Adventures in Beta: Blood Elf Paladin, 6-10

When I returned to my blood elf, she was ready to go kill some Wretched and arcane patrollers in the wreckage of the Blood Elf starting area. The whole Ruins of Silvermoon area is very confusing. It's a city, but half of it is overrun by enemies, so you can't really figure out where most of the questgivers are supposed to be. As I swung away at magic-zombies and machines, I discovered that I was sort of enjoying playing a paladin. The whole system of seals and judgments was pretty cool, and my big problem with my long-dead human pally - the lack of a viable pulling spell - was solved by mana tap. I was going out of mana a lot less than with my shaman, too. I had to keep reminding myself, "You can't play one of these in the expansion - you'll get bored around 30-40 like with all your other alts, and you'll have to deal with other blood elves like 'Onmyknees' and 'Sefhirotth.'"

I defeated the Wretched leader and was sent south of the Ruins of Silvermoon to investigate some Night Elf-related disturbances at the West Sanctum. It turns out that the Sanctum had also malfunctioned (hmm ... dang elves), releasing mana wraiths into the area. While killing the mana wraiths, I found quite a few Darnassian spies. Hey, weren't the draenei all angry that the blood elves were spying on them? Dang hypocrites. The spies dropped some documents with sketches of the sanctums on them. I returned the documents to Falconwing Square, where the guards identified them as having dwarven handwriting and sent me to kill an Alliance envoy who they said was the spy. Since the Alliance were just observing the sanctums, not sabotaging them, I felt kind of bad about killing the envoy. Too much time as a hippie draenei must have rubbed off on me.

I was supposed to go to Fairbreeze Village next, but I decided to wander around a while. I protected a sanctum keeper from dark spirits, spanked some misbehaving magic students who dropped their teacher's book in the water, and died a lot (turns out that paladins have the heal button so they can heal themselves. Who knew?) After that, I took a break for the night and vowed to finish up levels 8-10 tomorrow.

The next day, I finished collecting some lynx pelts and headed over to Saltheril's Haven, where I was supposed to convince a hard-partying blood elf to stop asking for supplies. Unsurprisingly, he asked me to pick up his supplies. The quest had no "Do it yourself, you lazy magic junkie" option, so I grabbed the quest and headed down to Sunsail Anchorage to kill some more magic zombies and find armaments.

It was about at this time that I ran into some pretty big bugs. First off, my enemy's portrait was not showing up in combat. Secondly, the armaments I was supposed to find weren't appearing. Third, when I tried to go on to the next quest, it involved murlocs. And fourth, oh my God, the BE starting area chat on a Saturday night is ten times worse than Barrens chat. "BEs are so metro!" "These mounts are gay!" "HELP ME WHERE IS TEH CRISTAL." I hit level 9 and decided to come back when there weren't so many ... other blood elves. My poor noble Horde - what have they done to you?

When I returned a couple of hours later, I camped the few armament spawn points I found until I got my 8 armaments. After turning those in, I went to work on killing some trolls and their chieftain, as well as finding a craftsman's hammer that the trolls took. Turning in the troll invasion plans got me to level 10 - yay! But I wanted to finish the starting area before going to bed. I went to another random "magic college" - Duskwither Spire - to deactivate power cores and find Groundskeeper Wyllithen. Yay for Simpsons references! Wyllithen asked me to defeat some "ether fiends," which made me think of small, ethereal Hunter S. Thompsons.

Duskwither Spire itself floats above Eversong Woods, and you have to take a translocator to get there. Mindful of what happened the last time I touched a translocator (a sudden trip to the Undercity), I looked around and made sure it was my only option before touching the orb. It was. I climbed up the floating towers, deactivated the power sources, and looked around a bit before heading back to the ground. I gave word of the college's destruction to its former ruler, Magister Duskwither, who showed a very un-blood-elf-like regret at the deaths of his students.

With my quests largely completed - except for that idiot elf and his party supplies - I went to Silvermoon City to catch up on my Paladin training and my jewelcrafting/mining. At my jewelcrafter's, I learned the prospecting ability to uncover gems from stacks of 5 ore. I also saw some hilariously-named crafting supplies (such as Cubic Zirconia Ring: "Trust me, she'll know.") I made some nice low-level necklaces and rings, and gave them away free to my fellow blood elves. I then headed to the Blood Knight area for some paladin training. After learning Lay On Hands, I fell through a hole in the ground and discovered Lady Liadrin, the blood knight matriarch. She didn't have any quests for me, though.

I hearthed back to Fairbreeze Village and got two quests - one to go to the Ghostlands, the next low-level area, and on to check out the southwest of Eversong Woods. First I had to deliver the idiot elf's party supplies. He criticized my outfit (admittedly, chain mail isn't too flattering) and invited me to his party. I grabbed a couple of drinks, figuring I deserved some alcohol after putting up with Eversong Woods chat all night. With all my quests finished - except for a stupid "protect the crystal" thing that I wasn't planning on doing - I headed into the Ghostlands.

When Adventures in Beta returns from holiday vacation - Ghostlands, Bloodmyst Isle, and (Blizzard willing) the Outlands!