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The questline for John J. Keeshan has some hilarious scripts. If you’ve seen the Rambo movies, the entire questline talks about John J. Keeshan and Colonel Troteman and a number of other references. It is worth rolling an Alliance character to experience the questline starting with the Gnomecorder and reading the quest text and the emote text sent while completing the quest. One of my favorite lines is when Jorgensen says:

I’m probably the most important member of the team, being a Paladin and all.

While running around Stormwind, another player had a silly emote that they would hit once in a while that said that they had pickpocketed you.

While questing in Lakeshire, the quest where you have to control the Ettin to lift the rock glitched. While that quest contains a +3 hit ring, I continued it on Luxxi until I got to Deathblaze.

During the Deathblaze fight, the scripted text from the Ettin quest was played during the other dialog.

During an instance, we had a person that was Need rolling on every item, and, trying to kick that person reported that they couldn’t be kicked for four hours. They ended up sitting well behind us and we 4-manned the instance, and, he won a good portion of the loot and got the experience, bag and rep rewards.

Cho’gall is a realm where the Horde seriously outnumber the Alliance. On the Horde side, seeing an Alliance toon is very rare – especially now that most instances can be queued while you’re in Stormwind. However, even still, the population on Cho’gall’s Alliance side is quite low.

Here are two screenshots, one taken at 9am, the other at 11am that show the complete ‘/who’ list.

At 9am there were 18 people logged on and at 11am 25 people were logged in. Sometimes, even during normal raid hours, there will be 40-45 people logged in. Yes, it is a very low population server.

While trying the Free to Play accounts, I created a hunter to earn money to send over to another twink. Realizing after earning a few gold that you couldn’t trade or mail – even to your own account.

One battleground I played had eight hunters, a shaman and a rogue. Originally we had seven hunters with one warrior, but, the warrior dropped out and was replace with… a hunter!

While running some instances with Brevisano, I was in a Shadowfang Keep with two other priests.

Brevisano is a level 20 Gnome priest that I made to run battlegrounds with. While leveling, I didn’t really realize it, but, I had never died even though I had run multiple instances. I thought I was going to die during one RFC when the tank and two DPS dropped out during rolling restarts, but, this level 15 mage (with AGM) and I survived, then, two-manned Taragaman the Hungerer. My first death didn’t occur until Blackfathom Deeps when I aggroed one of the frenzyfish that was biting us through the floor, but, couldn’t be targeted.

I was going to run battlegrounds until I realized I hadn’t died. Ironically, when I started running battlegrounds, I completely forgot that Inner Fire wasn’t maintained after death, so, I probably ran a few battlegrounds without Inner Fire up. Never having died, it was up from the time I got the spell. 🙂

My first battleground, I had exactly 1000 hit points, and, topped the healing charts, earned Warsong Gulch Victory, Warsong Gulch Perfection, First Honorable Kill and a number of discoveries. I’ve since farmed quite a bit more gear and am generally around 1350 hit points self-buffed in Battlegrounds.

When the World of Warcraft Free to Play accounts came out, I thought, I wonder if you can effectively twink a character at 20 to compete in the 20-24 bracket. Since you’re at the bottom of the bracket, you need to stack some hit if you’re going to be DPS, but, I’ve always enjoyed being a healer.

I’ve never played a paladin beyond about level 10, but, decided to try my hand with Luxxi – who has really become my primary Free to Play account. I also created a human priest, but, created a gnome priest, Brevisano, for battlegrounds.

One of these, the Horde dominated healing, but, fighting mid or camping the graveyard will allow you to get some large healing numbers, but, in the end, it is who moves the flag that wins.

When playing Warsong Gulch, I saw someone drink Rumsey Rum Dark and didn’t recognize the player name. It appears that when you’re in the flag room during the start, not only can you target the opposing faction, but, any drink buff they get is shown as if they are right next to you.

Here we see Breyanne, a 24 hunter twink, drinking Rumsey Rum Dark before the start of the game.

I created a number of trial account characters to see just what could be done with a level 20 toon. Luxxi, a Holy Paladin, ended up being the one I played the most. I suspected I would have run with my Shaman, but, somehow the Paladin won. After fishing for Old Ironjaw and coming up empty handed after 1650 casts, I decided to go for the Ambassador title, level up Jewelcrafting to get my necklace and the Simple Pearl Ring for my DPS set.

