Don't get overwhelmed

Despite feeling completely overwhelmed and lost when I logged in Sunday for the first time in almost 5 years, I managed to stumble across the Warchief's Command Board in Orgrimmar which pointed me in the right direction. I've been told that it essentially provides you with a quest to head to the right zone to continue leveling up. It wasn't until I got to the quest zone that I finally broke down and picked some talents and glyphs, something I had been putting off because I didn't know what to pick. I'm fairly certain I picked some of my talents wrong, but I just decided not to get bogged down in trying to make the perfect decision right away. There will be plenty of time later on to research the best specs and play styles!

Really I just wanted to get back into actually playing, do some quests. It was great. The new zone I'm in is essentially all under water. As a Druid with aquatic form (well, travel form under water) this wasn't an issue at all, though one of the first quests gives you under water breathing and increased speed. The landscapes are really nice, and I love all the wild life swimming around. I even saw a shark swimming around with a sea turtle in its mouth!

Once I started fighting monsters I realized that I needed to re-do the position of some of my skills. It's funny that despite having not played for almost 5 years I still have some muscle memory of old combos skulking around in the recesses of my mind. Some of the skills have changed though, and it was a bit hard adjusting to that. I was only able to play for about 45 minutes though so I am sure that will get better with time.

One of the first quest lines ends up giving you a new mount, a seahorse. I don't know if it's just the relative newness of the game or just some Pokemon style "gotta catch 'em all!" vibes going on, but I love this new guy. He's awesome!

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.

Movember!

That's right! This November I'm growing out my mustache to raise awareness for Men's health issues (plus, c'mon, mustaches are hilarious). If you'd like to read more about it here are a couple of links:

http://us.movember.com/mens-health
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movember
http://www.no-shave.org/#!what/cjg9

(is it weird that I consider "a couple" to be 2-3?)

Some company

So on Tuesday I went climbing with my brother and after about an hour finally confessed to have downloading and installing WoW again. I use the word confess because that's actually what it felt like - oddly embarrassing, like something I needed to keep secret.

I'm not entirely sure where that emotion came from; perhaps simply because I've talked a lot about it recently but still haven't resubbed? Or perhaps simply because going back seems so ... defeating in a way. You know, because for several years I thought I was done with World of Warcraft for forever.


And then this morning I woke up to a text from my brother saying he had spent an hour last night looking through old screenshots and reliving memories and was under full out nostalgia attacks. He's in his final year of college, so I doubt he'd have time to play now, but after graduation? Perhaps the band might be getting back together after all!

Weekly Wednesday Fitness Check-in

Well that was a mouthful of a title.

My plan going forward is to bulk (eat a caloric surplus to gain weight) for the next ~4 months. If I do it slowly, that will be about 8-12 lbs. The goal is for most of that weight to be muscle rather than fat. So my lifting schedule will be 4 days a week - the typical hypertrophy focused brosplit (Push / Pull / Legs) and then one day a week where I do a full body strength workout (following the 5/3/1 rep scheme). I'd like to continue to run three times a week, and the current plan is one short (3), one medium (5-6), and one longer (8-10).

What's throwing a wrench into my plans is trying to fit climbing with my brother in during the week. Ideally, I'd do the PPL split Mon-Wed and then the full body routine on Friday. Running would be short run on Mon or Tues, medium on Thurs, and long on Saturday. Climbing is generally a 2.5-3 hour endeavor during the week though, due to traffic, so how can that be slotted in?

I'd prefer not to lift on the same day as climbing, so with the routine mentioned above, Thursday probably makes the most sense. I'd then have to switch my running days around, potentially doing either Mon/Wed or the short run on Thurs after climbing. Of course, this week my brother could only go on Tuesday, and in that scenario I'd need to flip the timing of the workouts (so strength is on Mon, PPL on WThF).

Needless to say, this might be an overly optimistic schedule on my part. My bulk begins on Saturday so I'll update next week with the starting weights.

Well this is kinda crazy

You'll have to forgive a fantasy football themed post, but, as the title says, I thought this was pretty crazy and was worth sharing.

Over the weekend, the one undefeated team in our league ("My Hittas My Hittas") had a rough day. He started Philip Rivers (-5.05) and the San Diego Defense (-3.36), so he was likely assured of losing regardless of what the rest of his players did. The other players he had going in the early games didn't step up to the plate, with 3 of them combining to score just 16.9 points. Around 4 pm, he posted a joking message on the message board of our league, apologizing for the shoddy performance of his players and vowing that there would be changes made to ensure that never happened again.

