Cataclysm

[endev8003]

My experience with the elemental invasion event went like this:

1) Run up to rift where everybody is fighting.
2) Disconnect
3) Reconnect
4) Wait at loading screen for almost a minute
5) Jump back to login screen with a disconnect message
6) Swear like a sailor
7) Repeat steps 3 to 6 a couple of times
8) Finally get in, but invasion event is over

I did do all 4 bosses last night, and I don't really plan on doing them again. I'll have to check if there is any worthwhile drops from them.

First pug on the water boss went badly. The tank regularly went out of range of my healing, resulting in me running after him. Lots of group damage and I needed a lot of dispels.

Earth boss went easy for the most part, except for the one dps that decided to stand in front and not at the back of the boss. Kept taking some aoe hits that nearly killed him and I considered just letting him die at some point.

Wind boss was also easy. Had some aoe lightning and he lifts people up in the air and drops them quickly. I just used cat form everytime that happened and didn't get any damage from it.

Fire boss was a walk in the park. He did some fire dots on random members. There was some hunter that looked like he stood in the fire, but I'm not sure if it was that, or if is was the dot.

 

[akun50]

From what I've heard, they drop items that are equal to 10 man ICC stuff.

considering that it's all going to be relegated to vendor trash in about three or so weeks, not that shocking.

 

[FinalMax]

The gear is all 251 stuff. That means that it's already vendor trash for me.

 

[violinmana]

Meh, I'm just not playing WoW till Cataclysm comes out.

 

[violinmana]

Tauren Paladin.

 

[akun50]

THE SUNDERING IS COMPLETE! AZEROTH HAS BEEN FOREVER CHANGED!

In other words, while you can't be Goblins or Worgens or go into the new areas, you can now play as the new race-class combos and see the newly redesigned areas and the revised content.

 

[violinmana]

Holy cow.

 

[Serxeid]

Does that apply to the one week of free time Blizzard is giving to entice us back?

 

[violinmana]

Does that apply to the one week of free time Blizzard is giving to entice us back?

Uh... no.

Since when does Blizzard need to entice with free stuff?

 

[akun50]

Does that apply to the one week of free time Blizzard is giving to entice us back?

Yes, actually.

If you're going to be playing Wow at all, it's going to be in the redesigned areas.

It's just that the upper level stuff and the goblin/worgen races aren't unlocked yet.

 

[blackkyuubi]

For us horde players, a moment of silence for our fallen chieftain. May the Earth Mother watch over you Cairne Bloodhoof.

 

[akun50]

Honor guide thee to thy reward in the afterlife, Cairne.

*moment of silence*

All right, when do we murder the shit out of that cowardly evil bitch, Magatha Grimtotem?

 

[violinmana]

Honor guide thee to thy reward in the afterlife, Cairne.

*moment of silence*

All right, when do we murder the shit out of that cowardly evil bitch, Magatha Grimtotem?

We don't.

 

[akun50]

We don't.

 

[akun50]

I've tried running some lowbies and good lord, they HAVE streamlined it. The starting zone, at least, feel much smaller and you level up much faster.

There's now new flightpoints in the "first towns", like Goldshire, Sen'jin and such, and you get missions to take the flight points to the major cities around level 5 or so.

Tried leveling a Troll and... really, Zuni doesn't seem all that interesting. He's really helpful in one area in particular, but otherwise, not that good at all.

Haven't tried checking out the Forsaken area, though I've heard that's a bit epic.

Gnomes and Trolls both have a mission where you aid the leader against one of the age-old enemies. For the Trolls, it was the infamous Sea Witch who murdered Vol'jin's father. For the gnomes, it's one of Mekkatorque's higher minions.

Going through the Night Elf area, you'll be sent to various moonwell's where some of the history of the NEs is recited by a spirit who appears when you're gathering water. It's actually kinda neat. Pity there's no voice acting during these parts. :/

In the NE zone, one quest which had you go into a cave infested with spiders, sends a dryad-questgiver (who summons plant-assistants) in with you. After you complete her first quest, she gives you another to kill the big spider in the back. Completing that has you teleported outside and to another quest giver.

Some of the quests are going to be the same, or at least very similar, but there are a few interesting and fun surprises, like the fire-fighting quest in the human starting zone.

