Outland, What a Sight!!!

On monday, four fun things happened. Well, a bunch of fun things happened, but four of them were in WoW. Three of them will be described here, and the last one gets its own post in a few minutes.

Firstly, I was finishing up a quest in the Hinterlands (collecting bottles of wine that washed up on the shore) solo, and also trying to lvl up Ruby, my new Ashmane Boar. As I was at the mailbox sending the piles and piles of herbs that I had collected (I love me some Hinterlands), I saw someone advertising his guild over the general chat. I had been sans guild for 2 days now, and was actually wondering how I'm going to get some instance action, as I had had zero success with LFG over those 2 days. Perhaps I just don't know how to work LFG, because I've tried it about 5 times and not gotten even a single hit. Either way, the guy had put together a very concise statement suitable for the chat channel that seemed to indicate his guild has some of the characteristics I'm looking for in a guild. So, since I was sitting at a mailbox anyways, and I was feeling antisocial so I didn't want to just pst him, I sent him ingame email.

Then I jumped on a hippogryph for the flight to Booty Bay to turn in these bottles of wine for the quest. When I landed, the guy had already emailed me back with some more info, all of which sounded consistent with what I'm looking for. So I got on his chat channel where him and 2 other guildies were sitting. We talked for about 20 minutes, I liked what I heard, and now I'm a member of the guild. Very nice. I haven't done anything with them yet, but we're going to run BRD tonight, and I'll have a good feel after that (maybe).

Next up, ding 58. w00t!!!! Outland portal is now my beyatch. I flew to IF as fast as I could to talk to the hunter and pet trainers. Then took the hop to Blasted Lands. Killed a few vultures for a quest, and looked for Grunter real quick (nope), then headed to the portal.

WOW!!!

The battle going on just past the portal is awesome. I just stood there watching it rage on and on, not knowing if I was going to have to go in there, or if those elite guys were going to just look up and one-shot me. Really cool stuff. Hopped over to Honor Hold and did trained up to master herbalism and mining. Then ran over to the tower in the northwest of hellfire peninsula where there's the guy for master first aid.

Not to digress, but back to the gold thing, and how gold and enjoyment of WoW go hand-in-hand.

Within about 5 minutes, I needed to pay for (prices are just off of memory, so maybe wrong):
- Hunter training...4 skills available at 58, each about 4g
- Master Herbalism...10g
- Master Mining...10g
- New Smelting skills...3 skills, i think about 20g for all 3
- Master First Aid...4.5g
- Nether and Heavy Netherweave Bandage recipes...about 6g

Total = 66.5g

So, back to my whole soapbox about gold and whatnot, it really was pretty cool to be able to get all this stuff without blinking an eye. In fact, it was paid for only out of petty cash (the money that comes from selling grey items to vendor, and quest turn-ins), and didn't even touch my nest egg that sits with in my savings account (alt toon). So that was a nice moment where I really enjoyed the hardwork that I put in with my gathering.

Ok, done with digression.

Actually, you know what? I'm gonna put the last two fun things that happened into their own postings. They're both sorta stand-alone and I feel like padding this out.