Silithus

Ah, Silithus! 

If it creeps, crawls, or has an exoskeleton, a stinger, or pincers, it will be found here.  Tucked away in the far southwest corner of Kalimdor, it is regarded as one of the hardest regions in the 'basic' game.  Outlands, I shall claim you for my own within a week!  Muhahaha.  Err...sorry.

Again, my persistence at the Summer Fire Festival reaps rewards as I had a flight path to a small outpost near the zone's border.  I was greeted by a bevy people with things bugging them (literally).  Casting a glance across the landscape, the sky was thick with writhing swarms of insects, adding a distinctly alien feel to the area.  Everyone wanted something dead and in vast quantities.  That, I could oblige.

Venturing gamely into the deserts surrounding the area, I was immediately struck by how many adversaries there were.  Exploring anywhere would mean carving a path through the nightmares of children.  Spiders, and scorpions, and sandworms, oh my!  After I cleared out the first round of tasks and picked up round two, I found a tiny refuge manned by a dwarf (as opposed to being dwarfed by a man) with a mission:  obtain unobtainium (or whatever) from local geysers. 

This is apparently a PvP mini-game for the zone.  Each faction can bring back MacGuffins one at a time to 'home base' and score a point for their team.  Holding a MacGuffin flags you for PvP-combat, slows your move speed, and getting on a mount will cause it to be lost.  Lovely.  Each turn in grants reputation, a token amount of honor, and a 30 minute 5% damage buff.  As I discovered, the first turn in grants all of the above plus a chunk of xp.  Still, it's something to do and honestly... there aren't that many players wandering around this zone.  The 'goal' is for your team to be the first to 200 turn-ins. Doing so grants your entire side a debatable bonus to reputation earned in the zone.  The score stayed at 0-1 for over two hours, so you can see how popular this mini-game is.

Completed all of the quests for the zone, save for a "Kill the +4 Elite Scorpion with Two Bodyguards" group quest, but not without trying and losing violently.  Twice.  It was vaguely reminiscent of Clash of the Titans (the Harryhausen version, not the PoS they foisted off on us earlier this year)  The closest I got was burning (icing?) down one of the bodyguards and getting the Big Bad down to just under half health.  I may revisit this one next week just out of spite.

By the time I finished questing, I had leveled (Ding! 56) and was itching to try someplace new.  Deep within the Silithus wastes, I discovered Steve and I could handle +5 creatures at great mana costs, so I felt more comfortable taking my happy butt to Winterspring a level earlier than planned.  Initially I was reluctant to hunt Winterspring because of fears the bulk of the critters in an ice zone would have high frost resistances, but after a few owlbeasts and yeti were felled it looks as though my fears were unfounded.  There's some damage reduction going on, of this I am certain, but not enough to be...prohibitive.  Well, yet.