Some people might grumble that questing should go slower, and while I do agree that fast-pace questing might actually get starting players into the wrong mindset, it's likely trying to keep people interested long enough to get their first mount.

And given that most players used to quit before reaching even level 10....

Oh, and there's no achievements for completing all the quests in the starter zones, though they probably still count towards your overall total.

So less reason for the high-level players to come quest-grinding in starting zones.

 

[mgsaintz]

I actually like the pacing for the starting zone questing it's fast enough that you don't get too bored trying to level but slow enough that you actually start to see a glimpse on how to play your class and a small part of how the game plays. I know the criticism of the starting zones being too fast that may get people thinking that's the pacing of the whole game but you'll have to consider that at a certain point when leveling starts to slow new features in the game open up that may keep them interested such as bg pvp and the leveling slow downs tend to happen at a gradual pace though by 40s that slow down increases quite a bit.

 

[akun50]

Ran through Tanaris, Felwood, Winterspring and a good portion of Un'goro.

Each of those areas has a few quests that are essentially callbacks to the original zone, but Felwood had the quest chains that were, perhaps, the most shocking, with three quests in particular leading the forefront of my mind.

For those who used to go to Bloodvenom Post, you may recall a quest where a forsaken female would ask you to get water from a corrupted moonwell; then take a kitten to said moonwell, let it bathe in the water and then bring it back to her.

At the time, I thought it was rather cold of her, but it did get me used to the typical forsaken questgiver's mindset, which is "Oh, would you look at that? I'm all out of Giving-A-Shit. I might get some in the next year or so, but it runs out quick."

She and her kitty are now part of an almost heart-wrenching storyline. (depends on your particular point of view, but I found it quite sad).

Likewise, a story involving a seedling is tinged with respect, and one of Illidan's disciples gives new insight for new players in how the history of the infamous demon hunter-turned-demon and leads into a quest chain involving one helluva group of sneaky bastards that almost caused history to repeat itself.

All in all, I'd rate Felwood as one of the best new zones. Not THE best, as I've only done about six or seven to "completion", so I'll reserve my judgement, but it's clearly slated for the upper tiers of the revised zones.

BTW, if you want to test how good you are at avoiding enemies, go into Azshara and do the various quest chains. You'll eventually come upon a wizard, Xylem IIRC, who gives you a series of challenges. They DEFINITELY test your ability to avoid AoEs and other such attacks

 

[FinalMax]

Talk about bad timing. I have a glitch occur in Halls of Lightning, and I can't do anything about it because Blizzard's doing maintenance. Tried logging out and back in, didn't work. Can't contact Blizzard because of the maintenance they're apparently doing to battle.net, so I'm up shit creek without a paddle.

 

[violinmana]

Talk about bad timing. I have a glitch occur in Halls of Lightning, and I can't do anything about it because Blizzard's doing maintenance. Tried logging out and back in, didn't work. Can't contact Blizzard because of the maintenance they're apparently doing to battle.net, so I'm up shit creek without a paddle.

Log back in tomorrow.

 

[FinalMax]

Cataclysm is now live! that's the good news. Bad news is that boats aren't exactly as frequent as we remember them being anymore.

 

[akun50]

Buddy of mine and I have done some testing.

For those looking to grind for Guild Rep using quests, the rep you earn is strongly influenced by the area you're in.

In Zangarmarsh, I was regularly getting 22-24 guild rep.

A friend went to Dragonblight for a few quests and got 36 guild rep each quest.

Oh, and the "go talk to this guy to open up the next questing zone" quests don't give much guild rep, obviously

At a tentative guess, this is what you're likely to see, for quest based guild rep:
Herpa-derp quests: 1-10 rep
Revised Vanilla: 1-20 rep
BC: 20-30 rep
WotLK: 30-40 rep
Cata new content: 40-50 rep

I've found a few quests don't give guild rep. This might be a glitch, an error or whatever, but the first Talbuk Mastery quest in Nagrand didn't give any guild rep, which the first Windroc and Clefhoof did. :huh.:

Also, something interesting for solo'ing Rogues to note: In Zangarmarsh, when fighting the naga, if you start with Cheap Shot, you'll still get the message that they're summoning help, but they actually DON'T.

