Last night was a mildly amusing one in World of Warcraft. Those whose enthusiasm for my writing doesn't exceed their aversion to posts to which they don't know the background are welcome to turn away now.

The Warlock class quest to get their epic mount is absolutely crazy. I expect Dragon would have said if he'd already done it, so I guess he still has that to look forward to... Bear in mind that the quest chain itself is very long and very expensive, and I only joined at the end to help with the final fight: I'm a priest, after all, so I don't have much interest in a Dreadsteed (or more to the point, as interested as I may be, I'm not allowed one).

I'll spare you most of the gory details, except to say that the final fight is a timed slog against waves and waves of enemies. With two level 64 warlocks, a 61 priest and a 60 [restoration] druid we were hardly short of firepower or healing (for a level 60 5-man instance), but the pets (a voidwalker and one of those snazzy felguard things) weren't really enough tanking to keep things off us. Often we had a bear rushing around who would rather have been a tree...

The onslaught of demons finished at just the right time: with me and the druid announcing a lack of mana and most of the party having a lack of health. We then rested for a moment before our master of ceremonies started the next phase, of summoning the demon horse. The brief hadn't really stressed that the horse's owner shows up too, which was funny if only for the druid's reaction (ever since the 'I bet the cages open and the orcs attack us.' 'There's nothing on Thotbott about orcs.' 'I still bet they attack us.' incident, I've taken with a pinch of salt whatever briefing we get from a group leader [or the self-designated 'loremaster', whose only qualification is internet access]).

The horse was a pretty easy fight, and now my warlock friends can ride epic mounts: the training (worth 900 gold pieces) comes free with the horse, once you've spent the 250g to gather the materials to summon the horse. I would be annoyed, but I have a warlock on that server too, and I'm told that because we still have the equipment we can do the quest again later for other characters, for much less money...

Then we went to Ragefire Chasm. My paladin (level 20) was sent there for a class quest even though the instance is level 13-18 or thereabouts, so the others brought two priests and a mage, all around level 14. We ploughed through all the instance quests and found the guy who was meant to have the demon blood I was after, killed him: nothing. Nearby was a 'blood-filled orb', so I used that: nothing. Until a big demon appeared...
I think a level 20 elite demon appearing in the midst of your typical RFC group (even if there is a level 20 paladin there) might be trouble, but since it was me tanking anyway, it worked easily enough. It's something to look out for though if you intend to do that quest as part of a bad pickup group: if your paladin isn't specced for tanking (or you haven't worked out how) he could probably wipe an unwary group.

Next, Wailing Caverns, for a Wingblade. I am so sick of that place.