T Minus 1 Day

This time tomorrow, NCP will have completed our first raid of WoD.

As with everyone else, I haven't had time to do a blog post because I've been too busy levelling and gearing up for it.

Luckily, even my relatively laid back approach to levelling hasn't been affected too much by the new guild's requirements; I finished levelling to 100 in just over 1 week and managed to pick up enough gear from heroics and one challenge mode dungeon to get a 634 ilvl.

I would have preferred an extra couple of weeks just so that I could do what I would normally do at the start of an expansion - max out my professions, finish every single quest (and associated achievements) and explore every single zone on the map - but I'm relatively comfortable with the timing, considering I haven't really played any more than what I usually would.

Things to note on my early expansion experience:

1. Using alts to access alternative buildings in the Garrison seems to almost be a necessity to be completely independent of the AH; I may need to level my alts a little earlier than I usually would.
2. The CM dungeon I did, Auchindoun, was about the same difficulty as the level 90 CM dungeons were, and only the last boss gave us a lot of trouble. I would imagine after working out how to maximise gearing and after Blizzard balances all the class abilities, it should be fine.
3. The Proving Grounds were no trouble at all - I hit these as soon as I dinged 100, knowing that I'd need to run at least Silver DPS to get into heroics. As it turned out, I did Gold DPS and Bronze Tank with only a few wipes and almost all Mythic level 90 SoO gear. Would be interesting to see how Silver Tank and Endless DPS run now that I've shed all the 90 gear, but I have other things higher on my priority list...
4. Run the level 100 MC with guildies and friends, preferably those who you raided with in Vanilla. It is an absolute SLOG to get through for not much reward (unless you collect pets and mounts), so nostalgia is the only thing that would make it more palatable. Luckily I got what I wanted out of the one run I did - I'm certainly not bothering to go back!
5. The Southshore vs Tarren Mill BG is quite fun, for a FFA Arena. Not interesting enough to keep as a permanent BG, but I wouldn't mind running it again in the future (if Blizzard decide to bring it back at subsequent anniversaries). I could see how it might be frustrating for melee, however.
6. I am a hunter. New pet skins/families are frickin' awesome. Carry on. :)