So, after a few days of re-starting my account and giving things another shot, I have become exalted with the Kurenai and got my very purdy War Tabulk mount.

I'm happy to report that leveling this faction was actually easy and not too unpleasant because there is a host of quests that can be done without too much of a gigantic mob grind.

You'll want to do the quests at Orebor Harborage in Zangarmarsh to gain friendly status and then off to Nagrand to do all the quests there, that should get you well into honored at the very least if you weren't lazy in Zangarmarsh.

Finish this off by slaughtering Ogres in Laughing Skull ruins for warbeads, i find this area has the better drop rate and on my server you won't find too many people here at any one time, you need to hand in 10 warbeads at a time to Warden Moi'bff Jill (lol).

As a frost Mage doing the ogre grind at level 70 was a piece of cake, minimal downtime and the beads just kept on flowing into my bags, not to mention the bit of coin as well as various greens too.

I am now the proud owner of a Tan War Tabulk, as seen below.

So what is your favourite in-game ground mount and why?

Pre-BC personally i LOVE the rams, i still have my Stormpike Battle Charger which i adored, as for the BC mounts i really like the Hawkstriders, only because they remind me of the Chocobos from the FF games.

I know, all Tauren Druids are supposed to be these tree-hugging, peacebloom picking hippies but you just can't help yourself, when it's just you and another Drainei on a long boat ride you cant' help pouncing out of cat-form and hitting up some moonfire spam :-p

So on Sunday night I did the unthinkable.

I re-activated my WoW account. It had been de-activated since November of 2007, holy ***!

I wasn't in any great rush to play, I let the updates run and cleared my Interface folder since i knew the addons were ancient and useless now.

Once it was all done, I logged in, I'd forgotten what server all my characters were on, I remembered Aman'Thul but the queue to get in was too long so I checked Jubei'Thos and was greeted with a queue, I was already getting frustrated and hadn't even started playing yet!

I gave a deep sigh and tried Frostmourne, thank god because I was about ready to throw something at the computer, I logged in to my highest character on that server - a 21 BE Priest which I had left neglected in the middle of Orgrimmar.

I was greeted with the same harsh ugly environment, obscene general chat "OMG SOME1 MOAN FOR ME PLZ?!!" and feeling of 'what now?', it was like I never left.

I decided to pick up where I had left off, if only I can remember what that was...

I checked through the quest log, so many quests, some half finished and I didn't even know where to start, not to mention I’d forgotten all my class skills and abilities and how and when to properly use them.

I decided the best bet was to finish off a grind kill quest to get back into the swing of things and it all came back to me.

This is what makes WoW successful. The ability to pick up things in an instant no matter how long you leave them for.

I completed the quest and logged out; I didn't want to burn myself out immediately.

A few days later on Maintenance night I logged in to play again, (those are the nights Eli has Jiu Jitsu so I get some peace and quiet!) and as did a gathering quest in STV someone asked me to group with them, now in the past I would have rolled my eyes and rejected this fool who invited without asking but I thought, No - accept and go with the flow.

And I had a blast! Myself and another Shaman blitzed easily through the mobs and had a laugh along the way before being kicked off the server when it went down for maintenance.

I logged off feeling like I’d actually achieved something even if it didn't mean leveling up.

So here's where I think I went wrong previously and what I vow to not let ruin my WoW experience this time around.

• STAY AWAY FROM THE FORUMS! - All the whining and bitching, nerf class X and Class Y is useless and underpowered QQ

Reading the forums daily made me HATE the community, it made me doubt the classes i had chosen to play time and time again and it overall made me hate the game. Eventually you learn that the people posting on the forums are actually the minority, the majority are actually playing the game and enjoying it.

• STOP LOOKING AT THE XP BAR - I've been playing the game since launch and did not level up my first 60 till just a few days before BC had just been released, I figured I was being left out in all the guild activities because everyone else had rushed to 70 and had multiple 60's at least. This is what burned me out the most! Doing the whole "Just one more level!" every game session got old, fast. This is what drove me to quit. I've decided to go back to my old ways and take my time, so what if I want to explore and have Moonkin dance-offs outside Ironforge? Let ME, I'm paying to play my game, not someone else’s.

• STAY AWAY FROM GAME GUIDES - same as above, i got caught up on the "quickest" way to get things done in order to catch up with everyone else. This was very draining, looking up strats on youtube, downloading pay guides off torrent sites etc. No More! I'm going to do it my way, so what if i get lost looking for a quest? Its part of the game, exploration is great; you get to see things others have rushed right by.

• SIMPLIFY ADDONS - Do not spend so much time researching "essential" addons, stick to what you NEED. This also starts to detract from the overall game experience when you become dependant on addons.

• DONT BE A SNOB! - So what if the guy who is inviting you to run ZF TpES LieK ThIZ, give them a chance! I took a blind invite the other night to help some poor lowbie out like the above and they were ever so grateful, now they make a point of saying Hi to me every time I log on, which I think is nice :)

• DON'T GET CAUGHT UP TRYING TO GET INTO A GUILD - Don't force myself to meet impossible standards, don't respec my class to fit into a slot and definitely don't become just 'another number' to a guild list. People will see you for the friendly and capable player that you are and spread the word - there will be plenty of invites!

• STOP CREATING ALTS! - Sometimes alts are a good way to refresh the game, e.g. Creating an Alliance Priest when your Horde Warrior is getting a bit tedious but for the love of god, I need to stop making alts all over the place! This causes serious burn out!

• HELP OUT LOWBIES - I know we all get tired of the begging for gold, for runs, for mats, well for everything really! But there are some serious requests for help out there that can be fulfilled and in turn will create a good name for you and make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

I know that when I reached 70 I did not have the time to raid at all, I train in Capoeira two nights a week and have a lot of other commitments, I managed to see the inside of Kara once! But that doesn't bother me because I know what my limitations are.

So another good way to give back is to GO OUT OF YOUR WAY TO HELP OUT. I was going through STV the other night when a lowbie asked for page 11, which I happened to have, since he was at the top of the map and I was near Booty Bay, I took the pages over to him (I'd get there quicker since I had a mount anyway) because I didn't want him to get ganked coming to me either.

This guy was so grateful that he could now finish his chapters and level up, he was astounded that I’d gone out of my way for him like that. It pays to be nice, especially seeing as it's not the norm these days with all the higher levels too busy with raids or arena.

So following the above, the past few days I've really enjoyed playing again, I've leveled my Druid alt from 45-47 and had some fun along the way and hopefully if I can stick to my new 'rules' I'll be around for a lot longer!