How to Be Prepared (tm) for an expansion: Part 1

The overall look

Are you leveling a new character once December 7th rolls around? Take stock of your heirloom gear. Log through all of your alts - yes, ALL of them - and see what they've got. Mail it all to one central character (I use a bank mule for this) and then redistribute it as needed.

Take into account how often you actually play said alts, if you're ever going to level or twink them...and if need be, delete accordingly. I went from 50 characters (the account-wide cap) to 26. Every toon I tossed was under level 30 and a duplicate of something I already had above 70.

Take stock of your higher-level characters too! Will the Cataclysm recipes make maxing their professions easier? Then you don't need to worry about getting up to 450 before then - save your gold and use it on something else.

Do you know what toon you're leveling to 85 first? If not, or if you want to level several concurrently (hi, I'm an altoholic) make sure they have what they need to make the questing and instancing process as quick as possible. Stock repair money, convenient buff food, elixirs or flasks (hey, we get new ones anyway), and anything else you consider a necessity. In my case, it's pygmy oil by the stack and cooked deviate fish.

Got a bucket list? Double-check it and make sure you're satisfied with your progress.

How are you on gold? Do you have stockpiled crafting mats sitting around that you won't use up in the next three weeks? Sell some now, or hold onto them until after Cata and sell them when people leveling worgen and goblins start powerleveling professions.

Last and most important - how are you doing? Are you interested in playing until we get new content? If not, consider taking a couple weeks off. Volunteer at your local pet shelter and hug kittens or walk dogs. Learn the basics of a new language. Walk a mile every day (climate permitting). Or pick up blogging... :)

Alts, Alts, Everywhere

Jah and I are going a little alt-crazy at the moment. The ease of acquiring heirloom gear and the ease with which one can level up have contributed, as well as getting a tad tired of our mains.

For myself, there's:
-Jabberwocky, my 80 resto/feral druid. She's pretty decked out from heroics and pickup Naxx10 runs, and I just recently shelled out the 1,000 gold to get her dual-spec in Feral for grinding out Northrend Loremaster.
-Rinhoel, the Obligatory Death Knight. Nearly 61. Thinking of powering her up to be another tanking toon. I <3 Blood spec.
-Einmal and Rhetannie, also known as "The Girls". Respectively a 59 mage and a 59 rogue, and the fruits of my foray into RAF dual-boxing.
-Happybubbles, the level 7 bouncing priest of *doom*. Eventually she'll be a BG twink.

Jah has his own little stable going:
-Kante, his 71 DPS warrior. Not sure if he's Arms or Fury at the moment - they keep swapping the talent trees around so much x.x
-Hoyvakt, the 69 Deathmoo (Tauren death knight). Currently taking Howling Fjord by storm.
-Jahow, 61 hunter and his original toon on the server before transferring Kante and rerolling to Soleine.
-Jandi, 61 mage - one of his RAF experiments. (Looks almost exactly like Einmal.)
-A multitude of sub-50 things he thinks are not worth mentioning. He says he's not sure what, precisely, he wants as his next alt...so he's just slowly leveling one of everything up to 60.

I sort of have a plan. Most of mine have gathering professions, with vague plans for level 80 specs and production profession choices to mesh with their intended roles nicely. Rinhoel, for example, is probably going to end up as either a Blood-spec tank or DPS and will thus have Mining/Blacksmithing instead of her current Mining/Skinning. Jabs (Jabberwocky) is a maxed-out Mining/Jewelcrafter, mainly specializing in tank and healer cuts. Ein will probably end up with tailoring and skinning, and Rhe will probably end up with skinning and leatherworking. I think Bubbles is already an engineer, for PVP fun and rockets.

I think the next one I level will be Rinhoel - after I'm done amusing myself with two dual-specced 80s who have access to a ridiculous number of dailies, funding the next alt's epic flying mount, re-gemming and re-enchanting Besh's tanking gear to within an inch of its life...

Non-alt news: Versus the World completed Heroic: The Antechamber of Ulduar in one night, starting with a one-shot first kill of Kologarn (if you don't count the two hours we spent on him last week >_>) and ending with a stress-soaked, eight-attempt kill of Auriaya at EXACTLY 11:00 PM, our scheduled raid end time. Hopefully, later today will see us down Ignis on heroic for the first time and then waltz into the Keepers of Ulduar section for some fun with Thorim and Hodir. To keep the QQ to a minimum, I'm just going to say that I'm not happy at all with how warrior class mechanics are going, and it's ever so tempting to main-swap to one of the other plate-tank classes.