All Eyes on the Dark Portal

A few hours from when this post goes live Blizzard is expected to open the Dark Portal and let us all through and into Outland and Burning Crusade Classic.  The magic time is 3pm local for me here in California, midnight Paris time, or 22:00 UTC.

The World Wide Launch Plan

There isn’t much time left to prepare… well, there isn’t if  you plan to go through the Dark Portal at the first possible moment.  But our server was very busy over the holiday weekend, so a lot of people look to be ready to go.

Despite not being quite as far along as I thought I might more than a year and a half after WoW Classic launched, I do have three characters at level cap.  Ready to head to Outland are:

Tistann – My level 60 hunter and solo character.  He will, no doubt, be my first character through the portal and headed towards Honor Hold.  I am actually pretty happy with his progress.  In addition to being at level cap, his trade and secondary skills.

• Leatherworking – 300
• Skinning – 300
• Cooking – 300
• First Aid – 136
• Fishing – 151

He is my only character to finish maxing out his primary trade skills.  First aid he is stuck back at heavy wool bandages, which is kind of a flat spot in the training curve.  He has some remedial work to do on that front.

Wilhelm  – My level 60 paladin and now my main instance group character, he was my last to level 60, getting that last half a level after the pre-patch hit, but he is ready to go.  He is also doing pretty well on his trade skills.

• Engineering – 280
• Mining – 300
• Cooking – 300
• First Aid – 300
• Fishing – 270

Viniki – My level 60 warrior and the some time tank for the instance group.  I have to figure out what I am going to do with him.  I am actually surprised, it putting this together that his cooking isn’t at 300.  Going to have to fix that.

• Blacksmithing – 271
• Mining – 300
• Cooking – 285
• First Aid – 300
• Fishing – 121

In addition, I have one up and coming character.

Alioto – My now level 45 druid.  He was level 36 when the pre-patch hit, which put him in prime position to take advantage of the additional quests added into the game and has moved pretty quickly towards the level cap.

I had toyed with the idea of boosting him to level 58… I think Blizz tapped into the scarcity idea in that you can only buy a boost for one character in classic… back when he was just level 36.  But since the pre-patch I have enjoyed playing him enough that I am just going to level him up to 60 the old fashioned way… or, the Burning Crusade old fashioned way in any case.  He only has harvest trade skills, and those are easy to catch up.

So that is my team for the Dark Portal.  I am still half-tempted to boost a character to 58, though I suspect that is the scarcity thing playing with my head a bit.  I am not even sure who I would boost… maybe my level 21 rogue, maybe my level 25 warlock… and I am unlikely to have the time to play yet another character if my WoW Classic experience is any guide.  But my enthusiasm is high at the moment and that can lead to bad decisions.  We shall see.

And the game itself… I hope that load test was enough for them to tune up Outland.  It seemed pretty laggy in the beta, but had shaped up some once they hit the second load test.  Still, this video is probably a reasonable simulation about what is coming:

Soon.