So out of nowhere, Golagros and I decided to make new characters and try out the LFG tool to run low level instances that we never really experienced at their proper levels. He made a belf holy priest and I made an undead female prot warrior. Or rather, after a week of deliberating over names and hemming and hawing over possible choices, I made a warrior. I decided to go with the name Shrapnel, which I found both cool, fitting the class, and fitting the race. Some rejected names were: Wail, Shiver, Piranha, Carve, Gluttony, and Cactus.

Being fully decked out in heirloom gear has obviously helped a lot, but it's also surprising to see how much the starting levels/areas have changed. I was amazed to discover that the spiders and scarlet thugs in the Forsaken starting area were no longer hostile, something which always made for some early headaches.

We quickly leveled up to 15 (the minimum level to enter Ragefire Chasm using the LFG interface) and leaped in. It was interesting, but fun! It's really weird tanking with a very limited suite of abilities, especially with only one multi-target threat generator and no ranged abilities to speak of. I was pretty nervous to see if I'd get grouped with impatient or jerkwad players, but so far everyone's been relaxed and enjoyable.

One observation though - I think Blizzard hates hunters. Everything a new hunter learns seems to teach all the wrong habits. First of all, no pet until level 10, hence the melee hunters. And something I just experienced tonight, after puzzling for a good 15 minutes why the hunter kept pulling aggro despite Omen showing me with a comfortable aggro margin...why the hell would you give a lowbie hunter Distracting Shot?? There's no reason a hunter would need it yet! No wonder hunters have such a bad rep...the game is all but forcing huntard habits down their throats!

So our little priest and warrior are now level 18, and we've been eyeing up the random dungeon option. We've been shying away from it so far and just doing Ragefire though, as we're both a little wary about venturing into Deadmines, Wailing Caverns or Shadowfang. Especially Wailing Caverns. I hate Wailing Caverns.



I also stepped into Warsong Gulch for the first time in the 10's bracket and my gosh is it weird. No mounts and the limited abilities makes for a much different game than at 80. Also, druids with travel form at level 16? SO OVERPOWERED.