Tag Archives: Cataclysm

Goodbye Cataclysm!

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Here we are. The last day of Cataclysm. Finally! I’m sure you guys know that I wasn’t Cataclysm’s greatest fan. I quit for 3 months and barely played for most of it. It wasn’t until I found Harvest Moon that I fell in love with the game all over again. From what I hear, Mists will change a lot of the things that I didn’t like and I am very excited to see what’s new.

But Cataclysm wasn’t all bad. The new 1-60 quests were really cool if you stuck around long enough to see them (very difficult with current levelling speeds) and I loved that you could actually just get instance quests from inside the instances rather than traipsing around Azeroth and doing hand stands just to get a couple of dungeon quests like before. I liked the new zones before they got tedious and samey. The Molten Front dailies were actually a lot of fun and the new mounts and pets across the board were awesome. I loved the new ZG and ZA instances, despite never getting my tiger mount. And the introduction of LFR was a great one for people like myself!

I’m looking forward to exploring Pandaria with the Moonies and have been taking a look at Shadow Priest things today. We have my talent spec and glyphs here. Pre-raid gear list, followed by an example of BiS and some playstyle tips. And this MMO-C post is going to be so useful to me! I double checked my stat weights on HowToPriest.com and yes, haste is still ahead of crit and mastery by a mile. Now to double check my priority system and enjoy the goodbye Cataclysm party tonight!

Farewell Cataclysm, you won’t be missed but thanks for all the fish! *watches countdown timer eagerly*

What did you like most about Cataclysm?

The (Possibly) Beginning of the End

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How do I begin this one. Well, for starters, I’m seeing people left, right, and centre deciding that WoW just isn’t fun anymore, so they quit or cut down their playing time severely. I want to look at the reasons why. A lot of us have become a group of people who equally love Cataclysm for how well designed it is, but for some reason, we can’t get past how suddenly bored we became after just a month or two.

Wrath Killed Our Spirit

You can’t deny that Wrath of the Lich King was a bit of a spirit killer. Everything was so easy, handed to us on a platter, that it very, very quickly became boring. A lot of us ignored that, got into PvP, levelling alts, playing the Auction House, checking out other servers, trying RP, anything just to find some fun in the game again. A lot of us managed to, a lot of us didn’t, and those who didn’t quit, perhaps coming back for Cataclysm. But in the process, our spirits were definitely slaughtered and left to die, leaving just this one little spark of hope that Cataclysm was just around the corner and didn’t it look amazing? Many of us were relying on Cataclysm to bring the fun back to WoW. And rightly so, it really should have.

Linearity Sought to Squash The Hope

The quests in Cataclysm, while they are absolutely fantastic – they really did make you feel as though your character was important, and there are some great storylines to follow, and it’s not all about “kill 10 boars, bring me their ears” and then toddling off to bring back boar heads after 50 kills and much rage about why the fuck don’t boars all have ears – but it’s not enough. We’ve levelled our mains to 85, perhaps gone back and completed Loremaster of Cataclysm, and then just.. meh. Some of us managed to level other alts, some of us couldn’t bear the thought of doing the exact same quests again so soon. However, the questing wasn’t exactly the deciding factor, it was a large part of it, but at this point we still had these new hard heroics and raids and Archaeology to look forward to.

Heroics Are Fun, But Only With The Right People (Who Can’t Always Be Online And Up For It)

Hard heroics were a great idea, for some of us they still are with the right group of people, but you can’t pug them and enjoy them. I’m not saying that they aren’t doable in a pug, I am saying that they aren’t enjoyable, if they are, it’s so rare it’s hardly worth looking for. It’s all of the people running about with the Wrath mindset that has completely spoiled pugging, not that pugging has ever been seen as a good thing. There are still elitist fucks running around in LFD, calling people names needlessly, insulting people for not doing something right, breaking any CC that might be up, trying to AoE everything down, that kind of thing, being generally angry and unpleasant to be around – except you can’t get away with it now. LFD has become worse than it was in Wrath. At least back when everything was AoE’d down in 10 minutes you didn’t have to talk to the twats who would belittle you for simply breathing funny. It wasn’t so fun, but it didn’t make us want to tear our hair out quite so much.

