tank ends up with the debuff further into the fight, it's usually not a big deal, since they've established a solid threat lead by then, but always be mindful of where you kill those spores and try to keep them from dying around the tank. If a protection paladin or DK is tanking, they should be very careful to avoid AoE abilities that could kill the spores too early (same goes for any dps that has some AoE, e.g. consecration, death and decay, unholy blight, etc). I've personally tanked Loatheb with the debuff for most of the fight, but it was nerve-racking at times, so be careful with where those spores die. The other two raids use a common tanking position and raid arrangement. I'd be happy to describe it or whip up a picture if you'd like...makes it much easier to get those spores where you want them without having to chase them around. Gothik This fight is all about balance in the early phase. If live side kills adds super-fast, dead side could get overwhelmed. Likewise, if things aren't dying fast enough on live side, the adds will stack up and you'll end up with adds plus Gothik before long. Having tanked on both live and dead side, I've found it best to have a dps'er on each side coordinating when to slow down/speed up on the killing (tanks often have their hands full before long). Calling out when riders and such are heading over to dead side is also pretty helpful. It's very hard to describe unless you see it, but making sure both sides are taking care of adds at a roughly equal pace is key. We struggled with this at first on the other 10-man raid, but after swapping people around between live and dead sides a few times, we finally got past it (and it still required some "slow down on live" calls). Be patient if you don't get it the first time...this fight often takes some juggling. Instructor Razuvious I don't know if anyone caught my blog entry on this guy, but there's a quirk to the orbs that we found out pretty quickly: they always try to control the closest guy (this only applies to 10-man...no orbs on 25-man, so priests mind-control). If you use the orb to control a student then run him closer to the other orb than the uncontrolled student, the second controller "tank" will end up getting a "target is already charmed" message. Just something to be aware of when positioning the students initially. Also, to release and recontrol, you need to right-click the "pet" unit frame and pick "Dismiss", since they didn't implement the orb control as a buff or anything that you can cancel otherwise...then just re-use the orb to get control again. Watch the duration on that control, as well. We've found it helpful to release and recontrol immediately after the second taunt cycle. You really don't want to lose control over your student if you're tanking at the time

It's still WAY too early to start conjecture on Ulduar, so let's keep any comments about what the "requirements" will be out of the discussion entirely. FFS, it's not even done being developed yet (not to mention tuning) and already there are rumours as to the right tank/dps/healer ratios? Post reliable quotes/sources or erase it from your minds as "players are making crap up again", like they ALWAYS do. Honestly, I keep hearing how "boring Naxx is" from some people, so why don't they just sit instead of "some people"? If they're so bored, then here's an idea: STOP GOING. Some of us don't care for the drama or hearing how tired people are of an instance every five minutes...we're actually interested in being there. Problem solved? Frankly, I've felt less and less like this raid is about "fun with friends" these days. Half of the time, people don't even get my friggin name right...people I've known and raided with for years. I'm no more than a raid slot now and thus have become more and more quiet as time goes on. I can understand why people are feeling slighted by the announcement that some will have to sit...because they're just "slots". Before going on about how hard it is to juggle a roster and such, I know the game very well...welcome to raid leadership.

Pretty nice build. Personally, I wouldn't choose to put any points into Intensity, but I can see the attraction there (I'd probably use those into Primal Tenacity or Shredding Attacks, depending on how much time you spend in cat or tanking fearing/stunning mobs). Either way, though, those points end up being more about personal preference. The core of the build is very solid and I don't see anything that you missed that could be important.

At early levels, feral is probably the easiest since finding "rogue-ish" quest rewards is easier than finding spell caster-friendly leather. Once you hit Outlands, though, you'll start seeing more and more casting leather out there, so you can respec to balance and do fairly well (balance was really buffed overall in Wrath). It really comes down to personal choice at that point. I'm a "feral for life" druid, but I've seen all of the specs do well in my travels.

