Look at all those people clogging up Blizzard’s payment system because they HAVE TO HAVE their pre-order today! Sheep!
-Me, Tuesday Afternoon
Okay, I’ve unlocked my Highmountain Tauren allied race and raise my digital deluxe edition pet to 25.
-Also Me, That Same Evening
It isn’t like I don’t have enough things on my “To do” list in Azeroth. But at some point on Tuesday evening I said, “What the hell!” and joined in the frenzy and pre-ordered Battle for Azeroth.
They say all online purchasing decisions made after 8pm are a mistake, but I did this at 7:30pm, so I’m in the clear I guess. *cough*
Of course, Blizzard wasn’t making things easy. They dropped a patch earlier in the day to support the pre-order update and it was having… issues. Issues like not showing any of your characters.
That seemed to be a random error. You could log out and back in again and you might get your characters. And if you did get them, then foolishly logged out… never log out on a night where there are login issues… you might not get them the next time you tried.
Anyway, I did get in and found that you could order the expansion from within the game. I’m not sure if, by that point, it was a better option than the normal Blizzard store, but it worked. I was set.
Then I swapped to my level 110 Horde character… because for my first time ever in WoW I have a max level Horde character… so I could work on unlocking the Highmountain Tauren. That was the one of the current four allied races that interested me. And it is a good thing that was the one, because I still have some work to do on the other three. Part of my “To do” list is to finish up Argus.
So I got the quest pop for allied races which brought me to Orgrimmar where there is a new embassy building for this sort of thing. It was, naturally enough, kind of a crowded place. There you get to pick which allied race to pursue. I only had the one option.
The game warns you to choose carefully as you can only have one allied race quest chain running at a time. But the Highmountain quest chain… that is where you go to do it… only takes about 30 minutes. After that you get a portal back to Orgrimmar where you turn in the last quest, get the achievement for unlocking that race, and are cleared to make one.
So I logged out and went to character creation.
I wasn’t sure what to go with, but warrior seemed like a viable option. I already have a Horde druid and hunter. And so I have a new character. He started at level 20, which he needed to use the special mount that comes with each allied race.
The Highmountain mount is moose-like, which seems a little odd when you see a Tauren with moose antlers riding what seems to be a moose as well. It is a bit like he is riding his second cousin or something.
And now I have another level 20 character knocking about. I am not sure when I will find the time, if ever, to level him up.
Of course, if I really wanted to, I could use the level 110 boost that came with the expansion. I have no idea what else I would use it on. But I think I will let that sit for a while before I use it.