Ding! Now What?

I made it! ...and I'm a little unsure what to do with myself. I have been playing WoW since the original open beta in fall 2004, and I was late getting to both level 60 and 70. I never really raided in vanilla WoW, and by the time I started Kara in BC, a lot of people were going through it for their second time on alts. Hitting the end-game this early is bleeding edge for me and just feels a little strange. It also might be that December just gets a little weird in general with all the craziness going on.

As always, there is a ton to do at the level cap, and it's difficult not to be overwhelmed with information and keeping track of everything I want to do. I've actually only done two instances. I've had such a crazy schedule lately, that questing has been all I can do. I want to see all the others, but I'll probably end up skipping to heroic mode on most of them. I've spent the last couple days looking at the WotLK tanking gear guides and working towards the magical 540 defense for immunity from crits. I did manage to hit it without too much trouble by crafting the +def alchemy BoP trinket along with socketing everything with +def gems and buying a few BoE blues off the auction house. Now all I need to do is to get my base defense skill to level up those last 5 points.

I really like the championing system. It looks like the Wyrmrest accord will be best for some quick tanking gear. Not really sure which way I'll go after that. I still have about half of Zul'Drak to quest in, and I literally have not touched Storm Peaks or IceCrown. That's a lot of lore left to check out and also a pretty steady stream of income for awhile.

I have already been approached by the GM of my current guild to tank for our third 10-man team. He's willing to plan it around my schedule, which is pretty awesome. I'm ready to jump in and check it out, but I also want to make sure I balance it well. Consistently raiding three nights a week can realy be somewhat demanding for me, especially when there are still a lot of non-raiding things in the game left to do. It takes time away from doing 5-man content, which I really enjoy. I'm also not sure what my RL friends are wanting to do, either, and most of my fun in raiding comes from them being there with me. I guess I'll just have to wait and see how it all pans out.

Also, yes, I hit level 80 off discovery XP. I always wanted to hit the level cap with that...