don’t even try to out-nerd me …

ding!

After two years, and over 16 days of solid play, I finally made it to level 70. By all accounts and purposes, that is a shamefully long time to level a World of Warcraft character to maximum levelage, but, you know, I have way more hobbies than the average wow-er.

So now, at level 70, I finally have my flying mount. Which means I can fly over mountains, instead of running around them. Or land right in the middle of a field of baddies, without having to fight my way through. Or just fly somewhere, in a straight line, instead of running along a meandering road.

In most games, once you hit the top, that’s the end. You put your name in the hall of fame, and you start again, or you move on to a new game. But that’s not how wow works.

If I save up 5000 gold, I can buy a super-fast flying mount. Which means I can fly even faster! Unfortunately, that flying mount is really ugly – which will provide motivation for me to do the quests that will let me buy other super-fast flying mounts that don’t look like flying lions covered in spiky, neon armor. (Seriously, nobody can ride one of those and feel good about themselves …)

I still have 25 more levels in my leather-working to go. In order to get higher, I have to find the right vendors who sell higher-level patterns, and then I have to gather the mats to make the stuff. And then I’ll be able to sell that stuff on the auction house, to move toward my 5000-gold goal!

And then there’s this thing called ‘raiding.’ I don’t think I’ll ever get into that – it sounds way too intense to me – but my husband has already started getting my rajali ready for raiding. Because, well, he wants to take rajali raiding. And that’s a-ok with me, because the reward for raiding is some seriously nice gear. And, well, all of rajali’s clothes are a horribly mis-matched hodgepodge of things I’ve picked up along the way. He only recently traded up his halter-top chestpiece (Seriously? A chestpiece for a boy character that looks like a halter top? That’s just degrading …) for one that actually looks like armor.

So, there’s plenty more for me still to do. In fact, some would say that the game has just begun.