The typical fantasy league back and forth then occurred, which was humorous but nothing worth sharing. Until a long-time friend (also in the league) messaged me today. To paraphrase:

LTFriend: I think the message board has been more entertaining than the actual league this year. For me anyway [since I'm in last place].
Me: Yea, I like these new guys. (My Hittas is new, right?)
LTFriend: He is. That's former Orioles pitcher Steve Johnson.

... what?! WHOA!

Now, if you're not from Baltimore you may not know who Steve Johnson is. He didn't play for long, but I remember his performance in 2012 when the Orioles made the playoffs for the first time since 1997.

Thinking this was pretty cool, I immediately messaged another friend of mine who is probably the biggest Orioles fan I know. Reading that makes me sound like an excited school girl, which probably isn't too far from the truth.

His response? "Woah! I saw him tweet out his score!" And sure enough, he had!

Starting back up

I've started thinking about what class to play when I start WoW back up (did you catch the change from "if" to "when"?).

Apparently there have been a ton of changes to all the classes over the past 2 expansions (3, if you are counting soon to be released WoD) and I've been told that I might not even recognize the gameplay of my old characters. So with that in mind, here are the options!

1. Pick one of my old characters to level.

I've got three level 80 characters with varying degrees of nostalgia attached. A druid, shaman, and a priest.

The shaman, a troll named Bringo, was character I created on the day WoW was released and was my first level 60.

I spent most of my time in Vanilla playing Bringo, though he fell by the wayside a bit in the latter expansions. He also happens to have a sexy Ivory Raptor, the original epic mount that was later removed. So throw in a few bonus points for originality or old school-ism or whatever you want to call it.

I originally named my undead priest Phineas, after Phineas Gage, the guy who got a railroad spike through his skull and lived. That name wasn't available after transferring to play with my extended family, so I went with Crescendo (because I like to think I'm clever and a shadow priest's power, reliant on DoTs, grows over time; actually my Dad suggested it, he's much more clever than I am). I don't have a ton of old nostalgia with him, to be honest. He always seemed to be the second fiddle, though I did manage to get the class specific staff Benedict/Anathema which apparently has since been removed, and I also got to partake in some really fun all priest WSGs.

The final choice would be my Tauren druid Laktose (I told you I'm not so clever). This is the character I spent perhaps the most time on at level 80, doing Arenas with my brother as Feral/Rogue and raiding as a tank .My brother was better at PvP than I was and I'm sure he did a fair amount of carrying, but we made it to Duelist which I was really proud of.  I remember really enjoying the ability to do a variety of different things in PvP as a feral druid, and I like to think I was halfway decent. And I did manage to get the epic flying transformation quest done (I think?) with the help of some family members.

So yea. Of those three choices, I think I would be leaning toward the druid, Laktose. Obviously all three classes would be able to heal or DPS, but he would be the only one who could tank. I did enjoy tanking previously and it seems like it would offer me the most flexibility. That being said, there are other options!

2. Use the auto-level to 90 feature on a new class

Purchasing WoD allows you to skip one class to level 90. I figure it makes no sense to use this on a level 80 character, and so I would do it on a brand new one. Old habits die hard, so I'm not sure I could ever really play a rogue (my brother's character) or a hunter (my dad's). From past experience it seems as though I've enjoyed the hybrid tanky characters, so perhaps a Paladin would be interesting! Warlock or Mage also pique my interest, with mage slightly ahead. Death knight would also be pretty cool, but I'm not sure if they still start at 55 (which would limit the effectiveness)?

(I just noticed that I've gone from not capitalizing the class names to capitalizing them. Strange progression!)

3. Start a new character and check out the new zones

Not only did I miss the reshaping of the starting zones in the Cataclysm expansion, but I also missed out on the new races of Goblin, Worgen (apparently this is an Alliance race!), and Pandaren. I've been told it's worth leveling a new character just to check out the changes from Cataclysm and the new races would be a new experience as well.

Overall, I think I'm leaning toward just starting off with my druid again. Leveling a brand new character does sound fun, but I figure I might as well start off with the expansion content when it's brand new in case I have the time to get into some dungeons. I do plan on using the auto-90 on some class, but I'm not dying to try something new so I figure they can wait.

What would you suggest?