Breaking a two year hiatus from WoW

It has been roughly two years since I quit playing World of Warcraft, but with the coming of Cataclysm and some enjoyable reading of Swedish GameReactor journalist Mikael Sundberg's articles about the new addition, the game has once again hooked me in its claws. It all began about a week ago after I finished up reading Mikael's first article about Cataclysm and how the world of Warcraft would never be the same. It came to me that I had actually never finish leveling up any character to L80, or even L70 for that matter. The whole continent of Northrend was unexplored since I had my hands on other games at the time. And now, possibly within just a few months, all things are going to change.

With inspiration in my back, I once again logged on to my old account, only to see that I had to make a battle.net account, something I hadn't had since that early days of StarCraft and Diablo. Fair enough, I went through the short process of updating things and suddenly I was back at Iron Forge, two years later, just as I was when I left it.

My main character is a dwarf warrior named Brutalskägg (Brutalbeard) who was once one of the main tanks of a small guild called Köttkompaniet (The Meat Company). We consisted of mostly friends of whom I know IRL, but also a few outsiders. Since my time off, the guild has fallen on hard times as well as the server Vashj on which I play. Only two other members are actively playing today and both of them are L80, so I have some catching up to do. Brutalskägg left two years ago, only being a meager level 62 and fresh into Outland.

Vashj was a shadow of its former self. A quick look at server statistic showed that only 600 Alliance member were logged on last month and that Horde members accounted for 91% of the total server population. In other words, Vashj is soon to be a graveyard... for the Alliance at least. However, time is running short and I do not plan on switching server just yet, there is exploring to do first!

During this week I have grinded Brutalskägg up to L70. I mostly did simple Outland quests, mainly in Naggrand and Netherstorm, but once I was up to 68 I left directly for Northrend by boat from the "new" port in Stormwind. When I arrived I found out that a flying mounts costs 5000 gold! Something many probably have no problem with affording these days, but Brutal only had about 500g in his pocket and that was mainly from farming mines in Outland and selling ore at the auction house. Needless to say I was forced to rely on my swift but old and faithful brown ram to take me to adventure and conquest against the undead minions of Arthas.

How will it fare one might wonder? Well, with the coming weeks, I should find that out.

Brutalskägg at Valiance Keep in Northrend, standing proudly with the statue of Varian Wrynn in the background.