An Embarrassment of Options…

I find myself in a very different position game-wise than I was in just a month back.

With the return of the instance group to World of Warcraft I have found my “to do” list for the game growing out of control.

The odd bit is that, each time I complete something on my list, it seems to spawn a couple more items.

For example, I wanted to get my pally, who is my main “do all the things” character, through Pandaria and up to level 90.

That was a simple achievement based goal that would allow me to see a good stretch of the expansion… though not as much as I thought I would see… and put at least one character at the top of the heap, ready for the next expansion, and able to indulge in whatever level cap things Blizzard had laid out.

Easy stuff.  I figured it wouldn’t take too much of my time and I might be in danger of running out of things I wanted to do.

Instead, upon getting to 90, I have found myself:

• Finishing up the zone quest lines one by one.

• Running dailies for various factions because I want items they offer (usually mounts). The Order of the Cloud Serpent are at the top of the list.

• Harvesting for sales at the auction house, as all them mounts cost money.

• Harvesting to get engineering up to 600 (at 590 now) so I can build some of the neat things available, such as the Blingtron 4000.  Motes of Harmony and trillium are my main obstacles at the moment.

• Running Timeless Isle when I can get Pia to come play, to gear myself and a few alts up.  And achievements.  And general “oooh, lookit that!” fun.  And dying.

• Running scenarios with Earl.  Did one over the weekend and it went well, so I want to try others.

All of which could easily take up my play time budget.  There are a lot of dailies in Pandaria.  It wasn’t very hard for me to get the Every Day I’m Pan-da-ren achievement.  I managed it before I found a bunch of the daily quests.

However, on top of that,there is also the official guild group.  I have been working on Alioto, both to learn how to play the feral druid DPS role better, since we’ll be hitting Cataclysm instances soon, and to work on inscription, the latter being both useful to the group and mildly lucrative.

Then there is also the unofficial second guild group.  The four of us who play regularly have alts that are in the 68 to 70 range that have been playing together now and again when we have all been on.  I have a level 70 druid there as well, in the healing role.  He healed his way through Burning Crusade instances.  Since he also has inscription as a trade skill, I am thinking about dropping that and picking up mining, which would be more lucrative but which would mean going back and skilling up again.

After which there is my hunter, Tistann, who is sitting at 85 now and ready to jump into Pandaria.  Something about wanting a second character at level cap and seeing the content as a ranged player rather than in the melee role.

Then there is a Draenei Death Knight I have pulled out of storage, Tokarev, because I am sort of interested in running the Outland instances as a tank.  He is 60 and ready to embark.  We’ll see if I can find time for him.  He might be a candidate for my insta-90 character in Warlords of Draenor if I don’t.

Finally, there is every other alt I have on the server, which falls at the low end of my hierarchy of things I want to do.  No real plans there, but they all stare at me when I am logging in, wondering when they will next be able to come out and play.  And then there are the characters on other servers.

On top of all of that, there are at least a half a dozen sort of general blog posts about WoW I want to write based on having returned to the game, which are in addition to the “I did a thing” posts that I write.  Sorry in advance on that, both because the topic of WoW will likely dominate the post count for a while and because I will be writing from the perspective of somebody who has come back to the game after a long absence and will thus end up writing more than a few things that will be blindingly obvious to those who never left.

And while the rush back to Azeroth was all sparked by the Warlords of Draenor announcement at BlizzCon early last month, I find myself in no hurry to get to the next expansion.   Unlike many people, WoD could come too soon for me, being as invested as I am in my own little plans at the moment and feeling like there is still some catching up to do.  We shall see.  I am still excited about the expansion, but there is so much to do!

Other games, of course, will suffer because of this.  War Thunder has fallen by the wayside.  I am back to doing fleets on demand only in EVE Online.  I am good for fleet ops and jump in on that, but there is no time for mining or ratting or what not there.  Meanwhile, things like skill trees in Lord of the Rings Online, updates in Rift, nostalgia in EverQuest, and any thoughts about GuildWars 2 are all off the back burner in stored away in the fridge at this point.

Of course, that could all change.  Burn out is a surprisingly easy point to reach.  But for now I am happy, the rest of the guild seems invested in WoW for the moment as well, so we can make plans, talk, and play together.

Addendum: And as Cuppy reminded me, Pet Battles are also on my list somewhere.  See, more stuff just keeps popping up.