I finally did it

Yep, on Sunday I finally resubbed to World of Warcraft. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but the biggest surprise was ... how much I had forgotten. Remember when I was trying to decide what character to play first, one of my three 80s or a new character? Well, as it turns out ... I don't actually have three level 80 characters!

I had actually come to this conclusion toward the end of last week as I spent more time trying to remember the previous two expansions. I have very clear memories of raiding and PvPing during TBC, but very few memories of anything from WotLK. Eventually I decided that I must not have played much in WotLK.

Sure enough, when I logged in I saw that I had just a single 80, and apparently had just started to level my priest when I decided I was bored and quit WoW altogether. Apparently I even started a Death Knight!

Then I logged in and checked the /played time on my druid and he had over 10 days played at level 80 and his bags were full of epic gear (both PvP and raid). So either someone hacked my account and spent a lot of time gearing him up or I spent more time playing in WotLK than I thought and still just can't remember it. Ah well.

The second thing I noticed was that my druid does not look at all like he used to. They updated the character models and apparently my old look no longer exists. Eventually I found the Barber in Orgrimmar and updated his look to something a little more pleasing to the eyes.

My actual play time last night was somewhat limited, so I mostly just logged into my different characters to get a sense of where they were and to try and remember what they had in terms of gear, mounts (apparently these are shared across characters now!), gold, etc. One thing quickly came apparent - everything was different.

The talents are all different (they aren't even laid out the same way), specs are different, some skills are different, some gear is different (apparently idols no longer exist for Druids), and you can apparently fly in the old zones now! Embarrassingly enough, it took me about 45 minutes to realize they had combined the Druid's Flying Form with Travel Form.

Perhaps the worst feeling of all was that I've forgotten how to get around. Thankfully, my Druid's hearthstone was set to Orgrimmar so it was easy to get back there. But my Shaman is in Shattrath and I have no idea how to get back to anywhere from there; ditto with my Priest, who is in the starting zone in WotLK. I'm not even sure they need to be going anywhere at the moment, but it was very disconcerting to realize you've forgotten so many basic things like that. It didn't help that they have changed the layout of Org, so even there I felt lost.

Fortunately, once I got back to Org a quest popped up for my Druid to head to what I assume is the area to level from 80 to 85. I hope that once I get back into actually questing I won't feel so lost. Looking at my characters again last night I waffled between who I wanted to play first. They all seem like so much fun! I may start with the Druid simply because he's the highest.