The Mould Simply Wasn’t Broken

Yeah, I’ve mentioned this before but from a personal perspective rather than a general one. The fact is that it wasn’t. We’ve tried Archaology, and raiding, and PvP, and all the usual suspects, but what’s different about any of it? Everything is a grind. Who wants to spend their gametime just constantly grinding and banging their heads against the keyboards? A few, sure, but not many. Fair enough if you can do it with friends and have a laugh while you do, but that’s not always the case. At least in Wrath, as much as it sucked towards the end, the mould was attemptedly broken. We had achievement points to play with – giving us new reasons to do a boss a little bit differently (and sure, grind), and vehicle fights, as much as a lot of people hated those, they were different, Blizzard attempted something new and that was good. What did we get this time? A few minigames and a pile of cutscenes, which in Uldum get so ridiculous you find yourself screaming for it all to just stop already. Blizzard have redone our levelling experience and made things a little more challenging, and it was fun for a couple of months, but what now?

Is This It Then?

Is World of Warcraft reaching the end of its’ cycle? People are quitting without really much reason. Sure, it’s boring, for all of the reasons I said above and then some, but a lot of people will tell you that Cataclysm is great, it’s just not for them. And sure, a lot of people are still having fun, especially people who started playing in Wrath. But it’s there, the apathy. Have we finally found a WoW-killer?

First Day of Cataclysm

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I did enter initial thoughts on Cataclysm as a Blog Azeroth shared topic so feel free to go see what everybody else is saying. :)

Around 1 or 2 in the afternoon yesterday, I went downstairs to watch the last episode of Merlin and wait for the hopefully arriving soon City Link van. As I went to grab a drink, guess who pulled up outside? Yeah, so I never got around to watching Merlin in the end but my Collector’s Edition arrived and my God I wasn’t prepared for how huge this thing is! I got the game (obviously), the mouse mat because I had a tiny crap little thing because I’m too stingy to pay £20 for one, and the Landro’s Gift lootcard (eeh!) which for some reason I couldn’t redeem, have opened a ticket about that but that could be a while before it’s answered, not to worry, it’s not *too* important. Anyway, so I installed the game after much squeeing, and went off to Hyjal.

Initial thoughts: Oh my God it’s pretty and there’s Ysera oh my God and the faerie dragons and the flying and the – I’ll stop there, that could go on for a while really. I was going to go to Vashj’ir first but as Hyjal has Guardians of Hyjal rep, which is where I’ll be getting my helm enchant from, I went over there. After completing the zone (and oh my God, if you haven’t yet – DO IT! So much lore, the last few quests are amazing) I was a little bit into revered, I’ll keep the tabard on until exalted just to get the reduced price on the helm enchant but the quests really are a nice big rep boost. And did anybody else find themselves doing this?

TWO SPEEDY'S

We did a Blackrock Caverns, which is pretty cool, reminds me a bit of Forge of Souls and I love Beauty’s pups. We also did a Throne of the Tides which had a Slave Pens feel to it, I thought. Both were good, but I can see them getting repetitive after a while no doubt.

After I’d finished in Hyjal, I decided to run around and get instance entrance discoveries. I didn’t bother with Grim Batol yet, but I grabbed The Stonecore and the 3 in Uldum and I had a fly around Uldum. Oh. My. God. Uldum is amazing. It’s big, and epic looking, and well designed. It’s also the next rep I’ll be going for, so I can’t wait to start there, but once I’d finally found The Vortex Pinnacle I headed back to Deepholm to quest there, because at this point I was only 82. Still am in fact so time for an abrupt end to a blog post.

Where did you start? Anything that has stood out in your mind?

A Very Disappointing Release Day

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I spent my birthday waiting for a knock on the door that never came. While everybody else was talking about the realm first level 85s and nearing the max level, I was running around the house like this:

Okay, maybe I was watching TV and creating my pre-raid gear list, but inside, I was most definitely flailing.

What’s worse is the news on the City Link website that our parcel was put in transit at about 12.30 midday in a place that’s a half an hour drive from here. If there was any way of knowing, I could have arranged a pick up. My car might be broked but my dad was around. And I live in the middle of England, we aren’t having the road problems that Scotland are getting. Lucky for us he went out later on so we could steal the living room to eat pizza and watch How To Train Your Dragon (which is still awesome).

I’ve told myself I won’t spend today listening for the knock on the door, but I can’t help it. I don’t like that I’ve missed out on that first day awesomeness, when everybody is running around going, “OMG SO AWESOME LETS DO INSTANCE.” My only real comforts are the ability to wave Little Deathwing in people’s faces when I finally get my sodding game, and that Dan was kind enough to actually wait for me. We don’t level together as such, but it’s nice to be able to do group quests and instances at the same level.

