Today's play started before patch 2.0.5 was released, for me. Unfortunately, I was only on early because I had been woken up by my cat, who was quite demanding in getting me out of bed, so I went back to bed after a bit of playing, and then was hit with the 2.0.5 update and the subsequent disconnects when trying to get back into the game.
I ventured over to the Official Forums (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com) and saw that everyone else and their dog was having the same problem connecting, so while I was hoping to get a few hours of play in before starting into the chores I had mentally assigned myself for the day, it didn't work out that way.
Laundry, dishes, unpacking (new apartment)... checking periodically on the status of the game. I got about half of my self-alloted work done during this down-time, which made the day a lot easier to manage.
When I got back online, I did my standard alt-checks on various toons I had used to sell things in the Auction House with the day before, and then settled on my bank toon to let Auctioneer do a full scan. I found a beta-release update on the AuctioneerAddon.com website that corrected some recently-introduced problem with the scan (Bliz changed something, 3rd party Addon maker responds) while the game was down, and was happy to see it worked like a charm.
I set up a new Bank toon last night - an Undead, because running to UC from Deathknell is faster than running a Troll or Orc. Tauren might be okay, but they take up so much screen space... I had been using a 21 Troll Mage toon as a temporary bank character, but wanted to dust him off (my only male toon), turn him into an alchemist and burn off his rest bonus. Now I have a level 1 bank toon, loaded with bags, 5g and a whole whack of recipes to be re-sold over the next week or so.
Bank toons are great - if you haven't set one up, all you need to do is start up a new toon and run it to a major city. Park it by the mailbox or the Auction House, and use it to Auction off things from the rest of your toons, while also keeping a look out for good equipment to send to the rest of your toons as well. One day I'll write an entry entitled "Ode to my bank toon" :)
So, I've freed up my 21 Troll Mage, and I brought him out for a test drive, completing the Egg Hunt quest in The Barrens. I had dusted him off last night after setting up the bank toon and dropped the Skinning profession and trained in Alchemy, since I didn't have an Alchemy toon going yet. I'm only up to 50 or so Alchemy so far, but I'm feeding the herbs from my 16 Undead Priest who is a Skinner and a Herbalism major.
Right at this moment I'm doing some Badlands quests with my 40 Undead Warrior, and mining iron whenever it appears. As a Blacksmith/Miner, I've decided to become an Armorsmith, which means I need to collect some 140 iron ore and some other various materials in order to create the bits and pieces the Armorsmith trainer calls for in order to allow me access to his recipes. Lots of work, I've decided to ignore it for now and just focus on mining and questing, and I know the rest will come.
I think I'll go back to mining and questing. Pop me a note if you are a "lowbie" player, especially if you have a blog. I'd love to exchange links.