A couple of months ago, I said I would discontinue The Azeroth Journal. Now… I present you the final issue of the journal.

I’ve been pretty busy with WoW since I made my announcement of the discontinuation of AJ. Our guild — which I will keep a tight lip on due to reorganization, and recruitment rules (including my minimum state of anonymity to prevent backlashes from Alliance and fellow Horde players) — has been struggling with content progression for sometime now. A month ago, we had a guild merger, which lasted only 5 days due to conflict of interest.

Remember Karazhan — that one dungeon that I’ve been trying to get into since last year? Now I’m sick of it. It’s because of a couple of reasons: 1) I got just about everything out of there. 2) and I’m ready for bigger content, and 3) The people who merged with us left the guild because of this. Whenever we were ready for a Tempest Keep or Serpentshrine Cavern run, they would ditch the group to run either Karazhan or Zul’Aman instead. Then us, the remaining members of the guild, would either have to run Gruul’s Lair and Magtheridon, start our own Kara/Zul’Aman group, or just log for the night.

Basically, we’re back where we started; we have to run Karazhan or Zul’Aman in place of our 25-man runs. The good news about our progression is that we’ve made lots of new friends (of course), and I’m finally have full Epic gear! I can’t keep up with the names of new gear I’ve gotten out of instances so far, but here’s a brief run down of what I’ve got so far:

• [Bloodmaw Magus-Blade]
• [Staff of Infinite Mysteries]
• [Adornment of Stolen Souls]
• [Tirisfal Wand of Ascendancy]
• [Voodoo-woven Belt] (Not an instance drop, but a badge item that I’ve been wearing for a while, and it beats all of the belt drops I’ve seen so far…)

The sword drop was very important in my completion of getting full epic gear. Pair it with the [Talisman of Nightbane], and I’m a crit monster. If you’ve been reading the past Journals, I play a Warlock class. When I first started WoW, I was an Unstable Affliction warlock. Now I’m a Destruction Warlock, thanks to the help of a fellow Warlock! With new gear and a much better build, my critical rating is at 271, and my spell dmg is 711. This may not be fully accurate since I got a new upgrade for my neck piece ([Adornment of Stolen Souls])…

As of June 2008, I started leveling my Paladin again. She’s now level 59, but I’m going to take it slow for now. It’s been 7 months since I last played with this toon, and I need to start getting her geared up for raids and PvP — especially Arena. My next desire in getting my hands on high-end content is participating in Arena. I don’t play Arena very well on my Warlock, so I think that Paladin is a great class for Arena. Warlocks die fast in Arena, thanks to Rogues…

I’ve also attempted Zul’Aman, and it was a tiring experience. This was my first and only run through ZA, but there’s always time for more until WotLK. I really wanted to go through Karazhan, and I did — now I’m done with it. Zul’Aman? I had little interest in Zul’Aman before I hit 70 (which is very soon; 7/7/2007), and that opinion still counts as of today, now that I can go into just about any raid dungeons with Tier 4 or equivalent gear.

Putting Burning Crusade aside, we managed to run Molten Core! That night was fun. My first time in an old school dungeon, and I even picked up some Felheart Robes. We were planning to finish the entire dungeon that morning, but we had to stop due to rolling restarts, and people leaving since it was 5 AM on a Monday morning.

In Closing…

It’s sad that I have to end while the Burning Crusade content is still fresh. There’s the extra content that I usually put at the end of these things, but nothing new is going on since the BC is coming to an end. Good new is that Season 4 of Arena is starting very soon along with Patch 2.4.3. For some people who are still new to World of Warcraft still have a chance to level to 70 and hop on the Karazhan wagon. However, the I will continue to post sporadic updates of my adventures in Azeroth and Outland (and Northrend when Wrath of the Lich King is released).