My highest level character, a horde undead warlock, got cold weather flying and reached level 80 last week. It was lucky enough to run some heroic instances then - mostly with guildmates. And it learned a lot of new level 415 and 420+ leatherworking patterns!
Color me happy! :)
One disappointment I suffered a few days ago was that I noticed that Horde had suddenly stopped winning the Alterac Valley level 51-60 bracket battleground. This went on for a couple of days.
Finally, it hit me that the inconceivable had happened and horde was reliably losing AV BG.
So, I made lemonade out of lemons and switched from doing AV on my horde rogue to doing it with my alliance hunter and warlock. Suddenly, I was getting a steady streamm of wins Saturday night - over and over. Won all but one Sunday morning too.
This was unusually terrific because I had a Daily BG quest I had been holding onto for agest to win AV BG one one or both of those alliance characters. Plus, I had a lot of AV-specific quests I wanted to do that were contingent on Alliance either winning the BG, capping (capturing) some strategic places, or - at the very least - not losing really, really quickly!
Until now, trust me - those things were not ever happening. So, last night I was one very happy camper - or BGer as the case was - when I went to bed.
I gained faction reputation with both my alliance warlock and hunter. Both alliance characters got higher level AV BG trinkets, making them more robust in the BG and when doing PvE. I got some silvers. And my hunter got one very wonderful polearm that has an incredible twenty something Agility on it. I skilled polearms up from nothing last night so I could use it in BG. Even not meleeing with it, it still gives my shooting and my pet better performance.
All in all, my characters got better overnight - literally!
The cause of our alliance lucky streak was that hordes were not showing up in their usual numbers for some reason Saturday and perhaps Friday as well. That tipped things toward alliance's favor since they had 2 men in the 40 man BG for every 1 man the horde had. At least for a while.
Initially, horde guys probably got discouraged from playing as much as usual since they seemed to be on a temporary losing streak - tipping things even further in the Alliance's favor.
However, Sunday morning there started to be a little bounce back. Horde guys eventually did start streaming into the BG in complementary numbers to that of the Alliance. That was probably because horde side collectively realized they were losing simply because they weren't showing up!
In the meantime though, one thing had changed. That bracket of alliance characters had geared up, feasting on their two days winning streak of marks and honor points and quest rewards. That enabled them to get really nice gear to compete in the AV BG much stronger than they had before.
Gear is not everything but if you know what you are doing then it really helps you a lot. I think the Alliance knew what it was doing but it just was at a material disadvantage - even though it has vastly superior numbers of players in my battlegroup.
So it will be interesting to see how things develop. At the higher levels, Horde pretty much always loses AV - with Alliance victorius. If the situation continues indefinitely, Horde might find it incredibly difficult to gear up on the AV gear.
Another great boon befell my Alliance characters last night and this afternoon in the form of bags.
My discipline spec priest is my herbalist. He had not fully stocked his bank with bags and he was using the pathetic 12-slot herb bag because I could not afford the going rate in the AH for the bigger ones.
His gulldmaseter suddenly declared that he had a bunch of the largest side of herbalist bags and he wanted to give them away. I asked if I could have a couple and he said sure and a couple minutes later told me he had put some in the gulld bank for me. I equipped one on my character and one in the bank. I also put a 14-slot Runecloth bag in my priest's bank, giving him plenty of breathing room for the first time this year and maybe even last year!
So now, I will be able to quest and farm alchemy materials with my priest. Some will probably find their way into our guild bank as useful potions and elixirs or raw materials for other guild members' inscription crafting activities. Others will go to support my characters leveling by making them fall down less in battle, essentially - and being used in their armor crafting some.
The other big surprise came this afternoon. Two of my alliance characters are in a different guild. The guildmaster of that guild sent slightly over a hundred golds, combined - to my two characters in her guild. I am hoping this is not a sign she is leaving the game or disbanding the guild soon. It might just mean she had a winfall and wanted to share the wealth.
In any case, it enabled me to buy 1 more bag slot for one of them and I put a medium-sized bag - a 12-slot bag, that I had been holding onto for a while, in one of her bag slots at the bank. It had basically too much stuff to do anything so this solved that problem.
Another stroke of good luck was when an alliance guildmate asked if I could help with transfering some gear she had from one faction to antoher. I was happy to help her. We have helped each other many times in the past since she first started playing the game a couple of years ago.
She tipped me a number of golds and helped me transfer some items of mine as well. Now, my alliance paladin has a very nice level 49 "blue" shield with a +7 Stamina enchant added onto it by my horde enchanter. Needless to say, she is going to be very tough in one more level (she is 48 at the moment).
I also transfered some other gear and a couple terrific blacksmithing patterns to her. I am so looking forward to getting her to level 49 now, equipping that shield - and then leveling her to 51 so she can participate in the Alterac Valley battleground. There she can pick up a really great "blue" mace and perhaps an even better shield - we shall see.
As you can tell, a few random turns of good luck just made a huge difference for my characters on the alliance side. The horde side characters I play have been steadily progressing but not really accumulating enough wealth to spin much of it back to the alliance characters.
Happy days for the Alliance!