Grind to 60, or is it 70?

For the past year I've been on and off playing World of Warcraft, the popular MMORPG game. My main character is a undead female warlock with various lower level characters. Since starting this character last year I have taken time away from the game for school and work. Also while playing the game I like to explore the game world myself and not rely on game maps or web sites for hints.

After a few nights of wondering where that special animal or quest location is at I started to get very frustrated with this game (as you can tell I'm not good with maps). Not to mention I was moving so slowly up the levels it felt like I was taking forever.

After realizing just how slow this process is for leveling I decided to change my playing style using more help from guide books and leveling walk throughs. In the past few weeks I've been making a not so slow pace from 36 to my current level 49. I spend about 2~3 hours a few nights a week and at this pace I should be at 60 in a few weeks.

While 70 is the level cap, many friends say that at 60 you get to explore the new content which is more interesting to me than actually just getting max level. I would have really liked to see more new areas for mid level people like myself, such as a new dungeon or questing in a new land. Currently at level 49 the grind has become easier, I'm making a decent amount of gold each day but it's still hard to get to the top. Guess that's way they call it a grind. :)

Just for the people new to World of Warcraft here's some helpful web sites I've used in the past.

General Help (Information about World of Warcraft).
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/

Questing Help (Both sites have quest information and item locations with maps for each).
http://wow.allakhazam.com/
http://www.thottbot.com/

Quest leveling walkthrough (If you want to level the fastest to 70).
http://www.wow-pro.com

World of Warcraft UI's (custom UI's for making the game easier such as maps, buttons).
http://ui.worldofwar.net/
http://wow.curse-gaming.com/en/files/addons/
http://www.cosmosui.org/
http://www.ctmod.net/

Learning to play the bass.

I've been playing the guitar and learning basic chords, got a few down but I still need a lot of practice. Recently in the past few months I've been very interested in learning to play the bass guitar. It's hard to describe but the bass guitar is very different from the guitar in more ways that just tone or sound. The bass feels like you are playing a percussion instrument, like a drum set, where the guitar feels like you are singing or in a lead position of the music.

In the few months of playing I enjoy the guitar but it didn't feel right for some reason. Then I tried out a few bass guitars at the music shop and really liked the feeling of keeping a beat and deep low end sound. Just personally, I like drums and funk sounding beats from the late 70's like Sly and the Family Stone type stuff. It's different from a regular guitar, the strings are very thick, the bass guitar feels huge to a regular guitar and you usually play with your fingers than a pick but it's still a fun instrument to play.

Rob