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While questing in Winterspring, I received a private message from ‘blizzard’ telling me I was a lucky player and would get a ’surprise gift of the mysterious’

Geesh, does anyone believe this stuff?

After watching the trade channel, I guess they do. Stories of people who’s accounts were hacked are all over the trade channel — which honestly, Blizzard should rename as World General.

Last week they were giving out free mounts. I didn’t get my free mount.

Thank goodness I signed up for that Cataclysm Beta…. wait, where did all of my items and gold go?

We had this game from the start, but, Horde got lazy. Alliance fought as a group, defended the nodes they took (Horde never does this), and beat us by playing smart. They didn’t have to top the HK charts to win, they held three bases and sent small 3 person groups to attack the nodes where Horde wasn’t defending. The strategy worked well as they ended up winning, and all of the Horde that ran around from base to base killing topped the HK charts, but, still lost.

I had been defending Blacksmith until I was left solo and a group of four took it, so, I ended up recapping farm with a few others and was stuck defending farm.

While leveling, it is funny how some numbers pop up on different stats. I had ‘leet’ armor when questing in the Barrens.

I had exactly 2000 Honor exactly during an Arathi Basin battleground.

I needed 2805 Honor to buy the Insignia of the Horde, and had 2806

While fighting some mobs in Felwood, Qwickthree had 73 armor. Yes, he’s level 48 taking on level 53 mobs.

Blizzard made a number of changes to leveling which I believe means they are focused on end game content rather than everything prior. Bind On Account gear gives 10% more experience per item, and you can equip two BOA items for a 20% gain. Experience for quests was raised and mounts are obtainable at level 20. This probably is a big factor as many of the quest hubs in the starting areas require a bit of running around.

However, the biggest change was experience in Battlegrounds. While questing, I’ll always have two battlegrounds queued, and, on a good night, I’ll actually do more battlegrounding than questing. While leveling Qwaitxsix in the Hinterlands, the battlegrounds were constantly popping. A quest turnin leveled me in Orgrimmar.

With the new Honorable Defender bonus, you get 50% more honor from your kills than you do when you are attacking. I’m not sure why Blizzard did this, but, as someone that usually defends, it is a welcome change. It doesn’t mean people will defend, and more than one time we’ve lost a base because someone capped a flag and left it to go fight. The ‘Too Good to D’ syndrome.

What most people fail to realize is, if you control three bases in Arathi Basin, the battle will come to you. Fight on the Flags when defending, pull the enemy from the flag when they are defending. It’s not a difficult concept.

It isn’t surprising to see some healing on non-healing classes in the battleground scoreboards. Life Drain shows up for warlocks, Mend Pet shows up as healing for hunters. However, many hunters hit Mend Pet only when their pet is about to die because healing their pet takes away from their DPS. Sure, PUG battlegrounds should have healers once in a while, but, I’ve seen ret pallies that refuse to heal anyone around them, even themselves because they are there to DPS. Shadow Priests rarely pop out of shadowform even when it could save them.

Once in a while you’ll see some rogue that is relatively low leveled for the bracket and they’ll ask for a healbot — because by some miracle with a healer, they’ll be able to take out someone. If you call out for a healbot, and by some rare chance you get one, protect that healer — don’t charge into battle DPSing everything and allow the healer to get killed and then complain that you didn’t get any heals.

In any case, the screenshots of Qwickthree’s healing are a pretty sad testament to the healers in battlegrounds. They are virtually non-existent, but, very much appreciated when they are around.

Overall, it is just a statement that healers are pretty rare in battlegrounds – even on the twink battlegrounds.

Battlegrounds and Questing at the same time uses up a lot of soul shards as I use the voidwalker while question, and the felhound while running battlegrounds. If the battleground queues are rather quick, I’ll leave the felhound out while questing and kill two or three mobs.

From 30 to 40 was very fast. Battlegrounds provide about 2000-4000 experience per game and done while questing, you level up incredibly fast. One thing to remember is setting your pet on defensive when you are about to leave the battleground so that you don’t chain pull a few mobs once you’ve zoned into where you accepted the battleground queue.

Bendovr, a Night Elf Druid from Dragonmaw got on top of the roof at stables. It takes a little creative work to kill players that get up there, but, they usually do quite a bit of damage before they are killed.

Relicc, a gnome mage from Eldre’Thalas got on top of the roof at stables to try and kill people. Luckily, a few drain manas and a well timed dot while he tried to evocate and he died pretty quickly.

It appears that they can be mounted and hit the little shed on the graveyard side of the stable and walk up the edge with a well timed jump. From there, they get on top.