Oh, yeah, I also bought the Moonkin Hatchling to cheer myself up. Couldn’t exactly afford it, but I had a little birthday money so why not. It was so worth it, it worked. He’s so darn cute!

Horde moonkin is better but that's the only screenshot I took yesterday

Levelling Cloth Gear List 80-85

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I wanted to know what I can get for my Shadow Priest from which instances while I’m levelling 80-85, so that I know where to go if I’m queuing and such. Here’s the list if you’re interested. Should imagine you can gather a nice healing set using this list too, or if you’re one of those other cloth classes – figured I might as well add healer trinkets for the healy type Priests and swords for the Mages and Warlocks while I’m listing all the cloth.

Listing all normal mode gear from 80-85 in the new Cataclysm instances, call it a ‘pre-heroics gear list for cloth wearers’ if you will. I’ve not added every craftable, or every reputation reward, or every quest reward, just the items of note for levelling between levels 78-84. I will also update this post as and when I notice any differences.

This post at Wowjuju tells you where each entrance is, it’s worth a look, especially now that you have to discover the entrances.

*  = Has Hit
~ = Has Spirit

Armour

Head

~Aurelian Mitre – Lady Naz’jar, 78, Throne of the Tides
*Helm of the Typhonic Beast – Setesh, 83, Halls of Origination
Crown of Enfeebled Bodies – Erudax, 83, Grim Batol
Spiritmend Cowl – BoE, Crafted, 83, Tailoring 485
*Helm of Temperance – Reputation, 83, Earthen Ring Honored
*Mercury-Coated Hood – BoE, Reputation, 84, Earthen Ring Honored

Shoulder

~Krystel Mantle – Ascendant Lord Obsidius, 78, Blackrock Caverns
*Skeletalized Shoulderpads – BoE, 81, Silken/Sturdy Treasure Chest, Deepholm
~Spiritmend Shoulders – BoE, Crafted, 82, Tailoring
Mantle of Master Cho – Siamat, Lord of South Wind, 83, Lost City of the Tol’vir
Blight-Lifter’s Mantle – Quest, The Source of Their Power (requires 83), Lost City of the Tol’vir
~Woundsealer Spaulders – BoE, 83, Silken Treasure Chest, Uldum

Chest

*Inquisition Robes – Rom’ogg Bonecrusher, 78, Blackrock Caverns
Deepmist Robes – Quest, Sins of the Sea Witch (requires 80), Throne of the Tides
*Deepsilk Robe – BoE Crafted, 81, Tailoring
~Robes of Broken Dreams – BoE, 81, Silken/Sturdy Treasure Chest, Deepholm
~Anraphet’s Regalia – Anraphet, 83, Halls of Origination
Robes of Rampant Growth – Ammunae, 83, Halls of Origination
*Robes of Whispering Sands – BoE, 83, unknown source

Wrist

~Falling Snow Bracers – BoE, 80, unknown source
~Tangled Web Bindings – BoE, 80, unknown source
*True Archaeologist’s Bracers – Quest, Doing it the Hard Way (requires 83), Halls of Origination
~Crimsonborne Bracers – Drahga Shadowburner, 83, Grim Batol
*Sand Silk Wristband – Lockmaw, 83, Lost City of the Tol’vir

Hands

Vonica’s Gauntlets – BoE, 80, unknown source
~Dolomite Adorned Gloves – Corborus, 81, The Stonecore
Deathsilk Gloves – BoE, Crafted, 81, Tailoring
*Bone Fever Gloves – (Horde) Reputation, 83, Dragonmaw Clan Honored
*Gloves of Aetherial Rumors – (Alliance) Reputation, 83, Wildhammer Clan Honored

Waist

Band of the One Hundred and One – Quest, Followers and Leaders (requires 82), The Stonecore
*Stratosphere Belt – Grand Vizier Ertan, 81, The Vortex Pinnacle
~Evelyn’s Belt – Siamat, Lord of South Wind, 83, Lost City of the Tol’vir

Legs

~Leggings of Iridescent Clouds – Asaad, 81, The Vortex Pinnacle
Gartic’s Resplendent Leggings – BoE, 82, unknown source
Legwraps of Astral Rain – Isiset, 83, Halls of Origination
~Curse-Tainted Leggings – BoE, 83, Trash, Grim Batol

