Nine Muses

Before the sapling came along, I had a serious altitis problem.  I have, currently, 26 characters that are level 10 or higher.  There may be more.  That’s just what the Armory is owning up to, which hasn’t always been accurate for long unseen characters.  Just for curiosity’s sake, some statistics:

• Eleven are in their teens, four in their twenties, four in their thirties, two in the forties, two in the fifties, one at 60, Sera at 75, and Ceire being my only character at the current cap.
• I have four hunters, from 17 to 60.
• I have four mages, from 10 to 34.  I had one to upper fifties in beta but haven’t reached that point again since.
• Ten are human.
• Eighteen are Alliance and eight are Horde.

My limited time has largely kept my altitis in check.  I barely have time to play one character, let alone two, and so my time has mostly been divided between duoing while playing my druid, or soloing while playing my rogue.  Technically, Ceire is specced for restoration.  However, effectively I spend most of my time DPSing and then patching up, because in a duo, the levels of healing that resto spec can handle are rarely necessary.

This has led me to my current quandary.  I’m a wee bit bored… no, that’s not right… I have an itch.  It’s an itch to play something that is not all about DPS.  I can’t really imagine leveling another healer as, not only do I have a pretty effective one, I don’t feel they’re much fun solo and my play schedule doesn’t lend itself well to more than occasional grouping.  The answer to this, of course, is to play a tank class. 

At the moment, I’m waffling between two options for tankage.  The first is spending some time with my Death Knight, who is barely out of their starter area but would not have to repeat for the umpteenth time any of the old world content.  This character has no actual background story beyond that given by the game.  The other option, I think, is my paladin.  I love her name and she has some interesting background story already, as I did quite a bit of role-playing with her on her original server.  However, she’s only in her upper thirties and this would mean having to go through the worst of the old world content again.

For either of those, there is the dread of going through the Outlands content again.  Working on the Loremaster achievement for Sera has really left a bad taste in my mouth.  Most of the area feels so grindy to me, but I can’t see any way around it.  There’s not an alternate advancement path.

I’m considering using a leveling guide.  One of the nice TBC folks recommended a particular one to someone else on the forums, and I became curious.  I know most of the areas in the game (prior to Northrend) very very well, and I think I’m already a pretty efficient quester, but maybe it could be better.

In the end, it may be that I grow tired of this idea before it’s really gotten off the ground.  I suppose we’ll see.