New European WoW server farm

In a press release Blizzard announced opening up a new "site", hosting new European realms for World of Warcraft. In a first step, 8 new realms will open up there. Blizzard will also ship more copies of the game to European retailers, as more than a million Europeans have bought WoW now, and game boxes are in short supply.

I've been waiting for new servers to open to start a little experiment: Make a new character on a new realm. I don't want to abandon my two level 60 characters, or my guild, but I think it would be a good idea to take a break from them. Once you reach level 60, your meta-level progress becomes very slow. You can still advance by improving your gear, either doing lots of PvP, reputation grinding, or by doing lots of raiding. Unfortunately many of these activities feel more like work to me than fun. So while my guild is planning 5 Zul Gurub raids in a row, I'll take a weekend off and try the new servers.

The idea is to play on a server where there are many people playing in my (low) level range, experiment with a new class, and do quests I don't know too well. So I think I'll go for a dwarven palladin, having played Horde characters most of the time. I hope that palladins can easily find a spot in a group, either as tank or as backup healer.

Might be interesting to start a "new life" in WoW, something that isn't all that easy in the real world. One has a tendency to get far too attached to one's existing characters, even beyond the point where playing them becomes repetitive. It is hard to leave a rich level 60 and play a dirt poor level 1 un-twinked. And it is hard to leave your social network of friends and guild mates, and meet new people. But I think it could be worth a try, earning money on a new server using superior game knowledge could be fun, and new friends who like to group with me might be more to my taste than participating in yet another raid. Unlike leaving town and changing your name in the real world, a new virtual life is possible in parallel, if at the end of the weekend I find that the idea wasn't all that fun after all, I can always go back to my level 60 characters.