Success

Short post today, with good news.
Gnomcot finally made it past the usual age of death for my alts. He hit 25 last night while grinding dark wolves in Duskwood for leather.
There's lots to like with this character. I dropped blacksmithing, as I quickly found that I can make more money with two gathering professions. I can use my profits from Auctions to buy better armor than I could have crafted myself with precious time wasted trying to find minerals for mats.
So the combination of mining and skinning has me living quite comfortably in reasonable greens for my level. I found Killmaim for what I thought to be a bargain at 10g around level 19 or so. It's been my DPS two-hand ever since. :)
I also managed to get into a very small casual RP guild. Haven't done too much with them as of yet, but I have been thinking about developing Gnomcot's RP backstory. Have to work out a few details, including where the fall of Gnomeregan falls on the Warcraft timeline, but I'll post that when I polish it up.