Played Lately: World of Warcraft

• As much fun as I'm having with the new expansion, the best time I've had in World of Warcraft of late had nothing to do with my mage's run to level 80. Instead, I started a new priest alt for two reasons. First, I wanted to see what playing a new character with the achievement system in place would be like. Logging in with my old characters and finding them with a bunch of retroactive achievements was interesting, but not nearly as gratifying. Not first, I really wanted an inscriptionist of my own. (I know scribe is the right term, though it's not as much fun.) Since I wanted a priest on the horde side and inscription has some interesting bits for spellcasters, it seemed like a good fit. That's a lot to say to completely miss the point but I'm getting to it.
• The specific bit of fun I'm referring to was an unexpected invitation to run the Shadowfang Keep instance. SFK, as it's known, is a dungeon for characters level 17 to 21 and has been around since the game launched. I was running though the Undercity on Monday morning, thinking I would spend just enough time online to complete my daily Minor Inscription Research, then log off. As I was going about my business, I got a whisper asking if I wanted to run SFK. Many times, I politely refuse such a request since I don't like getting tied down to the expectation of other players for long stretches of time. This morning, though, I couldn't think of a good reason not to. The fact that I had a few days earlier sporting the great looking Robes of Arugal might have tempted me as well.
• So off I went with a rogue, a warrior tank, and a higher level warlock to fight our way though. Even though there were only four of us, we were plenty to win though to the end. Although the robe did not appear, I did win the slightly less impressive Belt of Arugal as well as the Bloody Apron and Feline Mantle.
• My fear, of course, is that now that I've hit level 20, I have to start the long climb through the dreaded middle levels. I still have a lot of fun playing the old world content, but a lot of it was designed with a different paradigm than the expansions. Quests in one zone that take you to another zone on another continent is busy work, not adventure. If you find that I never talk about my priest alt again, you'll know why.