Feet

*Slippers of the Twilight Prophet – High Priestess Azil, 81, The Stonecore
~Medic’s Bloodstained Sandals – BoE, 82, unknown source
~Hekatic Slippers – Rajh, 83, Halls of Origination
*Sandals of the Courier – Quest, Kill the Courier (requires 84), Grim Batol

Back

Periwinkle Cloak – Lady Naz’jar, 78, Throne of the Tides
~Beauty’s Cootie-Ridden Blankie – Quest, Do My Eyes Deceive Me? (requires 80), Blackrock Caverns
Rippling Azure Cloak – BoE, 80, unknown source
*Shadow of Perfect Bliss – Asaad, 81, The Vortex Pinnacle
Vertigo Cloak – BoE, 81, unknown source
~Solar Wind Cloak – Rajh, 83, Halls of Origination
~Azureborne Cloak – Drahga Shadowburner, 83, Grim Batol
~Cloak of the Dryads – Reputation, 83, Guardians of Hyjal Honored
~Thousand Bandage Drape – BoE, Reputation, 84, Guardians of Hyjal Honored

Weapons

Two-Handed

*Cerith Spire Staff – Commander Ulthok, 78, Throne of the Tides
Sealing Heartstaff – BoE, 80, unknown source
~Soul Releaser – Earthrager Ptah, 83, Halls of Origination
Staff of Siphoned Essences – Erudax, 83, Grim Batol
Staff of Solemn Secrecy – BoE, 84, Silken Treasure Chest, Uldum

Main Hand

~Torturer’s Mercy – (mace) Rom’ogg Bonecrusher, 78, Blackrock Caverns
Biting Wind – (dagger) Grand Vizier Ertan, 81, The Vortex Pinnacle
~Scepter of Power – (mace) Setesh, 83, Halls of Origination
Blade of the Burning Sun – (sword) Rajh, 83, Halls of Origination
*Modgud’s Blade – (dagger) General Umbriss, 83, Grim Batol

Off-hand

*Beauty’s Favorite Bone – Beauty, 78, Blackrock Caverns
~Prophet’s Scepter – High Priestess Azil, 81, The Stonecore
~Lord Rottington’s Pressed Wisp Book – BoE, Crafted, 81, Inscription
Book of Blood – BoE, Crafted, 81, Inscription
Book of Origination – BoE, 83, Trash, Halls of Origination
*Petrified Camel Haunch – BoE, 83, Silken Treasure Chest, Uldum

Wands

*Corla’s Baton – Corla, Herald of Twilight, 78, Blackrock Caverns
~Torchlight Wand – BoE, 81, Silken/Sturdy Treasure Chest, Deepholm
Wand of Dark Worship – BoE, 81, Trash, The Stonecore
~Wand of Untainted Power – Forgemaster Throngus, 83, Grim Batol
*Cyu’s Ornate Wand – BoE, 83, unknown source

Jewellery & Trinkets

Neck

~Quicksilver Amulet – Karsh Steelbender, 78, Blackrock Caverns
~Acanthia’s Lost Pendant – BoE, 78, Trash, Blackrock Caverns
~Sea Witch Charm – Quest, Rescue the Earthspeaker! (requires 80), Throne of the Tides
~Amulet of Tender Breath – Altairus, 81, The Vortex Pinnacle
*Token of Gratitude – Quest, Vengeance for Orsis (requires 82), The Vortex Pinnacle
~Soulsurge Necklace – BoE, 82, Silken/Sturdy Treasure Chest, Deepholm
Tauntka’s Necklace – High Prophet Barim, 83, Lost City of the Tol’vir
*Charm of the Muse – BoE, 83, Trash, Halls of Origination
~Pendant of Elemental Balance – Reputation, 83, Earthen Ring Honored
Kuang’s Locket of Secrets – BoE, 84, unknown source

