I saw a funny thing on my way to 80...

"My" part of Sweden has gotten a fair amount of snow today - hence, haven't set foot outside the door - and most of mid-morning was spent cleaning the house, replacing the ink cartridges in my printer, and a number of other little boring things.

Rahamra, the new druid alt, has reached level 22, and is so far specced 8/0/5 - not raiding material just yet :D - and she's moving along quite fast, partly because I know the spells and the quests, partly because I've run her through both the night elf zone and the draenei zone. And yeah, I've realised I may have to budge a tiny bit when it comes to my "more resto than balance, even before 40!!!"-plan - with the lack of caster leather at lower levels, she's a bit squishy, and I don't think I can (comfortably) get out of investing a bunch of points in extra damage and crit. But, come dual spec, she'll be heavy resto and a viable dps/solo-spec! Probably moonkin, but being a kitty can be fun too... We'll see.

The situation might have been different, had I started her on a fairly new server, where there's usually a bit more healthy activity in lower-level dungeons. The server on which I have my primary characters opened in January 2007, and during the first 6 months or so, people were putting together serious groups to go through Deadmines, Sunken Temple, Scholomance and so on, but two years later the activity there seems to be limited to boosts. And of course, I too like it when I get to higher levels - you can do a lot more, travel more freely, and the chances that you'll run into people who actually know what they're doing seem to increase, the closer to 80 you get - but there are a lot of things along the way that I don't want to miss:

• Duskwood questlines. I love the "haunted" atmosphere in there, and the storylines are good.
• Ashenvale. I like the quests, and "wild forest"-feeling. The same goes for Feralas.
  
• Un'Goro Crater. A lot of people hate this place, but I love it - it's like Nintendo-paradise, quest- and lookwise.
• Gathering materials for, and leveling my professions of choice, without having the main pay for it. (Rahamra is a herbalist/tailor (flying carpet? I'm so in! Also, nice leg enchant for healer/caster.))
• Silly little traditions, like swimming from Theramore to Tanaris instead of taking the Great Lift, or if you're playing a hunter - at level 10 insisting on running to the other end of the map to get a "special" pet, such as a Strigid Hunter if you're horde, or a Springpaw Lynx if you're alliance.
• In general, getting a feel for the character while leveling - I'm not an RP:er, my characters don't really have a well thought out story attached to them, but I tend to bond with them a lot, and I think I'd lose a lot of that if a friend/someone I paid 20 gold would run me through Scarlet Monastery for three levels and gear.
  

I could go on and on, but I think my point is already quite clear: I like leveling. I often complain about it somewhere around the 40s, when it seems like nothing is happening, and you feel like you're never going to catch up with everyone else, but in the end, it's nice putting the pieces together, finding out what works and what doesn't, discovering the advantages - and disadvantages - of different classes and builds.

So, even though leveling is mostly a solo-project on a server like mine, it's nothing I would like to fast-forward through. Well, there are always areas and questlines that bore me to bits (Read: Desolace. What has anyone ever done to deserve it?), but in the end, I'm always glad I've been through it, and hopefully it'll make me a better player.