52 days

Mists of Pandaria will release September 25. That is 52 days from now. If you're looking to change you main character, role, guild or server, this is a good time to do so. In those 52 days the following things will occur:

• 8 Call to Arms: Alterac Valley is excellent for alt leveling, and Arathi Basin- and Warsong Gulch-weekends are good for reputation grinds.
• 7 raid resets: It's time to get those last kills, achievements and legendaries.
• 2 Darkmoon Faires! August 5 to August 11 and September 2 to September 8. Which means 10 profession skill points to all professions that aren't maxed yet! It also means I can get rid of some Soothsayer Runes on my 85's, and hoard tickets for new Darkmoon-stuff on alts.
• Pirates Day September 19
• Patch 5.0. Stop rolling for melee weapons I can't use anymore after patch 5.0, and start going for expertise on gear...  Theramore event will bring a tabard and achievements. And I would be surprised if there isn't some gear to get as well.

Additional plans for the 52 days:

• Glyphs. Influenced by those saying glyphs will be in demand and very expensive at the beginning of Mists, I've decided to learn all glyphs on all characters before that. Those glyphs that are going away will be transformed into the new ones, so it should be safe to do so.
• Heirlooms for my monk. Levels 1-10 and 85-90 should be a blast, 10-85 perhaps a bit less? Let's make sure it goes as quick as possible. :)
• Stack up 25 quests for a small XP-boost for launch.
• Stack up 200 fragments in each race for a profession-boost in Archaeology.

Back in March I wrote the post Mists of Pandaria Launch Predictions. My prediction was more than a month wrong. The best prediction was from Sesamee, with October 2. Good job Sesamee. :) I was so relieved when we finally got the release date! Not because of the date it self, but because we had one. The Mists of Pandaria hype started with Blizzcon last October, and escalated with the big Mists of Pandaria Press Tour in March and eventually the start of the beta in May. It was refueled with more and more datamining from beta, everyone saying "it's closer than you think", and also a lot of people making predictions, which I gathered eagerly. All of this slowly started to stress me a bit. People were predicting it to release in my summer vacation, should I plan around that? Should I make other plans, worrying I might be away for the release? Now we finally have a date, and I hope I learned some lessons about getting caught in a hype. :) At least it all made me remember how it was to be a kid longing for Christmas.

The announcement was a good time to look at my Bucket List. It's looking pretty good! There are some gaps, but I'm gonna be a bit laid back about it; I think I've done good enough! The only thing that gives me guilty conscience is that I haven't started using my two month old Razer Nostromo yet. But the rest of the unfinished goals can stay unfinished.

A small update on what I'm doing in the game nowadays

I kind of went a bit crazy with OpenRaid! I got all my goals from there (all bosses in the game killed on all difficulties), except Ragnaros heroic. I have decided to leave Ragnaros for Mists, as I joined five long raids to get him down, without luck. On top of our Dragon Soul progression, it became too much work, and not enough fun. So it can wait. :)

Our small guild killed Spine and Madness heroic, meaning we actually cleared current content!

And Lae has gotten a lot of achievements out of the way, actually trespassing 14k achievement points. I decided that I could give her a small rest, and now...

I've been going completely altoholic-maniac the last weeks! Death knights and mages and paladins and warlocks and even rogues, I'm leveling them all! Fire mage is fun actually, who could have known? I had a mage stuck at level 42 for about two years, now she's 78! And I had never been able to level death knights, but I've been leveling with some guild mates, and she just hit 80! Have been doing some healing (!!!) on a lowbie paladin, also together with guild mates, leveling some professions here and there, and overall I've really been enjoying myself. I'm even starting to think about transmogging for them all, which is a good and big step back to my altoholic ways of Wrath of the Lich King, and far far away from the Lae-centric player I've been in Cataclysm.

The lessons learned are: Anything can be fun, as long as you do it together with your friends. And all classes have something that makes them really cool and fun, be it disengage, pets, blink, instant pyroblast, death grip, shadowstep, cool gear or cool story. Never get rid of your death knight's starter gear. And if you really like the woosh-sound of fire spells, ignore all the know-it-alls that tell you that you have to level as frost. Actually, let them BURN. :)