Finger

~Kibble – Beauty, 78, Blackrock Caverns
*Anthia’s Ring – Mindbender Ghur’sha, 78, Throne of the Tides
~Ring of the Great Whale – BoE, 78, Trash, Throne of the Tides
Finkle’s Twinkle – Quest, Do My Eyes Deceive Me? (requires 80), Blackrock Caverns
Rose Quartz Band – Slabhide, 81, The Stonecore
~Ring of Frozen Rain – Asaad, 81, The Vortex Pinnacle
~Caliph’s Band – Quest, Vengeance for Orsis (requires 82), The Vortex Pinnacle
~High Priestess’ Signet – Quest, Followers and Leaders (requires 82), The Stonecore
~Band of Life Energy – Ammunae, 83, Halls of Origination
*Band of Rays – Rajh, 83, Halls of Origination
Abandoned Dark Iron Ring – BoE, 83, Trash, Grim Batol
~Heartbinder Ring – BoE, 83, Silken Treasure Chest, Uldum
~Ammunae’s Blessing – Reputation, 83, Ramkahen Honored
Diamant’s Ring of Temperance – Reputation, 83, Therazane Revered
Spirit Creeper Ring – General Husam, 83, Lost City of the Tol’vir
~Veneficial Band – Lockmaw, 83, Lost City of the Tol’vir

Trinket

Witching Hourglass – Ascendant Lord Obsidius, 78, Blackrock Caverns
Bottled Lightning – BoE, 80, Silken/Sturdy Treasure Chest, Deepholm
Elementium Dragonling – BoE, Crafted, 80, Engineering
~Lady La-La’s Singing Shell – BoE, 80, unknown source
~Unquenchable Flame – (healing) BoE, 80, Silken/Sturdy Treasure Chest, Deepholm
Tendrils of Burrowing Dark – Ozruk, 81, The Stonecore
Tear of Blood – (healing) High Priestess Azil, 81, The Stonecore
~Rainsong – (healing) BoE, 81, Trash, The Vortex Pinnacle
*Anhuur’s Hymnal – Temple Guardian Anhuur, 83, Halls of Origination
Blood of Isiset – (healing) Isiset, 83, Halls of Origination
Corrupted Egg Shell – (healing) Erudax, 83, Grim Batol
Gale of Shadows – Erudax, 83, Grim Batol
~Electospark Heartstarter – BoE, 83, unknown source
Sorrowsong – Siamat, Lord of South Wind, 83, Lost City of the Tol’vir

The Shattering – Book Review

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I finally finished The Shattering last night, it took me about two weeks. I read it for maybe an hour or two before bed, when I got there before 10, and I read maybe 30 pages in an hour. I might be a slow reader, but I’m blaming a lot of that on the ingame Shattering taking away my reading time. They bloody went and made the game fun again, the bastards! And before I start, don’t worry, I don’t give spoilers in book reviews – not much use in a review if you spoil it for everybody.

My initial thoughts upon reading the first few pages of the book were, “Oh God, she’s referencing the previous books, which I haven’t read, and repeating herself a lot, this is going to be like wading through treacle, I might not even finish it because WANT TO READ FARSEER NOW!” But I kept going, because her writing isn’t terrible, it was readable, and I wanted to know what happened. It’s labelled the “prelude to Cataclysm” and I want to be filled in on all the yummy lore. I fell asleep for a few years? Bullshit, tell me what happened!

Christie Golden has managed to capture the characters’ personalities well enough to make you love them, and make you hate them. This is a very important part of storytelling for me – if the characters are flat the story will fall on its’ arse. Reading The Shattering has made me particularly love the Tauren and Anduin Wrynn. However, I’m still finding Jaina a bit whiny, and Garrosh is still a dick. And Varian? Yeah, dick too.

Right at the beginning, I found her take 2 pages to say something that, in my mind, only needed a paragraph. The padding was a little too obvious in places. She also used the stopping in mid sentence to create dramatic effect a little too much. “She- He felt a knife in his back and all was dark.” ((Not real story content – just an example!)) At one point, she did that, and then switched scenes.. There really didn’t seem to be any reason for it.

However, it wasn’t as bad as I thought initially and I didn’t have to put it down, though a couple of times I nearly did, it wasn’t too bad a read. I wouldn’t read any of the other tie-ins, they aren’t really my thing, especially Knaak if he really is as bad as I’ve been told (and I don’t doubt that), but I’m glad I read this one because now I know what’s going on with the lore and all that.

If you haven’t read The Shattering yet and you’re interested in the Warcraft lore, particularly if you’ve enjoyed other Warcraft books, I definitely recommend it to you. 2.5/5.

Things Achieved and Planned

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I’ve had my bucket list up for a while, and come the 7th I will remove it because it will hold no further purpose in existing. I thought it’d be nice to go over and see what I managed to achieve and what I didn’t, because I’m one of those strange people that benefits from seeing plans and achievements in a nice, neat list.

