Northrend...

Its been a few days since I posted, simply because I have dived in to the quest pool and looking around in awe. Blizzard has done a very good job on the environments, most of the quests and the story is more involving than ever. I am halfway to 76, trying to keep a balance with speed and enjoyment of the quests. Leveling as retribution is solid, almost no uptime and I also did UK, NxS and AN with guildies. Completed the quests on Howling, Dragonblight, went straing for the Argent Crusade tabard (did a few quests there for the rep), then went to start normal questing in Grizzly. The latter is by far the most immersive area I have seen in wow. Probably the trees, the colours, the shadows the...ah crap, bears!!!

No upgrades yet though apart from some trinkets, a ring and gems! Oh the gems are nifty. As far as professions are concerned I am not doing anything in particular than mining everything I encounter and then try to level engineering in steps. I was also fortunate enough to get the Heavy Frostwave book (or whatever its called) quite soon in Zul'Drak and do the odd cooking here and there. Fishing...well, I am stuck at 320 so I'll leave that for when my GF goes to outlands.

Overall, the game looks and feels a million time better than previous instalments. Lots of things to do, lots of scenery and lots of lore. Meeting up with the likes of Krasus, Rhonin (I am a wow book fan :p), Alexstrasza, Arthas and ofc Tirion in his pala armour truly gets you into the conflict.

My only concern is the slightly more demanding minimum requirements that may affect my GFs laptop and seem to have caused some issues on my rig. Do not be afraid to tweak the settings and do not assume that going all maxed out in the graphics tab yields the best performance. You need to look what wokrs and what not for your setup, going lower or disabling something may look better actualy.

Good luck, may the Light guilde your path and see you in Icecrown...