Can I hold your hand?

That's how the quests from lvl80 till 85 felt to me.

Make no mistake. I liked the stories, the cut-scenes and the idea I was part of a story, maybe not always as participant, but I kept a good idea what the story was. I remember that in the pre-zulaman area (when we had to walk till level 40), I often had no idea what the story was about, I just was flowing with the quests, but often not reading further then what to do.

Now I read all the quests I encountered in cataclysm, they where part of the same story, and I read it like a book. For that matter, vanilla was like reading a lot of books at the same time, while cataclysm was reading one book at the time, before you continued to the next book (with the exception of Uldum where two stories walk side-by-side)

Now both TBC and LK where somehwere inbetween. To continue with books. TBC read like you are normally reading comics. Lots of little different stories after each other. While LK read like several books, while sometimes you took a comic besides the book. And yes, in this line, vanilla was like reading your complete comic-book collection at once.... which is a lot for me.

Now the problem ofcourse arises, that if you need to read a book, you normally need to start at the beginning, and read it to the end. There's no way you can skip a part, books are not written that way. And that is exactly the problem with Cata-questing at this moment. The road you need to take is written, and needs to be followed. So if you want to level in Cata, you are only left with two options, follow the questline or level through dungeons.

Yes, I know that you can choose between two 'starting'-zones. But after that you need to take deepholm, and at least a part of either Uldum or Highlands. And yes, for every one out there who wants to raid, doin all of the Deepholm quest is a must, something to do with shoulder-enchants.

Now, this is not that a big of a problem for most players... but... well... if you have altism like me, it can became a drag to do the deepholm quests for the umptied time.

Now, I know the past was not good. The forced levelling through Hellfire was not fine, and I destroyed those portals enough, but at least there you had a choice to skip stuff. Don't like the quest, or the reward, just skip it. In Cata this choice is taken away from you. You need to follow the questline.... no more free will....

Well, ok, I did skip ONE other way to level, through professions. Mining, Herbing and *gasp* Digging, gives experience, and you can level through that I suppose...

On the archeology... 3 BiS-gear pre-raid can be solved by archeology. 1 dorf, 1 Nelf and 1 tolvir. It's all RNG, and for that matter, Tol'Vir digsites are rare....very rare.

Back to the topic, for a fast finish. Luckily levelling from 80-85 is fast. So before you are actually bored, you are level 85. But does the game really begins at 85 then?

...well, I am of, studying raid-bosses....and I just keep digging....