Alts

  • Death Knight – I managed to gear up Soupdragon satisfactorily, even grabbed 2 parts of T10 (pre-Justice Points), one Sanctified from VoA.
  • Druid – My Druid is still just level 71, so not the level 80 I wanted, but I can come back to her later. It helps that levelling 70-80 has been nerfed.
  • Hunter – I finished up ‘What A Long Strange Trip Its Been’ on Fae, also got her the Headless Horseman mount and tamed Loque’nahak. Whilst I didn’t have any Hunter-based plans for pre-Cataclysm really, I’d say I achieved a decent amount still. At the moment I’m camping Scholazar Basin for King Krush and the bird.
  • Mage – I wanted to at least get my Mage to 60 so that I could go out and get polymorph pig, and use the polymorph rabbit and polymorph turtle books I had, and I did. She even has a macro to switch them around. I haven’t levelled her past 60 yet, but then again I’m a little more interested in my Night Elf Mage at the moment.
  • Paladin – My Paladin has managed to collect all of the Inscription recipes pre-4.0 which means less work to do later, yay. I have also managed to gear her up a little bit, especially from the elemental invasion bosses, but I’d still quite like to get her another trinket as she’s still using Warsong’s Fervor. Luckily, I presume, she will replace that pretty fast in the expansion so it’s not the end of the world, she still kicks ass enough.
  • Priest – I’m happy with the level I got my Priest to. Her gear, her achievements, her mount and pet collections, everything really. As she is my main, I’ll talk about this a little more below.
  • Rogue – It took me a little while but I did get my Rogue on Argent Dawn to 80. I hated doing Rogue in Outland and Northrend, especially without heirlooms, but at 80 it’s nice to play Mutilate and be able to join in with the guild a little more. I would imagine that Rogue is a little more fun to level since patch 4.0.
  • Shaman – I levelled my Draenei Elemental/Resto Shaman a little bit, from 11 to 41. It was fun, and the highest I’ve ever levelled a Shaman, but I had other things to do in the meantime, so I will go back to her in a few months time.
  • Warlock – I was happy enough with my Warlock when I wrote my bucket list, she’s still at the same level and I’m fine with that. I’m not a huge fan of what they did to Warlock specs in the patch, so we’ll see in time.
  • Warrior – I didn’t touch my Warrior. Briella is still 35 and I’m planning to remake her with a different name in order to see the new human starting zones without too much travelling. I figured 35 isn’t too high, might as well. I haven’t started a Warrior on Horde yet, either, though will probably do a Blood Elf sometime.

Overall, I’m happy with where my alts are. I’d have liked to get my Druid up to 80 and sorted out Blacksmithing (probably on my Paladin) but it’s not the end of the world (well..) I can sort that out in Cataclysm still.

Achievements

  • Loremaster – I only had a little bit of Kalimdor left for my Priest and I finished it. Sure, it might have been easier to wait as I’m doing the new zones as well to complete all of those achievements and see the quests, but I’m still glad I did it.
  • 10,000 Honorable Kills – I did achieve perhaps 3k more honourable kills than I had, but I needed about 3k more to reach 10k. I’m just not a PvPer, I know it’s an easy one, but I don’t really enjoy PvPing. I’m bad at it!
  • 100 Wintergrasp wins – I’m perhaps 30 off getting this one, but no. As I said above, I’m not really a PvPer and I really couldn’t be arsed after a while.
  • Frostbitten & Bloody Rare – I did get Bloody Rare, but I’m still 2 away from Frostbitten. The guy in Icecrown, who I have found dead but not alive, and Old Crystalbark, the tree outside of Nexus. I do look but I’m never lucky – the trouble is, I started going to bed at a normal time, I used to find a lot at around 2 in the morning but I’m asleep by 11 these days, and I don’t log in when I’ve just woken up so I’m online and looking when everybody else is around.
  • Salty – Well, I did manage to win the Stranglethorn fishing contest which felt absolutely brilliant and I love my fish trinket! But I haven’t had any luck with the rare fish and haven’t bothered fishing up Lurker yet. Another one I’ll go back to, it was starting to send me insane.
  • 40 Exalteds – I still haven’t finished my Consortium rep, but I have got 40 exalteds and 45 is going to be piss easy.
  • Pet Collection – I’m very happy with where my pet collection is now. Just a couple more festival pets, 4 I can get from the Blizz store, plus a couple of the new pets I haven’t worked on yet. I have 124 pets at the moment, just can’t afford the Blizz store pets right now *sniff*
  • 100 Mounts – This one was pretty recent actually. You probably remember the post in which I admitted realising I hadn’t picked up the newer Horde mounts (Ochre Skeletal Horse and a couple of level 20 ones) which gave me the 4 I needed for the 100. I felt a bit silly for forgetting them, I’d got them on my Hunter previously, but it was damn nice to finally get 100 mounts.
  • Turtle Mount – Not yet, see: rare fish.
  • AQ Chain – I didn’t bother in the end. Couldn’t get a group for Blackwing Lair and decided I didn’t care enough so I left it.
  • Midsummer – Yup, mentioned it above. I did get Midsummer finished on my Hunter.
  • Doomguard – I didn’t bother with this one either, she has it now though so – woop!

