Is everyone level 90 yet?

Every expansion I read tons of posts about preparing for the coming content and think "Oh, yeah, I should stock up dailies and crafting mats." And then I don't. Of course, I know I'm not exactly in the running for realm first of anything. I'll get to max level eventually, probably soon after I start getting heckled by guildies to catch up and run dungeons with them.

This past week I started logging in more, and more regularly. Amazingly, stuff got done! I got to see the Theramore scenario, took care of the new Scarlet Monastery, finished up my last achievement in Tol Barad, and powered through the last few achievements I needed for my Cata heroic dungeon drake! Many of those were thanks to Rades filling out our guild group of four, and he got his drake too!

On Tuesday I was at school for most of the day, finally coming home late and playing way past my bedtime. Everything is so great!! I started my pandaren monk and was extremely surprised to see that the starting zone was pretty empty. I suppose by that time everyone was already level 30 or so. The music is much more varied than in the beta, and it's so good! I'm really enjoying listening to it while questing.

Earlier today, instead of making flashcards like I should have been, I instead logged into my main to start up ~pet battles~. If you haven't looked into it yet, I found what appears to be a great addon for that called PetBattle Teams, which does exactly what it sounds like. I hope you can name the teams!

In other news, for the two of you following the fiction updates on the blog, I've compiled the timeline on the Series & Resources page immediately under the Leatherworkers section. Hopefully it makes the progression clearer!

BUT FIRST:

Me update

I've been writing some guides for my own use, so I figured I'd clean them up and share with you folk. They can get kind of boring, however, so how about an update?

I finally got heroic-ready on Aka. Thanks to R&R's wonderful gear list (of all the ones I've seen this one was the most visually appealing and therefore helpful :B) I had some goals to shoot for and mostly accomplished them. I started doing regulars with manfriend's prot pally - we've even been toying with the idea of switching places but that's a way off - after I've got resto gear taken care of. My first heroic was Vortex Pinnacle, followed by Throne of Tides which was...quite an experience. To start with, manfriend and I were taking a quiet weekend at home, so we decided to get outrageously drunk and play WoW. Backed by 3 indulgent guildies, we queued for a random Heroic.

Don't ask me how, but we got through Vortex Pinnacle without a hitch. Then we zoned into ToT... The first boss I understood fine, but I couldn't seem to make my mana last the fight. We wiped and wiped, and even in my drunken haze I was so frustrated - how could I possibly save any mana just to get to the end? After one wipe, as we were buffing up, I realized my mana had mysteriously plummeted. Actually, come to think of it, it was halved - from 80k to 40k buffed! I looked at Titan Panel - 40% durability. I opened my character tab suspiciously.

Sigh.

Everything that could be broken, was! Since the wiping began we hadn't come across a repair, obviously, so I hadn't auto-repaired as I am wont to do. Plus, Titan Panel's durability foolishly averages everything, counting items without durability as permanently 100%. I switched in fubar's durability plugin and got a much more accurate percentage. (Incidentally, I like that it tells you 0% even if only 1 piece is broken. It may not be the actual average, but it's a good incentive to repair) One Jeeves later and we were sailing through just fine.

I'm being good and doing my dailies. Sadly, Therazane is the only faction I'm exalted with, but I'm buckling down on Dragonmaw now and wearing the tabard in addition to doing the dailies. I'm doing cooking and fishing dailies - cooking to buy recipes and fishing to get some skillups, seeing as I've had no time to sit down and fish! (Also, I got the strand crawler pet! Hooray!!) I've also started leveling engineering again (finally, groan) due to picking up mining - a big change that will probably merit reflection later.

The guild has been raiding - they have already downed Magmaw, Omnitron, Chimaeron, and Maliorak in the three weeks they have been working. Not being ready to raid means that I missed being even a candidate for the groups - this leads to all sorts of natural worries like setting myself up to be perpetually sat, or at worst carried, but I hope that as the guild progresses we can run 2 groups a week instead of the same every night. I want to contribute - I want to be part of our progression - but at least I'm catching up.

**On a happy note, I won a roll for a BOE epic cloak in a SFK run and was able to trade it and a discounted 4k to the gbank in exchange for my shoulders! Now I have more money to blow on the LW crafted chestpiece and my engineering helm!

Alts...well, I have a lot of them. They are usually neglected. The paladin is about to become a JC; hopefully I'll start to level her before the next expansion. The lock is working the AH (mostly selling leftover enchanting mats and DKMN cards from my turnins) but will need level 75 to keep sending me enchants. And of course there's my goblin mage - the guilty pleasure of this expansion, who will hopefully get some playtime and become and alchemist.