Of course, running instances with the Tabards brings a decent amount of rep per run – sometimes close to 3000 rep, so, it doesn’t take too many runs to get to exalted, and, while leveling cooking, several of the recipes are 2-3 gold – with a 10 gold cap, that means buying a few, running some instances or selling some loot from your bags to bring in a little cash.

Once you get cooking near 300, you need fish from Outlands and some cooking recipes from Terrokar Forest. You also need a recipe from Zangarmarsh near the Cenarion Village. The run started rather well – I took the flight path to Duskwood and ran through Deadwind Pass. I don’t ever remember spiders falling down, but, as I was mounted, I would aggro them but they never caught me. While in Swamp of Sorrows, I opened the flight path, then, it was time for the run through Blasted Lands.

I almost made it to the base, using Hand of Protection and Holy Shocking myself and using Word of Glory, but, one mistimed heal and I died. I rezzed close enough to open the flight path and then made the trek to the Dark Portal. Along the way, I aggroed one of the Hyena’s which aggroed a bird, and a boar… and I was bounced along until I died again. Getting to the portal resulted in one more death from the mobs walking around the rim of the crater. Level 20 has a very large aggro range, and, it is about to get worse.

Once I ran through the portal, I thought, finally, once I open up the flight path I can fly to Honor Hold… nope. You don’t know any flight paths connected to this one. Repair my armor, look at the path through Hellfire and run.

I mounted up and ran through and made it to the giant elite before dying using Hand of Protection after getting hit and dismounted. After watching the guard patterns, I realized that they don’t patrol back and forth, but, walk towards him and disappear, so, I waited for the next group to pass, mounted up and met the next patrol coming up and died. After this, it was pretty smooth sailing to Honor Hold, aggroing mobs I couldn’t even see, but, even on a 60% mount, I was able to outrun them. I opened up the flight path and set my sights on Zangarmarsh.

Of course, we have another flight path in Western Hellfire which I opened, but, made the mistake of aggroing a boar on the way, missed the road cutoff and didn’t want to doubleback and get dismounted. In retrospect, I should have as I aggroed more birds than I’ve ever seen. If there were that many birds when I quested, getting those feathers would have been easy. Opening the flight path, I resumed by trek back down the road, and followed the path through the ravagers. I almost made it into Zangarmarsh, but, died close enough that I could rez within the safety of the village. I talked with Juno Dufrain and bought the recipe for Blackened Sporefish.

A quick trip over to the Alliance base, and, up to the Harbor to get the other flight path. Realizing after getting there that I don’t have the rep with the Kuranai to get the one recipe. No problem, it is safer to fish here for fish as you can find a few spots where you don’t aggro nearby mobs. In 30 minutes I’ve gathered enough fish and have 320 cooking and ready for the next recipe. This time, the trek takes me to Shattrath to the bar to learn another recipe. I’ve got enough fish to easily hit 350, but, I’ve run into a snag.

I now need to go to Terrokar forest so I can cook the Golden Fishsticks to get me to 365. This is where it gets tough. In order to get to 375, you need to fish the Highland pools – which, require a flying mount – or do they?

After some thought, and looking around, I find that there appears to be a spot where I could be death gripped up to a plateau, and then again to the lake just outside the Alliance Stronghold. Voila, three Highland Fishing schools. I end up spending a few days up there waiting for pools to respawn and while waiting, run Wailing Caverns. While waiting for the others to turn in the quests, I decide to cook some of the lobster to hit 375 cooking. A little reading and I find that even if I could catch Mr. Pinchy, I wouldn’t be able to use it.

However, I did get the Ambassador Title and Master Cook.

While running instances, you run into a lot of people that have figured out where they can sit away from their keyboard and still get the loot rolls, experience and rep gained from the other people in the party that are actually running the instance.

Kaserola was sitting in a niche near the stables, and, need rolled on every loot roll. Sad when people can’t even take the time to put in the effort that the others are putting in.

While questing in Westfall, I ran into two issues. The first was a missing model replaced by the blue and white checkerboard. The second was some dialog by the ragamuffin’s during the crime scene quest.