So, here we are, the night before the launch of World of Warcraft’s first expansion pack after two years - Burning Crusade.

I’ve got my copy pre-ordered through Amazon, but it’s not marked to be shipped tomorrow - I think it says the 18th or the 20th is the expected ship date.

That’s okay by me, tho, because while I do have a level 60 Hunter to dust off and advance through to 70, the toons I’m playing the most these days are far from 60. I think I’ll be happy to let the first big wave of Blood Elves be born and raised on my server, and hopefully when I get installed and fire up a BE there won’t be 100 other newbies running around competing for the same quest resources I am. I tend to play during low-population hours anyway, but if 50% of the Horde is playing a new BE, even the times that have only 200 players on (according to Census+) will be pretty competitive. We’ll see how it goes.

Free Server Transfers Off Of Zul’jin

My main realm is Zul’jin, as it’s the one the game suggested for me initially, and it has a cool name, and it’s the one I always had my highest toon in. Unfortunately, it’s also a WoW-launch server, meaning that while the actual physical hardware has been upgraded since launch, this particular world has been in use from a toon’s perspective from the beginning of the World of Warcraft, over two years ago.

There are a lot of 60s on our server. We were an early server to open up the gates to AQ when that came online. Our high-end raid guilds have come and gone and come and gone and come and gone again. We’ve had many population freezes and at least one other free server transfer I remember in my year of playing… and now apparently, as of today, another free server transfer has been posted which includes Zul’jin:

Destination: - Trollbane, PvE - Eastern

Eldre’Thalas
Zul’jin
Elune
Khadgar
Doomhammer

You can read the January 12 Character transfers post here if you’re interested in looking for your own realm.

Personally, I have no interest in transferring at this point. I have a few friends on Zul’jin and still think the realm name is cool. I hope entire guilds transfer off our server, however, and could name a few people I wish would leave…. ;)

Playing The Market

So, a beta version of Auctioneer I got recently came bundled with BottomScanner, which scans the AH for “deals” ready to be bought out and re-sold. I’ll let you know how well it works (in terms of turning a profit) in a week or so. For now I’m buying up cheap sales of Preserved Holly in the hopes that if I sell it in July, I’ll make a killing. Most of my investments aren’t that long-term in focus however.

My current strategy is to scan for deals on Mon/Tues/Wed/Thurs and then sell ‘em on the weekend when there’s the most players about. I know this strategy works when flying around buying up limited-sell recipes, but we’ll see how finicky the market is surrounding non-recipes.

Level 40 Undead Warrior - Grinds The Elementals

Right now my warrior is working on Study of the Elements: Rock, requiring me to kill Greater Rock Elementals which are in the range of lvl 42-44. I find I can take on the 43s and win without doing Last Stand, and I end up with about 200 HP (out of 2059) left. The 44’s make me go runnin’ home to my Momma so I don’t challenge them.

Getting these binders is slow, and I still need 2 more, I guess I’ll be doing a few more hours of grinding on Elementals later on.

I’ve changed my CensusPlus configuration to collect profile data on this toon, so when I see that information updated on WarcraftRealms.com, I’ll include a link so you can gander at my stats and equipment. Note, I’m not a pro at all things equipment, so if you have any overall suggestions for improving my mostly-solo but sometimes-instancing tank warrior’s equipment, I’m all ears.

For now, I’m going to grind on dinner, and then grind on cleaning. Later all!