So the facts are this: I love playing Horde characters, I have tinkered with playing Alliance characters and a very good friend of mine loves to play Alliance characters.

I want to play with my friend but I don’t want to start all over. I was thinking of making a DK on the Ally side and moving a bunch of my money over to the DK. I will lose very few friends that still talk to me since I don’t raid anymore. I can always retrain my professions it will just take time and that isn’t an issue.

I was just thinking that I have some goals for my Paladin and since I don’t really enjoy playing my Mage then why bother playing him. I am going to work on my Paladin during my weekend and retire the Mage. I will just remember all the fun times I had being a raiding Frosty.

So here is the deal. When I get home from work I am going to make a DK on Rexxar (US), the name is secret so no one takes it. He will be Herbalism and Inscription. His spec is yet to be determined, but I will probably do 0/0/51 as a start. I am going to spend tonight reading the talents and trying to maximize where I can.

Even during my break away from WoW while we moved and I started my crazy work schedule I have still been reading some WoW blogs. One of my favorites is the Greedy Goblin. I have to admit that it’s a sad day when Gevlon doesn’t post something to make me smile.

So, I have been some thinking about how I would classify in his eyes. I don’t raid, do 5-mans or farm for countless hours. I am still leveling my primary toon to 80. I am taking my time and enjoying the story line on my way up. Besides that I am only playing on the nights when I am not at work to maintain my sleep cycles during a short weekend.

I figured out of the course of 1 week (168 hours) I only get to spend time with the love of my life for about 54 hours. That equates to roughly 5 hours a day with having one full day off together. So less than one third of my week is all about quality time. Watching TV, cooking dinner and just relaxing on the couch.

Does that make me a M&S? I have no idea, but when I do get to log into WoW I do my quests and collect herbs/ore I find along the way. I don’t sell the gear, I look it up on MaxDPS to see if the new items are better then what I am currently wearing. Why would I do that if I’m not raiding? Well it comes down to effeciency, the more DPS I do the faster I can kill a quantity of mobs to complete the quest. Therefore, I can complete more quests this week in the same play time then I could last week.

I maxed my Herbalism and I am working on my Mining now. I toggle between the two as I fly around on my 60% mount. I don’t have enough to pay for the Artisan Riding skill yet so I am working within my means. I did pay for Dual Specs, this was a no brainer.. If I need to kill an elite for a quest I put on my old T4-T5 tanking gear and solo tank it. My DPS is much lower but my HP can’t be beat.

I do vendor trash all of my grey, most of my white items and unusable greens and blues.

So what are my goals? Well let us review them..

Save enough money for 300 riding.
Save 200gp for Armored Red Wind Rider
Max Mining
Max Herbalism
Reach level 80 100% solo.

These are all realistic, attainable and measureable. I currently have 2.9kgp in my bank. As stated before my Herbalism is maxed and I am under 25 points from maxing my mining.

I am selling my ore from my bank toon and saving up all of my herbs. I have a level 70 mage that is doing Inscription and Tailoring. So all of the things he can use are being sent to him. So when my current list is done he can be ready to complete his goals.

I have to admit I have been reading fewer WoW blogs since the first of the year, but still some of them have me thinking.

For example, Tobold has a very good post on Dual Spec and Hybridization. I read this post a few times, I like fully understanding what I read. As someone that plays a hybrid class being DS’d can really help a raid. Seeing how I am not going to be raiding for a while I know it’s not applicable to me. Although, I have thought about DSing Tankadin and Retadin. Like Rohan at Blessing of Kings wrote about it can make leveling go alot quicker and I could probably get away with using it in the BGs.

On the other hand it may be something Blizz regrets doing after a while. It seems like a great idea at first but given the how quick people are to cry NERF on the boards and forums, it may be something they ammend.