Raiding

  • Gear – My Priest’s gear is at a good point. I have got as much from Icecrown as I could from pugging, including 2 tokens to upgrade 2 pieces of T10 to Sanctified. I was very pleased with that and even got a little trinket luck from 10 man Heroic Gunship!
  • Lich King Dead – A friend of mine turned around one day and asked if I wouldn’t to join his guild’s 10 man alt run to Icecrown. I said yes, sure, never expected to complete so many hardmodes, and definitely didn’t expect to kill the Lich King that day, but we did. Most of the others had killed him on 25 already, and I’d read up and watched enough videos of the fight to know what I was doing, and it went down, and it felt absolutely brilliant to achieve something I didn’t expect to achieve until level 85.
  • Ruby Sanctum Clear – I haven’t even entered the Ruby Sanctum, sadly, because I couldn’t bring myself to pug it, and I didn’t get in on anybody’s 10 man runs, but I’m sure we’ll pop back at 85 to say hello.

Economy/Gold

My goal was to reach 70,000g in order to afford all of this stuff and have a bit left over. Well, I achieved that and then kept going and I’m currently sitting on 210,000g. God bless Glyphmas! My only real goal now is to keep it above 200k and anything else is a bonus – I don’t have much need for any more gold than that, but I enjoy making it, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy seeing what I can make gold from in Cataclysm.

Plans for Cataclysm

So, picking through what I achieved compared to what I planned to achieve is one thing. Overall I have achieved pretty much everything I wanted to, plus a bit extra, with only a couple of exceptions. My plans for Cataclysm, whilst not set in stone, would have to be the following:

  1. Level Seithir, my Shadow Priest, to 85 as fast as I can manage.
  2. Once levelled, work on levelling up Enchanting and Tailoring to max and doing instances. Collect a healing offset.
  3. Probably then start raiding.

Then I get a bit more lenient, so I’ll switch to bullet points.

  • Work on any new achievements, or old ones I’ve missed.
  • Collect the new pets.
  • Start farming the new mounts.
  • Gather new rep.
  • Level profession alts first: Paladin, Druid, Warlock, Mage. Once able to – level their professions.
  • Commence gold making.

They’re the main things I want to focus on. Once I’ve done all of that, or at least started, I can carry on camping rares on my Hunter, levelling any other alts I’d like to level, start focusing on other servers on the side, and so on. I’m really looking forward to it now! I hope Cataclysm is a damn sight better than Wrath was.

What about you? Anything you managed to achieve or didn’t quite manage to before Cataclysm? Something you’re particularly proud of? What are your plans for Cataclysm?

Thoughts on the Shinies

13 Replies

It has been a week since 4.0.3a hit, aka when we all slept off a few years and woke up to Cow Paladins *shudder*. Yeah, okay, it was nice for a bit to imagine Cow Priests and Paladins but seeing them ingame? I don’t like them. They’re too weird. Plus, Dan keeps riding around on his Raptor and Cows on Raptors look ridiculous. Stupid cows. Anyway, I haven’t had chance to blog about the patch yet – not really, I’ve been kept busy with the 20 Days of Warcraft and playing WoW, would you believe. Besides, I think a week of playing the patch at least gives me a bit more to blog about.

omgomgomgsquee

The first day, I was surprised to see the servers come up pretty swiftly. I’d heard horror stories on Twitter of the American servers taking hours to finally come up, so seeing how prompt the EU servers were was a bit shocking, especially after such a big patch. So, I opened my game, and then the squeeing commenced. The first thing was “OMG new loading screen, so cool, and nowhere near as annoying as Cynagosa.” It was quickly pointed out to me that I meant Sindragosa, and in fact, not the blue dragon from Violet Hold.. shutup. Then I ran around Thunder Bluff looking at the new achievements, “OMG so much new stuff to do!” And was then told to get the fuck to Orgrimmar. Yessir.

