Last night I got into my first Wrath of the Lich King instance; Utgarde Keep located in the Howling Fjord. As a newbie to instances here's a few things I learned. All of these are from a Hunter's point of view. * Instances really are a different game from questing. To paraphrase a quote from Fight Club, "you don't really know your character or class until you're in an instance". * You have to turn off practically all of your pet's special abilities except for Cower. Unlike, solo questing you *do not* want your pet generating threat and taking aggro from the main tank. * Trapping is actually important. * Massive amounts of DPS will not make up for the lack of other roles. We had three hunters, one death knight (frost), and one priest (holy). The priest was actually a dude playing a character on his girlfriend's account and had never healed an instance before. Our tank was also new the role. * I need to look into acquiring a headset and getting into vent. We mowed through the trash without much of a problem but wiped on the first boss twice before beating him. We wiped on the next boss-duo twice before we called it a night since it was getting late. All in all, it was a fun experience and I really enjoyed myself. I look forward to getting through more of it next time.

I got home last night before my family so I powered up the Xbox 360 to run through the update to kill the time before they got home. I was on the "choose an avatar as a starting point" screen when my wife came in the door. My wife had absolutely zero knowledge about the NXE update before seeing it on the TV. HER: Hey, what happened to our Mii's? They're all different now. ME: Uh, this isn't our Wii. It's the 360. Notice the crisp HD picture. HER: Really? Whatever. Those look an awful lot like Miis. ME: Yes, they do kind of. HER: Why are they trying to copy the Wii? ME: I don't know. They want what everyone else has I guess. [I proceed to choose my starter avatar] HER: You picked a chick. ME: No way. That's totally a dude. He's got camouflage pants on. And a baseball hat. HER: It's a chick. Look at the available hairstyles. Those are female hairstyles. ME: [Looks closer at TV. Realizes she's right.] Ah man. I could've have sworn that was a dude. [Hit's 'B' button a couple of times]

I apologize for the bleeped out swearing but this is just too funny.

My wife and I will be rolling our death knights soon. The question is which race? My wife will go with Blood Elf because they're pretty. There's nothing wrong with that logic. But which race for me? Two things to keep in mind are that I'll be Horde and I care very much about the aesthetics of the character I'll be looking at for hours and hours. Racial abilities don't really make much of a difference in the grand scheme. Tauren: I'm not really down with the whole Earth Mother thing. And they're big. I'm annoyed enough with always having to look at the big hind quarters on my hunter's bear pet. I want to see the world and not a screenful of back side. Orc: They're big. They're mean. They're the iconic Warcraft race. They look pretty cool in the death knight armor. But they have a posture problem. Maybe it's just the way they're built but they are always hunched over. Especially the males. Maybe it's not a big deal. I'll keep Orc on my short list. Undead: Cool except for a few really annoying things. The bones of their elbows and knees are always exposed no matter what armor they're wearing. Most annoyingly, their toes always stick out of their boots and the undead toes look ridiculous. I thought the racial of breathing underwater would be nice but you don't really spend that much time underwater in WoW. Troll: They look pretty mean. But a Death Knight with a Jamaican accent just seems out of place. Also, their boots never cover their feet. Just the ankles. That's always seemed weird to me. Blood Elf: They look cool in the armor. I like the artistic design of the Blood Elf buildings. But I already play a Blood Elf hunter. It'd be nice to play a different race. Look like it's Orc then.

What does one do with a week and half at the level cap before going back to the leveling grind? Solo a bunch of low level instances for the achievements. I had only run a handful of instances before so most of these are new to me. So far, I have to say Deadmines is my favorite. The Goonies-esque feel definitely adds to the appeal. I also participated in the scourge invasion event as much as I could. I was lucky to have found a really good group my second time out. I managed to get three out of four pieces in the Undead Slaying gear set. Unfortunately, the event ended before I could get the fourth piece. So I feel a bit unmatched in my attire. I have one more night before Lich King gets installed on my machine so I think I'll solo another instance.

Umm... ya.

I finally hit level 70 last night. I had to kill a metric ton of those bird people in Blade's Edge to get to 99%. Being a hunter with a bear definitely helped with that. After turning in a couple of quests I got my final ding. Then I promptly went to sleep. Tonight, I'll get my flying mount, fly around for a little bit. Then hit the trainer to bring my skills up to date. I haven't been to a trainer since level 65, I don't even have Kill Command yet. Then I think I'll help run some guildies through some old-world dungeons for the achievements until Lich King arrives. And maybe finish the Gears of War single player campaign too. On a completely different note, my wife and I had the chance to play Rock Band 2 with some friends of ours yesterday evening. With a giant high-def TV and awesome sound system it was a very cool experience. Hearing my wife sing The Sickness by Disturbed while she held our baby daughter is not something I'll forget soon. Nor will I forget the four of us barely scrapping through Ride the Lightning (again with my wife on vocals).

In finally finished questing in Nagrand last night and moved on up to Blades Edge Mountains. I managed to reach level 69 as well which means I have less than a full level to go before I'm done leveling. For a week and half anyway. I've been so focused on leveling I haven't thought that much about what having a flying mount is going to be like. Then again, I'm only going to be able to use that flyer for a week and a half before I have to go back to the ground in Northrend. I'm somewhat glad the zombie infestation is over. It was kind of cool at first and then quickly got annoying when I couldn't go anywhere in Shat without getting infected.

For those of you who watch Heros here's a Smoove B inspired post. "Baby, don't let our love die. Come back to me. I know I've wronged you. I want take this moment to deeply apologize for physically attacking you, wrapping you up in a disgusting cocoon and hanging you up in the corner of my loft. I'm sorry for that darling. That was my bad. Please try to remember the good times we had. My transformation into a hideous insect monster can't erase the love we shared, that one time. I know I've killed a few other people, cocooned them and hung them up on my wall also. But I did that for you baby! That time I killed that drug dealer and dragged his body through my apartment and did the rest of my gross insect stuff on him. I was only thinking of *you*. Look, we've both made our mistakes. It wasn't that long ago when you killed everyone at your brother's wedding. I know that was an accident. But your body count is much higher than mine. At least for now. But don't think about that. Just come back to me. If the cocooned bodies are bothering you I'll take them out. I'll clean all the blood off of the floor. I promise. Just don't leave like this. Please." I'm not Onion material by any means but hopefully some of you found that amusing. One other thing that really annoys me about the new season of Heros is Claire's biological mom who just sort of shows up places, holds out her flaming hand and has that "look at me, I'm awesome" expression on her face. Not once have we seen her actually use her powers in battle and she was completely useless against the puppet guy.

I dinged 68 last night. I'm officially eligible for Northrend. This level went really fast since I was able to gain so much experience just by visiting the inns and grabbing candy from the candy buckets as part of the Hallows End event. I'll still have a few more candy buckets to tap in Kalimdor and Outland so there's even more free experience for the taking. I'm almost done with Nagrand. I have a few more quests remaining that involve killing a bunch of Ogres then I'll be moving onto either Shadow Moon Valley or Blade's Edge. The later has a cooler sounding name so I'm leaning toward that one but I'm not entirely sure how to get there. I haven't really tried yet but just from looking at the map there sure are a lot of big spiky things along the border. I just don't want to waste twenty minutes bouncing along the border only to later learn there's some secret tunnel or portal in non-obvious part of Zangarmarsh. I also need to take some time and re-install Auctioneer and Gatherer and start up the money machine again. I already have enough gold for my flying mount with a comfortable amount left over but it's always nice to have more. :)