Crickets! It's been very quiet here ...

I'd like to think it's quiet 'cause I'm not making funny noob mistakes anymore, but I know that's not true!

For my part, I'm in so deep if I took the time out to blog about it, we'd never get Nor to level 90!

A bit of an overview about what everyone is up to:

Nor: is still slogging away at levelling.  She's now at level 70 and working on the things she desperately wanted to be level 70 for, namely Old Man Barlo's 5 Daily Fishing Quests.  What she hadn't counted on was learning about Marcia Chase and her Daily Quests, plus the "fishing coins out of the fountain in Dalaran" achievements.  One each for copper, silver, and gold coins.

Noritam Level 70

Nor celebrating lvl 70 and her new glowy axe with a new haircut!

Ah Dalaran!  What a beautiful city - what a place to get lost in!  I never thought much of learning about the city, I had it in my mind as the place where I could get some cool pets [The Sewer Rat anyone?]  Maybe a mount?  I can't remember, I'm not as attuned to the mounts as I am the pets.

For me, a mount is like a car, it gets me from Point A to Point B and I don't know what the fuss is about.  I use my Ebon Gryphon for most things.  When I need a ground mount I've found, of all things, the Springstrider I found in an egg during noblegarden to be the easiest to maneuver and the quickest.  I wanted the Dread Raven mount from the pre-order of WoD, because I love ravens.  Truthfully though, I almost never use it!  It's too big.  I love my Elekks, they were my first mount but I find them clunky to get around on so rarely use them either.  My Gryphon and Tallstrider are keybound and macro'd too so it's a lot easier to hit "z" or "shift + z" to get going than open my mount interface, make a choice and then go.  Like I said, a mount is for getting places ...

Back to topic: Nor, is levelling, and occasionally trying to get her mining and blacksmithing up a bit.  It's killing me not being able to mine as I travel along on my questing journeys.  Just as I got Nor's mining skill to the point of being able to mine in Outland, we moved on to Northrend!

Nor taking a break - fishing with Punky

Saelybrooke is sitting in Darnassus at level 20!  w00t!  Thanks to my lovely daughter and the Midsummer Festival, Saely really got through 5 levels or more very quickly.

Midsummer Festival:  similar to the Lunar Festival in that you travel along to every zone for a quick visit at a midsummer fire and gain points.  Points, gold, experience and ... wait for it ... ... yes!  a chance to get a dress!  Saely and Nor were all over that, need the dresses!

There are achievements for each continent "Flame Warden of Eastern Kingdoms"  "Flame Warden of Kalimdor" "Flame Warden of Pandaria" etc.

My first solo try was taking Sushel through Kalimdor and that didn't work out so well.  We couldn't find some of the festival tents and we kept getting lost or killed.

Nor made out better in Eastern Kingdoms, won the Flame Warden achievement on her own, collected enough tickets to purchase the dress and figured out one of the two flame tossing games.  She finallly figured out how to complete the Torch Tossing but was unable to coordinate her movements with enough finesse to complete Torch Catching.

Flame Warden Eastern Kingdoms!

Saely was lucky in that Vier acquiesced to pulling out the RAF-mount and flying her over Kalimdor to the Festival Tents and taking her to all the flight masters so she'd be able to travel Kalimdor more easily.

 What Saely and I didn't bargain for was Vier's intent not only to honour the Alliance flames but also to put out each Horde Flame we happened across.  Including the one in Orgrimmar!

OMG! She's taking me into the Horde Capitol City!  OMG!

I thought I might faint as we were circling above the city, looking for the festival tents!  "Piece of cake!" said Vier.   The trick is to look for the "open" side of every flame/tent.  Each one has an approach that is less guarded, you just swoop down on that side, put out the flame and bug out.  Which is exactly what we did!  Easy Peasy!

Lulled into a false sense of security we got into a spot of trouble in Thunder Bluff, the starting zone for Tauren, [Horde cows].  I don't recall exactly how we got separated, but I'm sure it was me bumbling into, or over, something I didn't see, then ... Vier's up there at the flame battling Horde and I'm down here trying to figure out the elevator and bridges to get back up there without getting killed.

