Owlaf the Druid

Meet Owlaf. She is kind of my avatar. She is, as of March 4th 2011, a level 85 Druid who specializes is Balance with some off-tanking as a Feral Druid on the side. In a sense I tend to dive right into the vast world of Azeroth every time I log on to play World of Warcraft, and I'm more into the lore of the game than PVP. Actually I rarely PVP, if ever.

In the past, Owlaf, nicknamed Owl, has been known to be obsessive compulsive. When patch 3.2.0 was coming out, "Call of the Crusade" http://www.wowpedia.org/Patch_3.2.0, Owl was merely level 20 when she heard about it. At the time I was playing hunters for the most part, and being an idiot while doing so, but then we're all idiots when we first start playing. After finding out that a patch was coming out, I go to read the notes about it. At the time, mount training was a bit on the expensive side, and when I found out that flying would be learned almost right away for entering the Outlands, one of the few places available to fly in at the time, I decided it would be cool to level my Night Elf Druid and be able to fly as a bird.

Just to backtrack a little here, at the time, Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion released for World of Warcraft, was out. The Burning Crusade was it's predecessor, and it introduced a new area called the Outlands, and with it, the ability to fly. Wryverns and Griffons bore their masters into the air, carrying players anywhere they wished to go, making travel much easier than ever before, and at the time it was only available in Outland. The Wrath of the Lich King came out, and a new continent was available to fly in, at least as soon as you purchased the cold weather flying ability so you could soar to all places in Northrend. From the Burning Crusade onward, you could fly in these two places, but not in the Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor, the two original continents of the core game.

At the time, you had to learn flying at level 70, by which time you were no longer playing in Outlands, but instead heading off to Northrend, where you couldn't fly until reaching level 77, and the level cap was 80. So there I was at level 20 on my druid, and I heard that you could get flying at level 60 instead of 70, which meant you can fly WHILE you leveled in Outlands, which made buying the flying training much more worthwhile. So I decided to power-level my druid so I could fly at level 60, and I wanted my druid to be at that level by the time the patch came out so I would be ready for it.

Now you might wonder why I chose to play my druid up instead of my hunters? Well, for one thing I thought it would be cooler if I could turn into my hunter pet and pounce, slash, and bite my foes instead of just standing back and shooting arrows. Plus, the idea of turning into a bird and flying around as one instead of sitting on the back of a half eagle half lion was not quite me. If I had the choice I'd have ridden on the dragons! (clearly at the time I had not heard of Culling of Stratholme.) Another perk about this, specifically with the Night Elves, is the ability to exit combat with Shadowmeld, which renders you invisible to your enemies as long as you stand still, and once the enemies back off, I can shift into flight form, which is instantly cast, and just fly away. If I was a hunter, it would take me 1.5 seconds to climb onto my mount, just long enough for enemies to start attacking! As a Night Elf druid, POOF and I'm gone!

So upon learning about the earlier learning of the riding skill, as well as it's cost reduction, I decided to level up to 60, and I decided to do it without buying any mount training at all. Saving my gold... good idea.

Owl hit level 40... she could have gotten training at level 30 to ride on a mount, but instead she ran around as a cheetah. She went slightly slower than everyone else who rode on horses or wolves, but she didn't care. She ran all out on all fours all the way to 50.... then as level 60 loomed ever closer, I started wondering when is that patch coming out?! So I decided to take a break and level my reputations instead. One person told me not to rep grind until I was level 80, but I ignored that advice. Pretty soon, I was Ambassador to the Alliance, and I was level 62, and the patch still hadn't come out.

63....64....68... at level 68 I was able to train in flight form at last, which meant that I had given up waiting for the patch to come out. Yep. After leveling from 20-68 running around in cheetah form, I finally decided to break down and buy the mounts, riding training, and my flight form.

Two days later, the patch came out. All riding level requirements were reduced, costs for training reduced...

Yeah... If I had only waited a few more days I'd have saved a lot of gold... You betcha I was madder than hell!

If you've ever farmed for something for hours on end, then helped a friend farm it and they get it in one kill whereas you had to kill 1000 things to get yours, of yeah, then you know how I feel from time to time. I guess you can say as a payback for that I decided to go for the 100 mount achievement. Yeah, I can fly simply by shapeshifting into a raven, but sometimes I enjoy riding on the backs of dragons, or griffons, or skeleton raptors, or tigers, or rams, or horses, even a rocket or a mammoth. Yeah, I have 102 mounts as we speak. Current patch is 4.0.6... Owl is about 2 years old now and she's come a very, very long way since power-leveling to become my first level 80 toon. She is now my main. I swear her personality is similar to mine in many ways, and one way is that I tend to show off a bit. So if you see me on the Feathermoon server, drop me a line and ask to kiss Mojo. ;-)