I think I was off WoW for about 2 years. I sold my old accounts (two of them 0_O) back in the burning crusade days.

At the time I didn’t have the time to play WoW and didn’t really see that changing anytime soon. I didn’t miss WoW at all until a few months later and from then on I would have “urges” to play it. Like I’d miss playing my Feral Cat Druid or I’d miss healing on my paladin.

These urges weren’t really enough on their own to push to back into WoW. Then a friend told me about some upcoming additions in the new expansion such as old zones changing, new race/class combos,two new races and heroic deadmines. That’s that finally pushed me over the edge and I ran out and brought a World of Warcraft Battlechest and Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

So now I have a level 45 Druid (Feral Cat spec) called Ashbrooke.

For me WoW is so much more enjoyable now as leveling in azeroth is a lot faster due to exp increases and using the dungeon finder tool. The new dungeon finder tool lets you queue to do a random or selected dungeon with players from your battlegroup. So there’s no more standing around in Stormwind on the LFG channel spamming for a healer or tank. If you choose a random dungeon you are rewarded with a bag that will contain a nice class/spec appropriate blue on completion of the random dungeon.

All the “classic” dungeons seem like a push over now. You can steam through dungeons like Uldaman in 30-40 depending on how good your group is and from my experience most of the are great. Pugs are so much better now most people seem to know how to play their roles and with stuff like the dungeon finder group buff and heirlooms you just breeze through dungeons that were harder before.

Another cool change is that mounts are available now from level 20 for a normal land mount and 40 for a epic land mount with reduced costs. The normal flying mount now can be brought at lvl 60, its faster now at 125% of movement speed and it only costs about 650g for training and the mount! So leveling in outland is going to be fairly easy now.

I can’t wait to hit 80 or 85 if the expansion comes out before I’m at 80!
Also I’m dying to hit 55 so I can roll a Death Knight and have that as my tanking alt who will level up just in dungeons.

You can check out my character Ashbrooke below.

Yes only 3 of the 5 classes have been announced and I’ve chosen my class already. I think I’m starting to drift away from the notion of always picking a rogue/thief class first in a RPG. I still love rogues/thieves to death but I’ve generally been there and done that. I’ve back stabbed, lock picked, hid in shadows and used my agility/dexterity to avoid countless attacks.

Lately I’ve been going the more direct route in RPGS by building tank like characters who can soak up vast amounts of damage whilst laughing. Now I feel like destroying whole species of monsters with magic is the way to go.

The Wizard from Diablo III has so much style and speed in the trailer. I just hope he/she (you can pick the sex of your character this time around) will be as much fun to play as he/she is to watch. I think my favorite spell I’ve seen so far is the “Slow Time” spell (seen above) . You conjure up a large bubble that slows down enemy projectiles/spells and then you can use the “Wave of Force” spell to send the projectiles/spells back at your enemies.

There’s also a bunch of classic spell types like Magic Missle (seen above) and Electrocute (Chain Lighting). The only thing that would make me change my mind at this point would be a uber elite rogue/thief class that would be drastically different to anything I’ve played before.  So now I’ve picked my class I just have to wait like 11-12 months for the game to come out…