Northrend! It's here! And it's . . . already populated with 80s?!

I've been working at leveling my druid since the release. I quest with my girlfriend (a hunter), and we've been breezing through zones. Borean Tundra? Check. Dragonblight? Check. Grizzly Hills? Check. . . well, almost. We hit 75 tonight, but I can't help but feel that we're still falling behind. The big horde guild on our server whacked out Naxx this afternoon (the "big" alliance guild is a joke comparitively. . . it makes me a little sad), and I can't help but feel that I'm missing the leveling curve and won't even have the chance at 25 mans. Not that I'll be doing a lot of them, but I would like to have the opportunity there to not take if I choose. I don't want to be locked out of them because I was just too late.

But then again, as I look around at everyone else leveling, I don't see many people over 73 or so. Tons of people in Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord. Not so many in Icecrown and Zul'Drak. So maybe there is hope after all. I see bloggers posting about hitting 71 and 72. I see lots of tips on how to make enough money to afford training - which at 15-20g per spell per level isn't cheap, but not outrageous - and I see gearing guids for leveling. In my mind though, whatever gear you had on you when your soft little feet hit the beaches of Normand. . . I mean Northrend is plenty to carry you through until the quest rewards replace them. Instances drop ludicrously powered gear for how hard they are to do. Quests give 5-10g per, and that's more than enough to cover repairs and training. Hell, I even got myself a genuine [Repair-o-Mount] almost right off the bat and I haven't really missed the cold, hard cash.

I guess the best I can hope for is to just level through Northrend at the pace that I want to, and see what's waiting for me when I hit the level cap (again :) ). I've been getting enough cobalt to fuel a small army, so that's exactly what I'm doing with it. I've hit the point where I need saronite with both engineering and blacksmithing, used the crappy green armor from the blacksmithing to fuel my enchanting, and sent the extra ore off the be prospected into shiny new gems that get sold on the auction house for obscene amounts of gold.

All-in-all, I'm very happy with how things are going. I just don't want to get to the end of leveling and find out that if I had taken my time and leveled all my characters together I would have been just as well off. So here's to you, Blizzard. For another great piece of interactive video entertainment. And if you ever have a job opening, I'm very good at fetching coffee. . . .