Here's the new zone. Same as the old zone.

16 hours in. Level 27.

I rode down to Arathi Highlands at level 24. It's a level 25+ zone and I wanted to see if I could start questing there a level early. Nope. WoW has had a tight level lock on quests since at least Cataclysm and I've never liked that, because at a certain point on-level questing always got too easy and I'd want to skip ahead to the next zone up but couldn't.

It's not that I expect WoW, or any other MMO, to rival Dark Souls for difficulty, but when every fight is a foregone conclusion the grind starts to feel like a grind, and this game should be better than that.

On the way down to Arathi I killed the Ettin in Silverpine Forest and the first elemental in Durnholde. The second killed me. Elites then continue to be a threat (sometimes) but nothing else is.

I switched to a Fury spec since in theory it'll make me easier to kill, though in practice the increase in my own kill speed means nothing much lives long enough to take advantage of that. It's a good fit for my recently adopted charge in heedlessly approach and there's something hilarious about dual wielding two handed swords.

In most games I lean toward subtler armor and weapons, but this is World of Warcraft, and it doesn't really do subtle.