Ding, 70! - 3.25.2008

So, I finally hit level 70 on my original character, Punchline the Gnome Rogue.

The night the Burning Crusade released, I drove home as fast as I could (maybe a little too fast) and threw the disks into my drive. As I had it installing, I planned exactly what I was going to do to achieve level 70 as fast as possible. Well, it didn't go exactly as planned...

I got to level 62 that very night by running instances at the Hellfire Citadel. It was so great! Everything was so new and there wasn't one single person on the server that was max level yet - everyone had an equal chance to become great players again! New environments, new items, new quests, new mobs (well, new skins of old mobs), etc.! It was so fun! And then, I visited Zangarmarsh...

I cannot even begin to explain how much I hate that zone. I don't know what it is because the quests aren't really that different there from the other zones, but I just can't stand it there. I thought that I would just truck through it, but that didn't exactly happen...

I'm what you could call an "altoholic". I'm constantly rolling up new characters. However, I didn't expect that I would quit Punchline for an alt so close to level 70. But, it just so happened that I hated Zangarmarsh so much that I decided to quit Punchline forever at level 64 and reroll. Besides, I hated rogues! Before recently, I honestly never completely understood the class. I always played it incorrectly.

An Orc Hunter. That's what I rerolled as. It was almost refreshing to play through Azeroth yet again because this time it was on the Horde side - the faction that I never played past level 36. It was fun, I really like my hunter. It kinda sucked though, because Punchline is on a PvP server (Korgath), I had to roll my hunter on a completely new server. He was originally on Vashj (PvP), but I later transferred him to Lothar (PvE) to be with friends. The hunter hit 60 two days after the patch with the higher rate of experience gain from level 20-60 came out, so that kinda sucked. It took about 8 days play time to get to 60, so I'm pretty proud of that.

I decided to take a little week long break from WoW after I hit 60 on the hunter. Right when I was about to start playing again, I was told that all my friends had quit WoW. So, now I was a level 60 Orc Hunter on a server that I no longer had friends on and was strange to me. I haven't touched that character since the day my friends told that they had quit...

I decided to give rogues another try. I logged on Punchline and quested in Zangarmarsh for about 10 minutes before I logged off. My friend told me to just skip Zangarmarsh because it wasn't as necessary as I thought it was. So, I went onto Nagrand. It was a little tough for a level 64, but nothing too bad. Some time later I hit level 68.

I no longer hated rogues; however, I did hate Outland and leveling. Those last two levels are tough. But, my friend wanted me to hit 70 so bad that he provided me the incentive that I needed. He was going away for a week and he said that if I hit 70 before he came back, he'd buy my flying mount for me. Done.

Five days later, last night, I hit 70 with a group in Shattered Halls. It didn't feel quite as epic as when I hit 60 back in the day, but it felt pretty damn good.

Now, I can be an altoholic but know that I was still able to manage one character to 70. However, I foresee problems with Wrath of the Lich King...

P.S. - I'd like to thank Wideload, Breticus, Lid, and Redstarquad for that great Shattered Halls group last night. Thanks!

-Matt Graham