:o

Then I got to Orgrimmar and “omgomgomgomgomg” happened. After the initial running around in circles getting over-excited and exploring where they put everything and how the fuck do I navigate this silly new place it took me 4 years to find my way around the old one and omg the zeppelin towers are here now and there are lifts and oh good Eitrigg’s there and there’s a cow section?! Yeah, you get the drift. After all of that, I calmed down and did the first cooking and fishing dailies. Basically, I set my hearthstone to the Valley of Wisdom, aka where the cows dwell, and decided that I’m not so fond of new Orgrimmar. Yeah, sure, it’s new and shiny. Big. And I love that you can find auction houses, banks, mailboxes and everything you might need wherever you might be, but it’s so… HORDE. I like the pretty, you see. I like the Elves, and Ashenvale, and cute little non combat pets. Orgrimmar is so black and spikey. So, you can find me where the cows dwell from now on.

New Quests

I hadn’t quite got over the “omg squee” part of the day yet, but I figured I could go out and start grabbing the new pets and make a start on the new Loremaster achievements for each different zone. To begin with, as the Singing Sunflower is brilliant, I went to Hillsbrad Foothills. The zone had always sucked before, but that pet would be- woah Tarren Mill’s a bit different! That guy’s a big elite.. some of these quests are brilliant! I hadn’t seen it yet. I went around, amazed by Stagwiches (shutup, it made me laugh), giant yetis, and big Orcish elites, then realised I was nowhere near finished. Ran around a bit and really, I have never laughed so hard at a quest in my life – hell – I don’t think I’ve ever laughed at a quest before.

Yeah, that’s right, I’m a quest giver. What of it? I’m not going to say any more, but trust me, the image above doesn’t even scratch the surface. It’s just such a hilarious quest, if you’re Horde, go do Hillsbrad if you haven’t already. If you’re Alliance, level a Horde to 20 and go do Hillsbrad. It’s my favourite new zone so far.

Arathi Highlands wasn’t too different. The same quests, really, but there’s a new quest hub that gives you all of the quests in the beginning area so you don’t have to constantly run between one end of the zone to the other, they even send you to Faldir’s Cove now. It’s not great for people looking for new content, but for levelling it’s brilliant now.

Night Elf Mage

Yeah, okay, I went with it. I think Night Elf Mages look positively awesome. And no, I’m not being a hypocrite because I never said that Cow Paladins and Priests were a lore lol I just said I wasn’t a fan.

There are two good things about Night Elf Mages for me. First, I get to be a Mage. I have always loved the class, I just keep getting distracted by other things. It’s a pretty lame sounding excuse when I made my first Mage on the first day of the Burning Crusade release and she still hasn’t made it past 60, but it’s an honest one. The second, I get to be a Night Elf. See, before this patch, I didn’t bother reading quest text. I’m a pretty slow reader and when you want to level fast and get things done quickly, reading quest text severely slows me down. So I didn’t bother, I just read what I needed to do and followed the dots. Now, however, I don’t think I could not read the text, and levelling my Night Elf through the starting zone, I’ve realised how awesome Night Elves are. Lorewise, they are my favourite race now.

I think my only real complaint so far is that the levelling experience goes too fast, even without heirlooms. My Mage is level 28, sure, with heirlooms, but even so, I’m halfway through Darkshore, haven’t touched Ashenvale or Stonetalon Mountains yet, and everytime you enter an instance you seem to just level at some kind of ungodly speed… I’ve been told that they have nerfed instance experience but I worry, is it enough? I know that a lot of people like to speed level to reach end game, but a lot of people like to enjoy the levelling process as well. With all of the new quests and instance changes and such, it would be nice to be able to enjoy it without needing to turn off experience gains to do so. That being said, I’m definitely not complaining. I just wish I had more slots for all of the alts I’ll be levelling!

This ogre isn't related to this post, he just loves to swim.

What’s your favourite part of the recent patch so far?