I've finally got my troll priest to the same level as my human priest, that I've shelved for now. And just for kicks I decided to respec him into shadow to get the MindFlay. Well I ran around and tried it out, and I did not like it. I was much more happy with my discipline build, and I went right back to it.

You know you play too much WoW when...

I think I'm going to start this category. I just thought of one. You know you play too much WoW when you use emotes instead of smiley faces at your job's interoffice chat client.

YourCoworker: This is ridiculous. I can't believe they give me all this stuff at the last moment. How am I going to get it all done? :(

You: /cry

YourCoworker: What?

You: I mean :(

Do you like to do battle grounds? I'm not a very big fan of them or PVP in general. I am more of a casual quest-by-my-self type of a guy. However, I remember I once got addicted to the Alterac Valey and would play it for weeks non stop. Oh the exhilaration!

I still play it once in a while, but it's not as fun anymore. I was thinking about it recently, why is that?

Well for one thing, they've changed this battle ground three or more times since my "fun days" there. The game is different now, and you play and win differently. Still, that is not it.

Well my friend finally convinced me to come to the dark side. He is leveling his priest as a blood elf, and kept commenting that we would not be able to play together. So I gave in and created a Horse priest. I've decided to go with the troll because I've never really leveled a troll race, so the starting zone experience would be new to me. And of course the other biggest reason is the cool dance - can't beat Capoeira! Since i did capoeira for a bout a year, I would be doing capoeira vicariously. Hmm... Maybe one day I should actually go play some capoeira in the real world too :D.

I'm also planning to level as shadow. To many that would have been a no brainer. To me it was not. I was leveling my alliance priest as discipline. I've even convince my level 40 priest friend to switch from leveling holy to discipline. He loves it. I'll go shadow to level 40 and try it out. If I don't like it I'll switch to discipline.

The other day, I decided to create a brand new undead priest, and quickly level her to the same level as my human priest, who is almost level 20. After spending about an hour and getting the new priest to level 19, I got bored. Combined with being tired, and also Medivh server being extremely laggy, I logged off.

The realization hit me the next day. I love playing WoW, I hate leveling. What is the difference? One you do for enjoyment of the game. You play the game while you increase your experience and level. The other you do as quickly as possible to get to 70.

Well I hate leveling, even to catch to my friend level 40 toon, or to my own toon on opposite faction who's level 19. Leveling sux! Goes back to my post about life before or after 70.

I think I'm done leveling. I'm gonna play from now on, no matter how long it takes me to get to level 70.

Yestaday was my first day of running and instance as a healer. I ran my human priest Svyatoslav through the Deadmines. We had a cool group, and ran quickly through the instance. Even though I had terrible lag on my computer, I was able to heal just fine.

It was actually fun, to let other people dish out the damage, and my job being only to heal them and pick up the loot. It also gave me a good deal of experience. I think dungeons for a healer is a great way to level and get great gear.

I've been thinking about this topic a lot. When does life begin in WoW? Does it begin when you create your new character or does it begin when that character reaches level 70, or at least 60? Why am I thinking all of this now? Well because I finally got my main Warlock to 70 a few months ago, and now it has been almost like a midlife crisis for me in WoW.

I remember when I just started to play World of Warcraft a few years ago I leveled my character slowly, taking time to run and do all the quests. Sometimes I would run to other zones just to explore them. Needless to say, it took me forever to level. I also made tons of mistakes along the way, and would learn from those mistakes. This was before I discovered how to look up quests on Thottbot or effectively make gold in the game. But I was pretty exited to sit down and explore the WoW universe.