25man VS 10man raids

Everyone has their opinion of whether a 25man raid is better than a 10 man. I officially hate 25man raids. I will never be volunteering or allow my self to be drafted into a raid set to 25 player mode unless I personally know at least 24 of the people in that group (not including my self), #1 - know the fights inside and out, #2 - can pull at least half their own weigh, and #3 - Can show the group the respect of having their gear enchanted and gemed so they are not just dead weight being dragged by the players doing the work. The only sad exception this is the 25man Raid Finder version that is a dumbed down version of the real thing were you expect the majority of the group to suck.

The Monk

With my youngest brother now involved in the game, that means we get 300 times the experience towards levels when playing together on a character under level 80. So we both started some monks, and also both chose the pandaren race.

 The adventure begins on the Wondering isle which is the starting area for the pandaren race and a content of Pandaria. It is a large sea turtle named Shen-zin Su  that is roaming the great sea. The zone had about 90 quests that went by rather quick, since the time on the island was enjoyable from the wonderfully detailed landscape. There was also a lot of movement from area to area that helped keep your attention on the game. Nearing the end of our journey on the wondering isle, one of the final quest we need to finish before we choose which faction we will be joining, is to remove an alliance air ship that has crashed into Shen-zin Su. The alliance ship that crashed was threatening the giant turtles life which in turn threatened everyone’s life on it. It also contained some horde prisoners that were the first non pandaren quest givers for the pandaren starting zone, following some quests from the alliance. One of the final quests was to remove the air ship by blowing it up, and then heal Shen-zin Su injury.

 My brother and I choose to follow the alliance faction, as the majority of my character are alliance and all of them on my main server are. We managed to get to level 60 in about 10 hours of game play with help of the experience boost, mostly running dungeons after completing the starting zone. My brother had decided to stick with the dps class of the monk, but I have been jumping all over. I started as tank, with off spec dps, and now have just switched to healer keeping my off spec as dps. I have yet to actually heal anyone, but the healing mechanics seem to have no similarity to any of the other healing class, so its going to be an interesting learning experience.

What a long grind.

Well, after five days and a bit over 30 hours of eye straining game play, I have finally reach level 90. I also managed to do this solo. I guess I was unintentional punishing my self by sticking to my fire mage spec instead of switching to a frost spec that would have been far less painful to level with. But I took this advantage to tweak and prefect my fire rotation and pulled through in the long run ... a very long run. I also find out shortly after reaching level 90, that for every person in a group grants an extra 10% experience increase which would have got me there 40% faster since there is a 5 person cap to a group. But this long haul let me experience the beautiful landscape of Pandaria and collect a few achievements along the way.

  Now with the leveling out of the way, Its time to grind reputation with the many factions in Pandaria. My main focus is the Golden lotus, they have all my patterns for my professions: Tailoring and Enchanting. They are based in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms which is located into the middle of Pandaria and is not unlockable untill lv 90.