For those that don't already know or use it, I've written an add-on for visually tracking skill-up progress without having to pop open the stupid skill window every five secs. Here's a brief overview from my add-ons page on my blog: SkillMonitor displays a progress bar that shows how a selected skill is coming along. Let's say you just picked up a new axe and need to up your skill with that axe. Well, no more constantly popping open that annoying skill window to check on your progress! Just right-click the progress bar, select Axes from SkillMonitor's pop-up menu, and you can see a progress bar that updates as you gain skill. It's still in beta and I'm not sure if/when I'll formally "release" it to one of the add-on sites, but it's getting close to being as done as it can be. If you're interested in checking it out or following the progress, check out my add-ons page for the latest news and a download link: CLICKY FOR V'S ADD-ONS PAGE. For those who have been using it, I've just finished up with a big update which allows the menu to show when right-clicking the bar, as well as fixing some atrocious menu bugs that made me feel like a moron when I saw them Definitely pick up the new version, as it should just be easier to use and the menu fixes are fairly important from a code standpoint. Oh, one additional note...I don't have any of my usual copyright notices on there yet, so be nice and don't jack my code or upload it anywhere

Even though I don't currently work, I run into the same problem during server downtime. Here's my list of favourite things to do while "doing nothing": Make a blog entry Read other blogs that I frequent Check on the latest news from the physics world (hobby) Write add-on code or work on any number of programming projects that I always have in progress Email quirky greeting cards to random friends Write short stories or poems Pick a CGI model from some web site and animate it (usually space ships) Plan out my future Tivo recording schedule

Back atcha!

Hehehe, those first few PvP kills are always memorable. Congrats on the fun time and for flattening your first foe as a death knight

Agreed on all points above. As a veteran of numerous games at this point, there are times when the proverbial battery needs to be recharged...or at least checked to see if it's still worth starting the engine again. As always, good luck to ya during your off times and we hope to see ya back again soon

So true... I actually started listening back when I was beta testing Matrix Online, but lost track of the station over time...only to rediscover it later on (only a few of the original DJs remain, but they're the best of the bunch from back then ). Sometimes the music sucks, sometimes it doesn't...but it's more about the humour than the individual songs for me. My personal favourites: Nelks' show (at least when he actually plays swing) The "WTF" show...never know what he'll do/say and there's nothing like hearing a Greek guy singing German metal or some odd Spanish power ballad Chaotica (either of her shows) Each show is different, though, so it's worth checking out even if you don't like it on first listen

Thankfully, you're alright. I've been on the receiving end of the 9-1-1 calls during "home invasion" style robberies, some of which did not leave the occupants unharmed In all, though, it sounds like you and your family have a great and thoughtful attitude about such an unfortunate and untimely event. My thoughts go out to you all at this time of year. I sincerely hope that you can recover from the invasive nature of the crime soon and at least partially replace not only the things that were taken, but also the feeling of safety that's always taken away. For the rest of us, things like this should always remind us of what is truly important. I watch so many people scurry around to buy "stuff" that really has little meaning other than the thought behind it. We should all remember that the times that we share with our loved ones are what we should truly treasure. "Stuff" can be replaced...our friends and family cannot. Enjoy your holidays and be sure to remind those that you care for just how much they mean to you.

They make ointments for that, ya know...

As always, count me in. I have a few goodies stashed that I'm sure someone would enjoy :-)

If I'm around and un-busy (iffy lately due to a family emergency and the holidays, but I try), I'd be happy to tank with Tyrandius or bring Verissi out to toss some spells around.

The debate on Patchwerk's hatefuls continues, which makes me giggle, but I tend to believe that they didn't change the mechanic from the original encounter. With proper positioning and some slime dancing, melee without an aggro dump (mostly warriors or DKs that aren't tanking) can avoid them if it's a problem. 10-man Patchwerk hits reasonably easy and a decently-geared tank can probably take two strikes in a row...but 25-man is nasty (hits for 50k+ before mitigation, so 20-25k on a geared tank), so healers need to be excessively spammy on the offtanks in 25-man, as they cannot take two in a row. The important thing to note is that these strikes hit about every 1-1.5secs, so tanks should be fairly liberal with their use of trinkets and mitigation abilities (they can be dodged/parried, IBF and bone armour for DKs is very helpful as well). I'll fill in some of my other findings over time, but it's a good general overview.

