Choose My Adventure: Turpen dings 45

WoW.com readers, it's up to you to decide the fate of Turpen the Gnome Warlock with Choose My Adventure. Casting your vote toward the many aspects of Turpen and make him your own! Well, not literally. He belongs to Alex, but you know what we mean.

Well, it took longer than I had hoped, but Turpen has finally dinged level 45 and he did it in the wet, muddy wastes of Dustwallow Marsh. It wasn't particularly hard, but between all of the patch 3.2 preparation I've been doing, it was sort of a scatterbrained trip. Do a few quests here, a few quests there... all in all, it wasn't particularly memorable!

Throwing fuel on the 'not very memorable' fire was the completely anticlimactic ding of level 40. I remember that level being something of a landmark, but for Turpen the level came and went without much celebration. Mounts are at level 30 now, and the level 40 talent for Affliction Warlocks is pretty useful, but not much to get excited about. Oh boy, Dark Pact! Mana regen is so exciting! Don't get me wrong, I love me some mana, but could there be anything less exciting to someone who's leveling, questing and exploring? I want toys! I want explosions! I want excitement! This was none of those things. Maybe I would've been more excited if I run around with my Imp or Succubus out, but I've been getting pretty good mileage out of my Voidwalker still. I didn't have mana problems before Dark Pact, so I rarely use it now that I have it.

The levels up to that point, from 35 onward, were done almost exclusively through the Midsummer Fire Festival. I did everything I could in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, and it gave me nearly six levels, if I remember right. The XP from that whole thing was crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy. When the festival wrapped up, I tied up a few loose ends in Stranglethorn Vale, then moved onto Dustwallow Marsh.

During my travels in Dustwallow Marsh, I started to realize that the story there is now... pretty weird. You go to Dustwallow Marsh and investigate the Defias. You spend numerous quests trying to figure out what they're up to, and then you realize... oh no! They kidnapped someone! You go to tell Jaina what's happened and she basically says, "Oh, that whole thing? Yeah, we totally knew. In fact, King Wrynn is back home already. What? Nobody told you? Haha, oops. He's chillin', s'all good. He even killed Onyxia while you were off scuba diving for garbage!"

Well, okay then. Thanks a lot, Jaina.

And then, not 20 minutes later, I'm questing down in Mudsprocket and this friendly ol' ogre guy tells me to plant a Stonemaul Banner outside of Onyxia's Lair to piss the dragon off. Come on! Jaina literally just told me that Wrynn killed Onyxia. I realize that in an MMO, sometimes things can get a little weird when you actually move the story forward, but that's a little much. The zone is lost in some sort of time warp. The past, future and present are all happening side-by-side instead of linearly.

And that pretty much brings us to where we are now! I told you guys that this stretch of leveling was boring, didn't I? So now it's up to you again, dear readers. Where do you want Turpen to go? What do you want him to do?
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Voting will end tonight at midnight, at which point I'll do the zone with the highest number of votes. If I can't move onto the next 'tier' of zones with only one of them, I'll go to the second place winner until I can move on.
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I've also come to a crossroads with my profession, Engineering! It has been incredibly useful, and my only roadblock has been that I can't get my hands on enough Mithril yet. I love the bombs, I love the grenades, and I adore my Mechanical Dragonling. I've been given a choice, though: Do I want to go Goblin or Gnomish Engineering?
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I'll also be coming up on level 50! And since I ask this question every ten levels, what should I do with my talents?
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And that's all, folks. As always, feel free to hop on Cenarion Circle and say hello! I probably won't always have time to go dungeon crawling with you or anything, but I'm more than happy to say hi to anybody who passes through!