A few times.  [seriously, go to the Thunder Bluff link above, click on the screenshot tab and have a look at the city!]

We did prevail however and Saelybrooke is my only character to earn a flame extinguishing achievement.  Thanks to Vier.  Thank you Vier.

Extinguishing Kalimdor!  w00t!

Saely got dropped off back in Darnassus to finish the Kalimdor Flame thingy and got wrapped up in the daily fishing and cooking quests til she finally found the last flame in Teldrassil to get the achievement.

Saelybrooke - Flame Warden of Kalimdor!

Midsummer Outfit on Saelybrooke in Darnassus

 That's where we left Saely, at level 20, doing daily fishing and cooking quests in Darnassus.

YaY! Level 20 and riding.

Saelybrooke sleeping in Darnassus awaiting our return.

Sushel, dear Sushel.  She's really given the farming dailies at Half-Hill an honest go of it but she absolutely loathes the Hozen monkeys.  We've just figured out that each and every daily there required interacting with those damn monkeys, so she's not so much into those.  We took a break to see if we could go find Pat Nagle, Quartermaster of The Angler faction.  Seems Sushel's the only one in a position to gain enough Angler reputation to get us the fishing raft!

Mr. Nagle is decidedly unfriendly and not very talkative and I was so looking forward to meeting him in that his hat, boots, fishing journal, raft, fishing chair ... everything fishing ... is related to him.  Humpf!

Sushel fishing with Punky and Punky - Achieving all the fishing dailies in Stormwind!

Instead, we've been counting on Sushel to be our resident gatherer.  She's the one to fly around and collect linen for advancing our first aid, ore to advance our blacksmithing and prospecting for gems that we need to blacksmith a few items.  Sushel's our go-to farming gal!  As she has no interest in dresses, I'm waiting to see what she will covet.

Sushel - the second of us to achieve all 5 Cooking Dailies in Stormwind!

 She's the least interested of us in pet collecting, [she kinda got soured on that looking for the frog pet on Timeless Isle] but she hasn't revealed her hoarding weakness yet.  She does want to go and get her racial mount, a ram, though so maybe she'll be the mount-a-holic of the bunch.

Time to introduce the newest member of our gang ... Soozuu.

Soozuu - Human Retribution Paladin - Bank Alt

[as an aside, for those of you that know me in real life - her name was an accident.  I can show you the notes in my WoW notebook with the lists of names I was going for, that were already taken.  This name ended up being a variation of a randomly generated name and I didn't realize what it was until I saw it in a chat window.  Honest!]

Nor's bank and bags were overflowing and we needed a Bank Alt.  Someone to sit in a city close to a bank and auction house to collect our treasures and sell our crafted goods.  Plus, since we're so into bags, maybe someone to learn tailoring to make all these bags for us while she sits in the city.  From our reading, we figured it would take a couple of hours to create a character, get her to level 10 and park her in an inn.  Ha!  12+ hours later, exhausted, with a very sore mousing arm we made it!

I read somewhere that if your account is hacked, only lvl 10 and above toons would be restored. Thus my ambition to get Soozuu to level 10.

Soozuu is a Human Retribution Paladin.  Someone to wear all of the dresses we collect with a bit of flair and we thought we'd learn about being a Ret. Pally from the ground up.

Apparently Soozuu doesn't care for fishing with Punky, she prefers the company of Cal!

Noritam is still working on learning how to set up her Ret. Dual Spec bars so she can DPS her way to 90 now instead of healing.

So much to do, so little time!  It seems everytime I find an answer to a question I find more and more things to do.  Which only makes sense seeing as how this world is ten years old and has been keeping millions of people occupied for those ten years.  I see now why they're introducing the boosted-90 ability with the new expansion this year.

 When Warlords of Draenor drops, the level cap will be 100 and with so much to do between starting a character and reaching the level cap, the casual player would be too daunted by it all coming in new.

I figure with the tail end of the Baby Boom retiring in real life now, and looking for something to do, a new hobby, this would be the most perfect thing.  Available 24/7, no travel, and totally mind-encompassing!

That's where we are, Nor in Northrend, Sushel all over gathering, Saelybrooke in Darnassus and Soozuu in Stormwind.  Onward!

Nor.