My WoW playing has been intermittant at best lately. My main character is an 80 human shadow priest named Kattina. I have a few levels on my DK and my Warlock is 75. The rest of my crew are all under 45 so they don't get to play with new content.

I finally got patched to 3.3 and then got to log in last night. I'm looking forward to seeing the new stuff. I have hopes that it's a most standard dungeon experience. My Argent Tournament ventures didn't go that well. I never could get the hang of jousting. I had to get guildies to dps my opponent while I kept my horse alive just to get past that particular quest. I tried jousting so many times, I pictures the horses crying when Kattina came trudging back from the jousting area. I'm sure they drew straws and the loser had to take Kattina on her next round.

I had a heck of a time finding the entrance to the new stuff last night. Jaina might mention to her assistant in Dalaran that 'enter on the side of Ice Crown Citadel' isn't particularly helpful when the thing is freaking huge. A guildie was helpful enough to tell me to look under the first E in IcE Crown Citadel on my map. I talked to Jaina (I'm almost sure I'm spelling that wrong)..I talked to Ms. Proudmoore and she gave me my next task. Give the guys guarding the entrance are 80 elites, I definitely need friends. Hopefully tonight I'll find someone that doesn't mind running it again.

Kattina's side project as I putter around has been getting the dungeon achievements for all of the old world instances. I finished Mauradon and Zul'Farak last night. Zul'Farak went incredibly fast - probably 15 to 20 minutes total to kill the boss. And for once I didn't lose any of the people I was rescuing (at least not until I killed them myself). I just have Dire Maul left. I think that one will take a bit more time since I have to clear all three wings.

My life centers around Tulukaa, my Death Knight. Then again I have no life as my wife says. Tulukaa is now level 76, has maxed herbalism and is slowly working on inscription.

There was this one quest I worked on the day before yesterday where the Scourge had taken over the Undercity. How is that you say? Undercity belongs to the Horde, but Blizzard in their infinite wisdom created an alternate ending to this quest and it resulted in a battle royal to retake the city. This was one of the coolest quests I have every been on and I hope they have more in stock like this one was.

Damsine, my level 71 hunter has been taking a long nap, though I have been bringing her out every now and then to do some tailoring. Of my priest Gandamea, well lets just say it's vey slow going as I'm really not of the priestly sort.

Other then that, I haven't done much more then level and level and level....

With Brewfest running, I switched back to Kattina, my 70 shadow priest and let me 'lock (66) take a rest for a bit.

The boss for Brewfest is in Blackrock Depths. I've actually never been there before. When I started playing WoW, most of my guild was already in their 70s. By the time I was of a level for the Blackrock instances, they'd all moved on to Burning Crusade.

I was amazed to zone in and end up having a mole machine take me to a vast underground tavern. Crazy. After we took our turns beating up the quest guy, we decided to run through the area and get attuned to Molten Core. After that we went to LBRS and got our worg puppy pets. I think this week we're going to hit the Reginald Windsor quest line. I can't wait.

I have really enjoyed leveling my Warlock once I got past about 43. I set a goal of trying to get a level a day (really, a level per gaming session). I kept up with that pace pretty well until I got to 60. Now it's taking a couple of days. I don't play hours and hours a day either. I play for a few hours in the evening, mainly after my daughter goes to bed.

It continues to pleasantly surprise me how much tougher Rilla is level per level compared to my shadow priest. She and her Fel Guard have cruised through quests that kicked the butt of my priest. Side note: I really like my Fel Guard.

I was incredibly excited this week when I finally leveled into Zangermarsh. My 'Lock is an herby/alchy and Zangermarsh is absolutely teeming with things to harvest. And I'm not limited to plants on the ground. Oh, no. I can whack walking herb factories and harvest them too (also known as bog lords and fungal giants). Even when I level out of Zangermarsh (after I finish all of the quests here), this is going to be one of my regular stops.

I know I have it a little easier than Kattina with the quests, and not just because I have my big demon buddy along. From her experience, I know which clusters of quests are best to do at the same time. I know where to find stuff. And the big buddy and soulstone don't hurt. I do a lot fewer body runs than she did (not that I'd tell her that - it might hurt her feelings).

Anyway, until I run out of rested bonus I'll keep cranking away with Rilla. She's about 7 bars from 64 and still going strong.

As probably most of you that have any interest in WoW already know, the new patch 2.4 went live yesterday.

One of the first things I noticed is the wide spread abuse of being able to link abilities and spells in chat. Leave it to the players to find every possible rude or sexually suggestive way to use this new feature in conversation.

I deleted a bunch of older quests that I don't intend to finish at this time (pre-BC stuff I was messing around with) so that I'd have room for the new quests.

I went out to Silmyr Lake to get the new fishing daily. The first thing that gentleman had me do is go to Stormwind and fish a baby crocolisk out of the canals. That one was pretty easy. It only took about 10 casts to get it. On the return I got a random back of goodies plus some cash. I have 2 new potions of waterwalking and I got a sharp fillet knife that vendored for just over 4g. I can't wait to see what he wants next.

