My mage is now level 70 and slowly working on gaining access to the endgame content — heroic mode dungeons and Karazhan.

In addition to the mage I also started playing a blood elf paladin — blood elves are one of the two new races in the expansion, the other one being the squid-faced Draenei. I played a paladin for a bit on another server and quite liked it, but that was on the Alliance side. I’m Horde now, and until the arrival of the blood elves the Horde didn’t have access to paladins, just like the Alliance didn’t get any shamans.

With the two new races both sides have access to all nine classes. There’s some lore involved, but the real decision was probably that it got hard to tune encounters for two different sides, since shamans and paladins bring very different abilities with them. A major gripe has been that playing Alliance was considered “easy mode” for raiding due to all the defensive abilities a paladin has.

Zai, my paladin, just reached level 40 and got her Blood Knight mount, but I also bought the racial mount — the Elven Battle Chicken!

Or not. One might even say that the real game starts now, with the endgame content opening up for me. Tomorrow I’m going on my first Molten Core run, for some hot action. Since I’m a bit poorly equipped it might be very hot indeed, I could use more fire resistance items.

There’s really lots of stuff to do when you hit level 60. Apart from the obvious Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and Zul’Gurrub runs, you can participate in battlegrounds to gain faction reputation and get cool stuff.

…well, that was pretty much it. But it’s not like that is something you do over a weekend. I wrote a long list of various equipment I’d like to get now that I’m 60, and that will keep me busy for a good long while.

I play a hunter, and we’re a pretty special class. We’re focusing on long-range damage with bows and guns, and have a tamed animal who does the close quarters battling for us (if things go as intended). I’m not as flashy in combat as the fireballs and pyrotechnics a mage slings, but I do a steady stream of damage instead of high bursts of damage like mages do.

And having a pet can be a great advantage; the pet can keep one enemy tied down while I deal with another one. My current pet is a Stranglethorn tigress.

Her name is Pinky.