New expansion, new considerations. There is no restriction or grand plan about who can lead raids to places or how progression will go....that's always left to the industrious/masochistic souls that choose to lead the raids in question. If you want to lead one, go for it...if not, don't expect anyone to be presenting a raid menu any time soon Some of the past raid leaders have decided to step back from raid leadership while I'm sure others would like to start one for the first time (as was the case in Burning Crusade)...it's the natural order of things when raids aren't guild-exclusive or restricted to just officers for leadership. If you want to raid but don't want to lead one, keep your eyes and ears open and I'm sure an opportunity will present itself in time. To address one point in the post, though, from a personal standpoint...not everyone is all that "raid focused" and while they may participate in raids, other things are more than just distractions along the way to them. I'm a good example of that with Verissi's leveling to 80. I could've finished that off days ago, but have other goals that I'm working on first with her that are more important to me than being at 80 is. It's only really the "slow path" if 80 and raiding is the ultimate goal...which it just isn't for me on most of my personal army. This game is a treadmill, as all MMOs are, but I agree with Maube...folks really should stop to smell the roses a bit and enjoy the new stuff along the way. At the pace I'm seeing from some folks, I expect to see "bored, taking a break" posts in the next two months from quite a few.

It was probably me. The servers heard that I actually went to sleep and while trying to comprehend that, they crashed with a divide-by-zero error.

I was sorry to hear about this earlier Personally, I'd suspect the ads provided via wowmatrix (but not saying it's their fault). My personal feelings about wowmatrix aside (let's just say I do not approve of their methods), most websites contract ad providers to serve and track the ads you see...some of which may contain viruses, worms, and other nasty things. Often times, the ad companies don't even know they're serving malware, sadly. Recent exploits against outdated versions of Adobe Flash and some other scripting languages used in many ads are even causing problems for non-gamers, so it's always best to keep everything updated as best you can. It's very unlikely that an add-on can cause those kinds of problems, since there is limited interaction possible between add-on code in-game and the rest of your computer's functions outside of the game (add-ons cannot even launch external programs and are restricted to certain types of operations). Could it happen? I suppose it could somehow, but it certainly would require more knowledge of the WoW internals than is documented. Aside from that, I'd recommend skipping wowmatrix and going to the author's preferred publishing site for their add-ons for a few reasons. It lets you see their notes and change lists directly and provides an avenue for feedback to them should you feel that something went wrong...not to mention that it's as close to "from the horse's mouth" as you can get. It's a bit more painful when you use as many add-ons as I do (over 100 for me), but I've made it a bit easier by creating a local html page with links to each that I can just click on to check for new versions. From a "where to go from here", several folks have mentioned the Blizzard Authenticators as a bit of extra reassurance. While I don't own one myself, I do feel that it's a good investment considering how much time and effort we put into our characters...and how much enjoyment we get from the game itself. With the widespread keylogger/hacking problems recently, I'll probably be ordering one at least for my main account soon to avoid any potential problems as well. Better to spend a tiny bit of cash now than worry about losing game time and items that I enjoy.

Oddly enough, I'm not really racing. I just play at times that make it easy to quest due to low population density. That and, having seen everything up to about half of Icecrown, I'm just familiar with the quests and what order I want to do them (I had V and Tyr to 80 in beta and Waldy was on the way up). Overall, I just enjoy playing the death knight, so the hours just kinda fly by while I work on rotations, rune cooldown timing, etc. when things last more than one rotation I took a break today after hitting 75 with him to get V into Dalaran and work on Tyr's mining a bit. Every so often, it's nice to do something different and relax a bit, so I'm spending most of my evening just fishing in Dalaran until I get tired or something comes up that looks like fun. As for how others are hopping levels so fast, it's really about staying ahead of the bulk of the population quest area-wise (less fighting for quest mobs) and having a complimentary partner or two. Xeno, Remmetta, and Harne can easily do any group quest out there, given their gear, so the experience just flies in (and can probably handle every instance as well). Solo players, like myself, move a tad more slowly since we tend to skip instances and group quests. My only advantage is having the knowledge from beta of both the new class and the content itself.

OVER 9000! Actually, I'm not sure, but I know El calculated it out at one point. In all, it took about four hours of solid fishing, which seemed to go by pretty quickly. I was chatting with a few people while I was doing it and was VERY happy with the add-on that I wrote to track skill-ups visually (helped me keep an eyeball on my progress easily)...made the time fly by.