Gnome Man's Land

The past couple of days have been sort of "establishing an evening routine", around optional activities. In the old days, this would be "go to hub a, b, or c" and do all the dailies until you're ready to stab yourself in the eyes with a [sparking fork of the feverflare] or something. (It doesn't really matter what you're gouging your eyes out with, as long as it is epic.)


What a purple fork might look like

The "must do" list for me is:

- Scout the World Map looking for quests that will give item upgrades first and foremost. If time permits, also target missions that give Warden reputation, artifact power, and order resources (which fuel my follower's stream of missions and are used to purchase upgrades for my class set of gear)
- Run around the zone Suramar collecting Mana Crystals, the "currency" of choice for discerning mana addicts.
- Feed said crystals to all of the addicts in my Suramarian outpost for tasty, tasty Nightfallen reputation.

I have no love for the Nightfallen, a group of elves who have sold themselves out to the Legion in return for mana. Without a steady supply of mana, they revert into mindless Withered, husks of rage and hunger-- basically making them 28 Days Later zombie-elves. The drug metaphors are stupidly in your face here and frankly I could easily have done without all of it, but their reputation is needed for everything from completing your class set to getting the achievements which will someday perhaps give expansion-wide flying. Right now the best you can hope to unlock is "faster horse speed" through a ridiculous amount of achievement hunting, but I can't imagine they won't eventually let us use our flappy things.

Dungeon running is just as painful now as it was a few years ago. Queue times of about 45 minutes for a DPS that eventually lead to mute groups filled with chainpulling psychotic tanks, healers that don't, and facepulling, firestanding DPS that value damage meters over common sense. So at least I had that familiarity working for me. The fact that EVERYTHING sends you to dungeons is a little annoying: profession quests, world quests, your class quests, campaign quests. I put these off to weekends when I have larger uninterrupted blocks of time.

By and large most of my time goes into the world questing. I can't emphasize how much I love this.
- As your item level increases gear rewards scale upwards
- Reputation is earned based on the zone doling out the reward
- There's no pressure to "do it all!" or hitting some daily mission cap.
- It keeps the zones populated with players constantly. I can only imagine how exciting that must be on PvP servers.
- The dynamically-scaled content means you get all 5 zones to play in, instead of one zone or a few lackluster hub areas.

Otherwise I spend time picking off side missions I discover as I explore the edges of the map, sit around doing AH market research, or just run around and fish for a while. ( ><> FEEESH! ><> ).

I've heard there's an Artifact fishing pole. I now have a character goal.