Exploration came a little late for me. I was happy with all I was doing until I started loosing badly in the battlegrounds. At first, pvp was so much fun that I didn't care who won or who lost or how much honor I received. Playing was reward enough. Wish that didn't wear off.
It's demoralizing and much less fun when you are prepetually outgeared and outskilled. Alliance players seem to have this complete aversion to play in groups or to play strategically. I suspect Alliance players who are the exception play in premades and/or known groups. I certainly don't see them often enough.
It's not the loosing that is demoralizing, it's the lack of organisation. I'm tired of watching it all fall apart as singletons or small groups veer off into different directions. I'm tired of players who show no restraint and simply attack any horde at any place at any time just because they can see them. Most of all, I'm tired of not being able to hold my own. Although my resilience are up to 300 through painstaking commitment, I'm still mostly dying. Now I just die when I have the other person's health down to 2% rather than 92%, but I'm still the first to bite the dust. Arg! Doing a little better against squishies, but then the group problem hits. I take out one and get pounced on by a gazzilion, or so it feels. And since the biggest group I'm usually in is small, there isn't anybody else to heal or help since we're all outnumbered 3-1.
The result of this has been complete indecision on my part. I abandoned my level 70 gnome rogue to start up a troll rogue on a pvp server, only to realise that I don't want to be on a pvp server. At least, I don't want to level on a pvp server. I like farming as much as pvp and putting on my ipod, finding a nice grinding spot and spending a while mindlessly slaughtering mobs to skin, or running a little circular mining route, or flying over netherstorm with my druid in search of herbs is fun. I don't want to be ganked. I want to farm in peace and quiet. Not happening on a pvp server. Even when it feels as if I'm the only person in all Stonetalon mountains, I'm not happy leaving the base by myself. And farming in a group is just not the same. I want my solitude. I want to solo. The result of that experiment is a mid-level twenty rogue and a well-off auction toon lying dormant on burning steppes.
And so I went back to my gnome rogue, only to loose again. The result - I started a Belf Warlock on a pve server. She's now mid-twenties and I am still undecided. As much as I enjoy playing her, there's more to WoW than levelling and I seem to be stuck leveling multiple toons because I can't make up my mind. With WotLK coming out shortly, it's an even bigger dilemma. Shall I level my level 52 hunter in order to dump skinning for inscription? Or shall I level my level 22 mage to have inscription and engineering? Shall I put my alliance characters on the back burner and roll horde side instead? Or shall I get my level 68 night elf druid up to 70 so that I can level her to 80 for the arena? So many options and come to think of it, I'm not sure any of it is me.
I like the bread-and-butter profession recipes - the ones that are not BoP or require rep grinding rather than raiding. I like the battlegrounds, but only as a small percentage of my play time, otherwise WoW becomes too competitive for my taste. I think I will like the arena when I finally get my teeth into that, and so it's leveling remains. Ironically enough, the content everybody is rushing through to get where they want to play, is what I enjoy most. I like vanilla WoW, don't mind outland and there's few things as relaxing as leveling a toon just about anywhere.
As for pvp, the more toons I level, the better I am at pvp. I play better against opponents when I know how they play. Leveling one of each gives me that edge that I need. I'm best at defeating druids and rogues because I have a high level druid and rogue. I know how to counter, I know what they have and what the cooldowns on all the spells are. I realise that I don't need to level a class in order to have access to this information, but I don't level for this reason. I simply find that leveling different classes is what I enjoy doing and the added bonus is that it improves my pvp game too. And of course, my auction toon is gathering dust as nothing sells and nothing is bought prior WotLK. Is it wrong to say that the things I look forward the most to in the coming expansion pack is to have a vibrant auction house again...
