Mists Plans

I'm big on making plans for things and time is rapidly running out on making plans for the Mists of Pandaria launch. Where should I focus to start? What else do I need to do to get ready?

A couple days ago I was messaged by a former OGT shaman from back in the Burning Crusade days. It would seem he's going to start a monk and is shooting for realm first and heard I might be doing the same thing. He did his best to convince me to try for anything else. He thinks he's a lock to get it as long as I don't try but that I might be able to beat him. I still think I'm too easily distracted by other things and likely wouldn't be able to focus long enough to get to 90 first, but the recruit a friend thing is a pretty strong advantage. Especially if I didn't start a Pandaren and could therefore get boosted a lot earlier... Apparently gnomes can be monks! How awesome would that be? I would need Robb to actually get around to playing (or maybe stealing his account and two-boxxing all weekend) but I just might be able to get it done. I'd be giving up on any other realm first by doing it. If I was switching mains I'd be setting myself up for grinding all sorts of things up. 6 professions in particular but also all the mounts/pets and such. Really, I don't think I want to do this. So I won't!

I still like the idea of doing all the dailies and trying for Pandaren Ambassador even though I know I can't win if a human (like Sthenno) tries for it. I'll likely want exalted in those things anyway for mounts/pets/gear so I'm still going to go for it but it can't be my only focus or I'll come away with no realm firsts at all. I'm ok with getting none of them but I'm not ok with not even trying for one!

One thing I've already done is unlearned jewelcrafting and picked up mining on my death knight. It's how I leveled in both Wrath and Cata and it just feels right. Especially if I might ultimately end up an engineer for challenge dungeons. I want to at least consider defending my realm first blacksmithing title. The key to doing that is likely to just go out and do the quest lines in the expansion right at launch. I need to get together a Spirit of Harmony which you get by killing monsters. And find my way to the vendor in the vale of eternal blossoms. An advantage of being a miner is I can gather some of the mats I need along the way. Also I can buy either bars or ore and smelt it myself. Yeah. I like this plan. I definitely need to hit the mining cap by Tuesday.

I also have a minor desire to just jump off the boat and fish for a while. It would give a lot of fodder for cooking as well which is nice. Ultimately though while I'd like to go for many professions I think they're all going to be done so fast that trying for more than one is guaranteed to end in disaster. So I'm going to go for blacksmithing and keep an eye on inscription. If blacksmithing gets done before inscription (by me or someone else) then I might swap over to my rogue and buy up a ton of herbs and go for it. I want to get started making the new glyphs anyway, after all.

The last thing that needs consideration is sleep plans. The expansion launches at 3am and I am taking next week off work. Ideally I'd want to wake up around 2am Tuesday morning so I can eat and get ready for 3. This is not my norm so I have to adjust forward or backward. Backward might be easiest for many people but not really for me. Left to my own devices I tend to run on a 26-28 hour day. Trying to lose 6 hours is rough. Going for that plan I'd probably only get 2 or 3 hours sleep if any at all which would suck. The other option is to swing way forward. Stay up until something like 5am Saturday morning. Sleep until 6pm. Stay up until noon Sunday. Sleep until midnight. Stay up until 3pm Monday. Seems somewhat plausible! At the very least when it goes wrong I'm apt to be awake at 3am no matter what. Maybe I need to go to sleep a few hours later but I should be ready to go for long enough to see some realm firsts get claimed.

Seems like a plan! So tonight, a lot of League of Legends! Or maybe I'll give up on Robb hitting level 80 anytime soon and level my druid so I can eventually level enchanting/alchemy.