That's Polly, my mage, making level 80 in World of Warcraft. I know, I know, working on my birthday when I don't need to — I was only 3 bars away, though, and will be spending the next few weeks of spare time playing Football Manager 2009, so I thought I'd finish it and get it out of the way.
When I took my warlock, Leine, to 80, I went via the zones Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, Zul'Drak, Sholazar Basin and Storm Peaks. This time, I did Howling Fjord, Grizzly Hills, Dragonblight, Sholazar Basin and Icecrown. I'd finished practically every quest in Icecrown before I went back to do a chain I'd left behind earlier, and it was while handing in A Voice in the Dark that I tripped into 80. The fact that I visited two zones I hadn't been to before made it a little more interesting, although I quite liked what they'd done with Zul'Drek so almost took that route instead of Sholazar Basin. I eventually chose Sholazar Basin because it's full of herbs and my mage is a herbalist, though. Overall, I was impressed by the sophistication of some of the quests: Storm Peaks had some excellent (albeit borrowed) narrative, and Icecrown had some nice experimental work (not all of which came off, but you have to give them credit for trying).
I'd have made level 80 with Polly over a week ago, but I didn't play WoWfor 8 days because of a bug. Basically, the client/server link gets cut for me every once in a while, so that although I can send commands I never get anything back for them. If this happens in a fight, I can stuff in all the necessary spells or whatever for the next 30 or 40 seconds, and then CTRL-ALT-DEL to get back and see if I survived. What happened on this occasion, though, is that I handed in a quest, got the choose-your-reward screen, and when I moused over one of said rewards was told "Retrieving Item Data". At that point, I clicked on it. What should have been a Staff of Redeemed Souls remained a Retrieving Item Data, though, and left me in a continually hanging state. I couldn't log off, I always had to shut the process externally. It didn't matter where I went or what I did in the few seconds I was able to issue commands (with no feedback) when I logged in, it always hung on me. None of Blizzard's suggested fixes worked. My other characters were unaffected, but even if I logged out of one just fine and immediately switched to Polly, it would hang. Eventually I was able to eliminate the problem by logging in from a different PC which didn't have any kind of local data synchronisation issue; I sold the offending staff, and could play once more.
I may take my paladin up to 80 later, but I think I'll take a breather for a while. Football management glory awaits!