So with so many options of gaming currently (Oblivion, Pokemon, Spore, Sims 3 -- now fully legal copy -- and My World My Way) why do I find myself playing Game I Test For Work? (Or as the case may be, NOT playing it, if you're one of the people who knows what I mean by that.) I have no idea. Maybe it gives me time to sort through my iTunes playlist that I have recently recovered from my broken iMac's hard drive?

So Khoa and I have made our decision to return to WoW when 3.2 comes out. Because it's just that awesome, and it promises to make end-game similar to the way it was in 2.4: grind on 5-man heroics endlessly for really awesome lewts. That and being able to fly as soon as you get to Outland sounds really awesome.

1. We are going to start over on Horde side. We still haven't seen Northrend from a Horde perspective.

2. I am going to play an orcish enhancement shaman (most likely dual-spec with healing) and he shall play a blood elven protection paladin (as he is generally known to do).

3. My professions will be alchemy and herbalism, because as awesome as inscription is for making money, it's SO complicated that I rarely have time to play, and the improvements to alchemy look hella awesome.

4. My first challenge will be to do everything with a single character, not even have a bank alt. Instead of leveling alts, I shall work on achievements.

5. My second challenge is to play in complete default UI. Not a single addon to speak of. I'd like to see how the other half lives, and it's been so long since I've played with Default, I'd like to see how much it can do.

6. Our new server has some requirements:
a. It must have a good Horde/Alliance ratio.
b. It must be an RP-PvE realm, as RP folks tend to have better language skills.
c. It must be in Pacific Time Zone. It's terrible trying to find a group when everybody on the server is asleep.
d. It must be located in a datacenter somewhere on this side of the contiguous united states. I don't want to be dealing with high latency just because my Pacific-timezone server happens to be located in Boston.
e. It must be a relatively new server, because I realize I dislike being the new kid on the block when people can trace the history of their guild back to wiping against Molten Core bosses in level 55 blue gear.

We seem to have settled on a little server called Wyrmrest Accord. It's Pacific-time RP-PvE, and it was only just created in January. It has approximately the same 12,000 population on both sides. Shamans are apparently very rare on this server, and nearly half of the Horde side population consists of blood elves.

Sure it's located in the Seattle datacenter instead of Los Angeles (if not for point E, Feathermoon would have been a better bet) but Seattle is still closer than Boston and we've already checked our latency to be reasonably good on that server. On a side note, Khoa uncovered something amazing that slightly changes our system in order to reduce our latency from 160ms down to around 55ms.

So, we've got things planned out. In a couple of months when the patch is out, we shall return to our nostalgic little world.