No Money, Mo’ Problems, but at Least I Can Level.

As much as getting one’s hours cut at work can hurt the wallet, there are certainly bright sides to such an occurrence. In this particular case, one of those benefits has been playing WoW all day. This is pretty rad. I find that the daytime crowd, while fewer than the prime-timers, more than make up for it by being either a) even bigger douchebags or b) robots (see fig. a and fig. b, right).

Conversations such as these are just a tasting of my daytime experience, though, as I’ve spent most of my time working to better myself in-game. Fed up with being poor both irl and in-game, I’ve reactivated my second account and once again set up a side machine solely dedicated to working the auction house.

You see, I don’t want to work for my money. Why spend all my in-game time farming or doing dailies, when I could instead just set up another machine that constantly scans the auction house, looking for foolishly-low-priced deals? I make him jump every 20 minutes or so, and when the computer makes an audible “ding!”, I look over and click “yes” or “no”. Easy money.

I will say, however, many of my friends make UNREASONABLE money by working professions into it. Maybe I’ll try it; I’d love to make 20k a week instead of 2.5k. The trick, of course, seems to be having a jewelcrafter. This will require some work.

To that end, I’ve been leveling my Shaman. I’ve spent a good portion of the past several days remembering that level 51-53 is, in fact, the worst level area in all of leveling. You’re too high to do any of the quests that are close together, you’re too low to do most of the plagueland quests, and the only things that are reasonable for you are like, Felwood quests that are 48907 miles apart from one another. Before 51, you can find quests to do if you look hard enough/have done them enough to know where to be/where not to be (hint for Alliance – stay out of Feralas altogether). At 53 or so, Tirion’s quests in EPL open up and it’s tons of grinding (over a hundred mobs he wants dead) – it’s like a carpool lane to Outland. I’m actually on my way to freakin’ Un’Goro right now, because at least if I grind there, I can skin everything and maybe make some cash.

EDIT: Ok, so I totally forgot about Un’Goro. There are, in fact, a ton of quests for low-50s toons, they’re close together, and they involve a lot of grinding. Also, Shamans¹ are OP – I’ve been soloing devilsaurs all weekend. So yeah, levels 51-53 aren’t as devoid as options as I may have previously declared. My bad. I will revise my statement, and declare that the 50s in general are the worst, if only because they take the longest (you may say “but no, the 40s are worse!” but that’s because you’re trying to level on Alliance in Feralas, and that’s never a good idea).

Anyway, if all goes well, I should be in Outland by later this evening, at which point it’s smooth sailing to 80.

EDIT 2: Level 58 has been achieved, and I am on my way to Hellfire. Wish me luck. I’m home tomorrow as well, so I’ll try to get a post up about the Mike Doughty show I attended on Friday; we’ll see.

¹ Yes, Shamans is, in fact, the correct pluralization of Shaman. I don’t like it either; I think it’s unsightly at best. But hey, that’s how it goes. I’ve accepted it and moved on.