Ding! 90

Looks like I missed another Ding! somewhere. Maybe I'm only catching even numbered Dings now. (EDIT: Found the pic & posted it.)

So I sort of fell off the wagon again. Blizzard sent me another free seven day, won't you please come home, Bill Bailey emails, so I bit last week. I popped out in the wall tower with Shado-Master Chong, and he told me to go the the Townlong Steppes. I checked the map, noticed that the quickest way was to take a cat-fall down the wall, did that, mounted up, discovered the Upper Sumprushes, and...

Bam, I'm 90. That was exciting.

The worst part? There's not much else to do. Jal's 90, so the starting quest rewards from Warlords are probably going to be stronger than anything I'd quest my way to in Mists. So I guess Jal's done.

I'll post later about changes to the druid (I did play through a few more quests just to see what was up) and the game in general, but I was surprised how much stuff having an active "Mists"/warchest level account lets you do now in free-to-play. Two biggies:

1. You can play up to 20th level characters for free on any account now, so I could've been playing my low level alts on my main account all this time
2. You can play as a monk on free to play accounts

I think the only thing the free seven days really buys me is the ability to play as a death knight (or any other character over 20, obviously, but that's the only class that's blocked in free-to-play now). So, um, all right then.

Ooops -- WoW's Free To Play to 20

Boy, I really missed something when I applauded Blizzard's move to open BC to vanilla-only owners.

From Blizzard Support:

The World of Warcraft Starter Edition allows players to access World of Warcraft for free -- all you need is a Battle.net account and an Internet connection. Starter Edition players can play up to a maximum character level of 20 and are able to upgrade to a full, paid account at any time, allowing them to continue their adventures where they left off.

Okay, I'm less happy. It turns out the free BC was just to pacify that I'd paid to level to 20. Matlocker, as you can see, is just barely over level 20. Matlocker's buddy in Recruit-a-Friend is just barely 20. Now of course one bud probably should be in a paid account. If nobody is, they can't play together in a group (if neither can start a group -- and FTP characters can't -- they're just fighting near each other), have one use heirlooms, or get the RaF bonus, but the $15-$5+$30 we paid for Matlocker to get WoW vanilla and a 30 day time card seems a lot stoopider [sic] now.

Oh well, Blizzard robbed me of another $40. What else is new?

I think the real take home for me is that I've got something to do the next time I suspend my account. I still don't have a Horde alt worth a rip. I also planned on checking out the Worgen starting zone at some point. Now I can do both off the clock while Jal's fishing, and that's a good thing.