Legion Ordered

I went ahead and ordered Legion. Why not? I had fun with the last expansion. For a little while, at least. And a level 100 boost is worth a fair chunk of change to me, considering it normally takes me years to get to the level cap in WoW. (Although I confess I have yet to use the level 90 boost I got in the last expansion.)

My second-highest level character in WoW is a Gnome Mage at, now, level 77, thanks to a handful of Invasions. This was also one of my original characters from back in 2006. I hear the experience gain from Invasions has gone down so I guess I won’t quite get the free ride to 100 that I’d hoped for. Still, I picked up four levels a lot faster than I would have through questing. And as it turns out, maybe fast leveling isn’t such a blessing for this character.

While playing this Mage over the last few days, I remembered that my professions were Enchanting and Tailoring, which was cool because I could simply disenchant all the extra gear filling up my inventory from the Invasions. (Oddly, none of the Mage gear I got from the Invasions was better than what I’d previously obtained from dungeons.) Unfortunately I kept getting the dreaded message, “Your enchanting skill isn’t high enough.” Then I came face to face with the reality of what a royal pain it is to level the Enchanting profession and keep it roughly at the same level as the gear you get.

Maybe you folks who’ve been playing for years and now have 50 bajillion gold stockpiled don’t remember how difficult it was. For your amusement, when I started a few days ago I had about 200 gold on this Mage. Let’s just say you can’t buy very much at the Auction House with 200 gold. Even the most meager of trade skill supplies are 1 or 2 gold each. Even if I’d had millions of gold, a lot of the materials weren’t there anyway. So I had to find most of my Enchantment materials the hard (ie. slow) way.

It’s a pain, but I have to say it was quite a bit of fun soloing my way through TBC dungeons (in the 60-70 range) farming materials for enchanting and tailoring. (I even skipped a bunch of Invasions.) Most of my experience with the Mage over the years has been that it’s slow, squishy, and underpowered, but when you’re over-leveled, invincible, and can 1-shot every mob on the run, it’s really fun. :) I pretty much just Arcane Blasted everything in sight, including bosses.

Getting to the right dungeons took a while though. I realize this is probably whining, but it sure takes a long time to get around the world in WoW. Since they are now implementing Rift Zone events so well, it would be nice if they could also install a Rift Porticulum in every zone too. Or maybe the dwarves could get off their butts and expand the subway system beyond just Stormwind and Ironforge. They’ve had plenty of time now to dig an underwater tunnel from the Eastern Kingdoms to Kalimdor too.

Speaking of Rift, next I’ll be spending more money on pre-ordering Rift’s Starfall Prophecy so I can get all the sneaky pre-order benefits that require you to order early. It’s an expensive time to be an MMORPG player.