Some of the initial Sunwell quests had me collecting materials in the Outlands. I had to collect this nether residue through mining - which took an absurdly long time. I also had to kill Sunfury elves in Netherstorm until someone dropped their secret battle plans. That part I enjoyed quite a bit. I've never seen so much blood elf carnage at one time before. Both of these quests are dailies.

I had a few one time quests sending me to talk to folks at the new island - no I can't spell it. Let's call it Sunwell island. I portaled to Ironforge and then took a gryphon to 'Sunwell Island'.

The place was mobbed and there was definitely mass confusion. It totally felt like being dropped into the middle of a war zone. My husband and I did the first couple of modified kill quests and wandered around the city a bit. We still have to do Magister's Terrace and find this missing magister for another quest. We have no idea what we're doing, but I'm enjoying seeing and doing new things. With so many current instances, everybody knows which pulls in which order and everything is very scripted. Now we need to figure it out as we go along.

Let's see, what else. The quartermasters have some new rep items you can buy - at least some of them do. I'm hoping that at some point we can get to the new place without going to Ironforge first. I'm also hoping I find stuff in the new place that drops the motes I need for my cloth runs. I did get 2 motes of mana off of something, but I had 2 bodies there and am not quite sure which one dropped it. Oh well.

All in all, I'm excited about the new patch and so far having a good time. I will ignore my lonely alts for now as I explore the new stuff.

I have done quite a bit of backtracking with Kattina - my 70 shadow priest and am still working on the Tirion Fordring quest chain. I'm enjoying seeing some of the stuff I missed, but I'm also considering other ways to approach this.

Along with Kattina, I have a ton of alts that I want to level. I have at least one of every alliance race and class (though not every combination thereof) on the same server in the same guild. I have been wanting to level some of these folks. Someday I might get them to 70 and then have more options when raid night comes around. Maybe instead of running Kattina through old instances, I should let her stay in the Outlands and go through the content on my other people as I level them up. Granted, I have a ways to go - especially to get to the high-end pre-Outlands content. My next highest character is a gnome warlock, and she's 42 at the moment. All of the rest are under 30, all the way down to a level 6 rogue.

If I relax about doing Kattina's cloth runs immediately upon cooldown, and don't stress about dailies and farming primals, I can have some fun with my other characters. It's something worth thinking about.

On my way to the Outlands, I will confess that I was not thrilled with leveling in the Plaguelands. The quests took a ton of running around. At under 60, I got killed quite a bit as I was playing solo. I finally deleted all of the quests I hadn't finished for the area and found other places to level.

Fast forward many months. Kattina is now 70 and has gone through probably a majority of the Outland quests. She does arena. The guild raids Kara and has just started raiding ZA. She does her dailies (usually the cooking daily and sometimes others) and farms primals for her every four day cloth runs. I am a putterer and explorer at heart though, and I am curious about the many (many many) instances and areas that I skipped on my way to the Outlands.

I have run solo through some of the lower level instances. If I'm careful, I don't do too bad. I get to about the Blackrock level of instance at the point where I'm really pushing it. If I'm careful with my pulls, I can progress, but if I get any unexpected adds - well, it's a long body run is all I'm going to say.

Recently one of my guildies posted about the great story in the Tirion Fordring quests in the Plaguelands. I was intrigued, so this weekend I headed back to the Plaguelands to pick up some of the stuff I missed.

I did a lot of quests in addition to finding Mister Fordring. I actually got from neutral to honored with the Argent Dawn while I was there. My next step takes me to Stratholme looking for a family portrait. I think I'm going to try and recruit a buddy to go with me. I've helped a few guildies with their holy water quests in there, and I'm not sure how far I can get on my own.

I know I'm not going to get any loot comparable to Outlands loot on these little ventures. I'm not going to get the cash I could get farming pretty much anything in the Outlands. But still....there are places to go and things to see and people I've never met that are calling from the old world, so I'll just keep puttering and exploring and generally having fun along the way.

The vast majority of my time in WoW is playing Kattina, my shadow priest 70. For the last few weeks I've spent quite a bit of time doing the quests for Netherwing reputation. Finally, last night, I reached exalted. I have to say the quest ending was amazing. I don't want to spoil the details for someone still working their way through the quests - but it was awesome.

When I arrived back in Shattrath, I was taken to Lower City where all those netherwing beauties have been standing around for the last several months. I looked at each one carefully and then spoke with my chosen one. In this case, I am not buying a mount, I am choosing a companion that willing joins me. Sure, my ray is nice, but she's just a mount.

I chose Zoya. I think we're going to be a great team.

One of my guildies asked what I'm going to do now. I pretty much don't need to do dailies anymore unless I go on a wild spending spree. I think I'm going to work on battlegrounds so I can upgrade to more of that epic gear, keep honing my arena skills (they need a lot of honing, trust me), and putter around. And finally, fly around with Zoya and look cool.