Finally, Vamphrau is a level 80 character! I'm running lots of instances now as Vamphrau - more this week than I typically run in months. As I approached level 80, I got more and more invites to DPS and once I reached 80 they have fortunately continued. I got the formula for enchanting a weapon with Crusader as I was practicing my Sword and Defense skills in WPL. The Crusaders in a certain spot were once again generous in that regard. My Sword is now 400, Defense 399, and the Daggers which I just started working on tonight stil has a few dozen to go. I got invited by one of my nice guildies this afternoon to go on a Culling of Stratholme run as an 80 and it was really fun. We did it in Heroic mode - my first ever - and I only died about 4 times. Not awesome but I was afraid I would die every melee and it was far from that bad. A good friend in the game gave me a level 80 epic ring in the mail as a congratulations ring for reaching 80 and my party on my heroic let me win another level 80 epic ring. Hopefully, I will have a set of level 80 epics by sometime this spring. I got my Leatherworking skill up to level 420 - and above it a ways. I learned several more Leatherowrking paterns too. My DPS is pretty good. About 1600 when I am fully buffed. My BGs today and yesterday were terrible. I lost every match, I think. I really need to work on my priest so I can get him leveled up to 50 really fast. It won't happen this week but perhaps next month. In the instances lately, I have partied with a lot of druids and priests who are our healers. I am really impressed with their skill. I haven't run an instance as healer in months, I think - except with a friend of mine who was really high level, over in ZF. I need to get back into the swing of that in order to get my priest leveled faster.

Reached character level 79 while attempting to earn enough gold by questing and farming materials to be able to afford the 1,000 golds fee for Cold Flying Lessons. I wound up with necessary materials for making very powerful leg armor enhancements - several each of both the spell caster variety and the melee class character variety. Hopefully, they will sell in AH! I made a bunch of Borean Armor Kits for friends in my guild Hexed, as well as for a couple people that had helped us out on instance runs during the past few weeks. Sent them out as thank-you gifts via the ingame mail system. Shortly after reaching 79, I had enough - counting the gold from my alts - to buy the Cold Weather Flying skill necessary to fly my mount around the continent of Northrend. A while after that, by grinding quests, I earned enough gold to buy my level 79 warlock spells. Then, I got the Eye of the Storm daily battleground quest done. It was fun. I felt like my warlock had become kind of overpowered ("OP", as they say). That's because I add over 1600 bonus Spell Power (buffed) in that battleground! It is a burden I shall have to bear. At least until I reach the cap, level 80 - and realize 79 was just a step along the way to getting there. As an aside, a neat milestone achievement popped for me in the game while I was grinding these quests to earn enough to buy my level 79 spells. I completed my thousandth quest on Vamphrau. A lesser achievement I got today was completing my exploration of Howling Fjord. I would not have done it had it not been for the help volunteered by a wonderful guildmate who paid over half the cost of my mount and my initial flying training several weeks ago in Outland. I am doing things in the game I thought I would never be able to do. I have been able to experience so much fun, advanced stuff - things I could never have reached working strictly alone. It has taught me the importance of teamwork and putting your unique abilities into doing charitable acts. A team helps each other accomplish a goal. Friends enable each other to pursue goals in teams. The game teaches lessons by starkly contrasting what a loner can do compared to what a more social player can do not only giving - but also by accepting - help. At last, I feel I am a social MMORPGer, not some guy playing mostly alone in an MMORPG.

Started one of my alts out at Inscription profession and got it all the way up to Inscription 130/225 in one day. Used one of the glyphs I made, put some up for auction, held onto scrolls, and now have a stack each of weapon vellum and armor vellum.

Fellow Hexed guild member Twoc escorted me around half of the Sholazar Basin, allowing me to get one or two new Flight Path locations. The timing was very appropriate as I was just getting to level 77. It proved highly useful for my leatherworking and skinning skills sine the mobs there were dropping Borean Leather every time, instead of the typical Borean Leather Scrap(s) I was used to getting elsewhere.

Vamphrau got some new gear and now has over 11K each of both max health and max mana.

I reached level 76 yesterday. I also got upgrades to a couple of pieces of armor in an instance. My Leatherworking skill reached a new milestone too: 415, which enabled me to make a 32 slot Inscription bag. Emotionally, it was a pretty crappy day but in terms of character progression it was excellent.

I found Sholazar Basin! While Partying with a guildmate exploring Borean Tundra, I got disconnected in the middle of gameplay. That has rarely happened for many months. However, since the latest patch came out last week, I experienced it a lot. I got several disconnects during/around this past weekend. By the time I reconnected, I was not able to locate him on the zone map and thought he had left the zone. So I did some exploring and found a new FP (flight path) up in the northern tip of the Borean Tundra zone. Yay! Then I pressed on a bit further and walked a short ways into Sholazar Basin. What was cool about that is I went only a little ways in and within seconds I got about 3K XP for "discovering" things. It seems like I have explored a good bit of most of the zones in Northrend now. I have only been to 2 or 3 instances so far. So I think when I am not Partying with buddies and helping people get up towards my level, I will spend my remaining game time focusing on running instances and doing Daily quests, including the Daily BG quest. One thing I have Got To Do is get my shadow priest leveled up from level 42 to 50. Most of the non-bop greens drops I am getting in Northrend require level 325 Enchanting skill do disenchant. He, at the moment is at level 297. And he is stuck around there until he reaches character level 50 and can remove the Enchanting 300/300 skill cap - and raise his skill too. That is why I am going to divert some of my attention from my main to him at some point this month or next.

We lost one of the nicest players I have met from our guild last week. She and another in the guild came a couple of times last year and personally helped just me alone get through some WPL quests that are really impossible for a lone, lower level fifties character to do. We had one of those little guild blowups that each guild tends to happen from time to time. Fortunately, not a huge one - the headcount of the guild is almost intact. I noticed even after a couple of days I am still saddened by her departure. I repeatedly thought about her this weekend. Mourning the loss of her in a guild where I have become progressively happier, more comfortable, more social, and more powerful as my character level rises and my gear/skill/rep improves. I think she will be happier making a fresh start and new friends. She will be missed in her old guild as well.

In the early hours of this morning, the tank of our guild's raiding party tackling Naxxramas instance announced in guild chat channel that the raid had successfully taken down the boss. Hexed has completed the Naxxramas instance.

Man, I was so happy I did my first flag grab that I can think of that was in Eye of Storm battleground this weekend. It actually worked! I was trying to get the Daily BG done - it was Eye of the Storm BG - and everyone was standing at bases either fighting or watching. I noticed there was no one visible around the flag stand in the central area - which means one of two things: stealthed rogues and/or druids seething around it waiting to chop you down - or no one near it. Fully expecting the former, I ran from my tower to the flag stand, grabbed the flag, ran back to my tower - and planted it. No one ever came near me. It was odd. Getting an achievement for capping the 5th flag was a total surprise and a very nice icing on the triple layer cake of: marks, honor+XP points, and golds I won with that one simple act.