Hello!  A lot has happened in the past couple of months.  The new expansion, Battle for Azeroth, moved from Alpha stage to Beta stage.  I had the opportunity to play the alpha, and while it was pretty buggy, it was actually pretty playable.  The Beta is quite impressive.  Following is my notes about the xpac:

I created two characters, Zaradrel, a void elf warrior and Amphyx a Dark Iron Dwarf Mage (obviously).  Both started at level 110 using 185 ilvl gear.  This is different than what existing users will be playing with since most people will have an ilvl of at least 910~960 at launch.  Whenever Blizzard does a stat squish, things usually go wrong for the first week of the xpac release.

Getting better gear is pretty simple at first by doing the quests in the starting areas.  Playing as a warrior and mage has been pretty straightforward, although some talents are no longer available or changed, or not implemented yet.  What I thought was really odd was that they brought back arcane knowledge buff for mages for groups and raid groups.

I’ve reached level 114 on Zaradrel, and am hopeful I can get that character to 120 before they issue a new update and wipe the characters and we have to start over !!

Zaradrel is also in Drustvar which apparently is infested with witches!  While questing through Drustvar, it reminds me of a cross between Pandaria and Wrath of the Lich King.  The design is really nice, however, the NPC count needs to be increased as the zones look very sparse of people.

I’ll have more information as I continue to progress through the Beta.

I can’t wait to see what the final release will look like!