ding in sight . . .

I have had locks on the brain (sounds like a bagel shop delicacy) as of late because I recently decided, after having leveled my shiny new Death Knight to 80 as fast as I could when WotLK dropped, that it was finally time I gave a little love to the toon that saw me through my formative WoW days. My Undead Warlock was the first character I created back in July of 2006. He was my first toon to 60 (when that used to be the level cap), he was my first toon to 70 (when THAT used to be the level cap). Throughout all of BC, he was the only toon on which I had been able to bestow epic flying as well as being the first toon I took into a raid somewhere around mid-BC after a much needed mental break.

I had raided with my lock to about tier 4.5, so through Kara, Gruul's and some SSC and Mags before I switched to a druid and warrior and ended up spending all of my time in Kara and Gruul's (until the 3.0.2 patch where I was suddenly tanking stuff on my Warrior in BT).

Anyway, with a full bar of rest and a few gold in my pocket, I respec'd my lock to demo for the trek to 80 and actually had a blast doing it. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy playing a warlock. I was concerned when I started that I would find questing in the same zones too much of a retread of my DK time there to be enjoyable (since I took my DK to Northrend at 68 and never gave him time to build up any rest, I ended up questing in every zone before I finally hit 80) but after the initial foray into each I started discovering things I'd missed the first time through, including entire quest hubs (I had no idea there were friendly murlocs in Borean Tundra).

After getting the questing loremaster achievements in Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord and Dragonblight, I realized that I would hit lvl 80 before I even met the Ebon Blade and switched to seeking out all the lower level quests that give out rep (having already completed all the Wyrmrest and Kirin Tor non-dungeon quests) and headed to Zul'Drak. When I hit 77, I went right to Storm Peak and started grinding Son's of Hodir rep. My goal is to make sure I'm as close to raid ready when I hit 80 as I can be.

Now, I'm on the eve of dinging 80 (just hit 79 this morning, still with full rest) and I am 5 skill points away from being able to make my epic tailoring robe, my DK, who's a jewelcrafter has churned out an epic spell ring and and epic spell neck and I should be honored with KotEB and get a blue cape. If all goes well, I'll have a nearly complete set of blues and 4 epics the second I hit 80, which is an exciting prospect, and be able to head right into heroics. At the very latest, I figure I'll be gathering emblems by this weekend.