This MIGHT apply to ALL mobs who summon help immediately after being attacked (or aggro). (Though, if the mobs they summon are in aggro range, they might aggro to you anyway; and if the enemy randomly summons help throughout a fight, this won't stop that either) I tested this over 100 times and every time I started with Cheap Shot, they NEVER summoned help. The slaves they summoned would only join the fight if I was near enough to them to begin with.

Of course, if you're fighting an enemy who's immune to stuns, this obviously won't work.

But still, it might be something interesting to check out.

 

[Belgarion213]

As expected insane crowding of starter zones last night, so i took a bit of a break and came back with only partly crowding. I'm currently 82 (yes I'm slow) only having done one zone (Mt H .

I also have apparently maxed out my rep gain for my character which is kind of annoying as I'm stuck halfway between friendly and honored.

So far its enjoyable though I haven't done any of the dungeons yet despite my guild doing them, I just sot of did my own things as my anger was high enough without wiping repeatedly. Ill come back and do them.

Probably going to do De4epholm as my next place to quest. Should be interesting. I went way beyond the achievement for Mt H, anddid every single quest there, which as tedious but also fun to wrap everything up. In the end w had a little slugging match with Ragnoros which was cool as a pseudo raid encounter. (or at least that was what I sort of got the impression they were going for. It was ok though not as engaging as it could have been.)

Some of the particle effects, particularly the sparkle of objects in the environment you need to find need to be turned up. I spent ages looking for a couple of them (one of the books near the end of the quest line, the braziers that the quest pointed at the entirely wrong direction and a few others.)

 

[akun50]

Hmmmm... upon further investigation, I think your level versus the quest completed might also affect Guild Rep, as I was doing quests in Howling Fjord on my 80 death knight (as silly as might sound, I'm more focused on grinding up professions at moment and my engineer needed cobalt), and a number of them rarely gave more than 9 rep, while a friend who had a maxed level character in Winterspring was getting 20. (incidentally, a few Grizzly Hills quests gave 37 guild rep)

While Guild Rep may vary, at least Guild XP doesn't.

 

[FinalMax]

Launch night was a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, there was a good atmosphere when waiting in line for my copies (got one regular edition for my sister and the collectors' for myself). On the other hand, a group of Horde players deliberately switched to PvP in a PvE server when going into the new leveling zones.

So on top of hordes of 80s trying to get somewhere, we had people making a massive cockblock for leveling purposes. You couldn't attack any mobs without risking getting flagged for PvP and subsequently getting mobbed yourself.

Oddly enough, some guys in my guild had a bet going on what profession would first hit 525 rating on that realm. It was Skinning, followed by Herbalism and Mining about a half hour after that.

 

[akun50]

Launch night was a mixed bag for me.á On the one hand, there was a good atmosphere when waiting in line for my copies (got one regular edition for my sister and the collectors' for myself).á On the other hand, a group of Horde players deliberately switched to PvP in a PvE server when going into the new leveling zones.á

So on top of hordes of 80s trying to get somewhere, we had people making a massive cockblock for leveling purposes.á You couldn't attack any mobs without risking getting flagged for PvP and subsequently getting mobbed yourself.

Oddly enough, some guys in my guild had a bet going on what profession would first hit 525 rating on that realm.á It was Skinning, followed by Herbalism and Mining about a half hour after that.

Herbalism, Mining, Fishing and then Skinning for my server. I was also seeing Realm First: Level 85s as of yesterday. I think they were probably spamming dungeons with raid groups, but good LORD, that's OCDing.

I got about halfway to level 81 on my DK just working on Loremaster for Northrend (and I only needed 20 or so quests in Howling Fjord, 10 quests in Grizzly Hills and, like, 4 quests in Zul'Drak). I'm halfway through Icecrown and I've got most of Borean Tundra to do.

I'm going to be completing most of the non-81-to-85 content on my DK, getting my Rogue and Druid to 70 (the former is 67, so it'll be a short trip for her, but the latter is 33, so quite the journey for her), and then moving onto to the newest high-level content. I figure most of the leveling cockblocking should be finished by then.

Also, I'm not sure if it was because so many people were on the server causing some of the textures not to load or what, but I was getting graphical glitches in Ogrimarr and Shattrath before I went to bed. BTW, the Arcane Guardians were :blink: worthy sans their textures.

When I get home tonight, I'll see how my screencaps of them turned out, and if anyone's interested, I'll post 'em here.