we're not dead, yet

no, we're not dead or kidnapped or caught in a time warp or anything else like that. we are, however, taking a bit of a break from our usual WoW routine. we've taken 5 characters up to level 70 now, all alliance and all on the same server. frankly, we're a bit bored. our two "main"s, harl and zhered, are about as well geared as they can get short of doing 25-man content and while we *would* like to see that content, we're not sure we want to sign up for a heavy raid calendar right now. plus, we'd have to go guild shopping... we hate, hate, *hate* leaving a guild once we've decided to join one, so the "try before you buy" model that a few folks have suggested to us just doesn't really fly. we're one of those "get it right the first time" types, so selecting the right guild takes a lot of time and work. time and work that we don't feel like putting in right now because our interest is waning a bit.

we haven't completely given up WoW, of course. we just needed a change of pace. back in the mists of time, we rolled a blood elf paladin so we could see the new horde starting zone that came along with TBC. we ended up leveling him up to 58, but never got around to taking him into outlands before we shifted back over to playing alliance again on Dark Iron. since we'd been itching to play horde again anyway, we decided to pick him back up, re-spec to protection (he was ret back before ret was FOTM) and go hit outlands as a tank.

it's been fun! totally different play style from what we're used to. we've played every dps class out there and we're used to killing single targets fairly fast and being able to take 2 mobs (maybe 3 if we're playing a class with good CC) without it being too scary. as a pally tank, it's a whole different ball game. now we take 4-6 melee mobs at once and it's actually *easier* for us than doing a single mob at a time. casters, though... casters just suck. we can't mitigate magic damage worth beans and it *does* take us a while to kill stuff. that's the downside of life as a pally tank (no spell reflection). pretty nifty overall, though.

hellfire peninsula feels like a totally new place what with all the horde-flavored quests and some new twists to areas we thought we knew inside out (we had no idea that the orcs near the pools of aggonar were actually a horde-friendly faction!). we've been running around picking up tanking gear from quests and the AH, trying to gear ourselves up for the big show - Hellfire Ramparts. that'll be our first real test of tanking to see if we like it or not. if nothing else, we're looking forward to getting into groups a hell of a lot easier (LF1M, tank! PST).