Daily Thoughts: Work in Progress

So, today’s Daily Thoughts is going to be a bit shorter than normal. I’m in the process of working out a Cataclysm faction rep guide with wowhead links, their epic loot, and the status of the daily quests. It should be up tomorrow and maybe a day or so after will be my thoughts on the Twilight Highlands. I haven’t quite finished the quest chains there as I hit 85 in the middle of one that I think is phased and didn’t pick up the rest of the quests.

I was thinking though, I have a lot of things that are a work in progress: My rep/faction guide, gearing up for raids, finishing the new cataclysm zones, getting jewelcrafting maxed out. At work, in real life, I have a ton of jobs in progress. It will be quite nice to wrap up a few of them, both in real life and WoW. Of course, as I complete projects at work I’ll get more, or else I’d be out of a job. And the same, after I finish jewelcrafting or getting the Paladin raid ready I’ll have more toons to level and gear, their professions to max and gear to craft. But that’s also the goal that Blizzard set out with WoW, to make sure there is always something to do. If there’s ever nothing more to do in WoW, Blizzard is out of a job, or at least out of income from this game. I wonder how long the game will continue. WoW in 3d? WoW in virtual reality? Oh the possibilities.

Daily Thoughts: Hyjal

I must say: Hyjal was a blast. Counting all the horrible groups of people killing and collecting everything for the quests, completing the zone took me between 4-5 hours and got me to level 82. I really enjoy how the zone played out, with few exceptions I’ll get back to later. For the most part, the quests lead you in a circular direction around the zone with very few quests sending you very far. The zone makes heavy use of little mini-instances. You take portals to underground areas and complete small quest chains inside, then return to the main zone to continue. Everything looks great, though (unsurprisingly) they reused a lot of old models for the mobs. I only have one major complaint with the flow and feel of the zone as a whole. Occasionally, there was no quests to do. Sometimes it seemed to not give you any directional quests to the next place and you sort of have to fly around for a little while to find a quest giver.

There aren’t really any difficult quests to complete. This could be due to it being the “entry-level” cataclysm zone or because my Paladin was sporting pretty nice ICC25 quality gear. After doing what I believe was all the quests in the zone, I had only two upgrades to my current gear, though some pieces were close. As a result my person damage dropped a little. As you level the ratings required to gain a % of haste/crit/hit/expertise all become much more substantial. With only 2 upgrades, my haste and crit are both 50% or so lower after 2 levels gained and both hit and expertise, which used to be capped, are now well under cap. Fortunately, I feel that Deepholm holds more upgrades. Shortly after leaving Hyjal I did the Stonecore instance and got Sword of the Bottomless Pit, a substantial upgrade over even my Shadow’s Edge. The damage per second of the weapon is 33% higher. I digress, back to Hyjal.

Another thing I noticed, though honestly not until I was writing this, there wasn’t any group quests in Hyjal. On several occasions I ended up grouped with people so we could share the kill of a quest mob, but it was out of convenience of not waiting for 4 other people to kill it first, not from difficulty of the mob. I am hoping for more difficult future zones and quests. Alas, I must wrap this up, my 35 minute wait to log on is about over and I want to get back to questing.

More from the Cataclysm soon, Deepholm next!

Hyjal leveling guide – I admittedly didn’t use this, but I wanted to provide a resource for those looking for one.

Happy Cataclysm Eve!

Whether you’re excited or nervous about the coming Cataclysm (the expansion that is, since Azeroth is already shattered), tonight it finally arrives. One of the most anticipated game releases — ever — is upon us at 12:00am December 7th, Tuesday morning. Some people will be in a mad rush looking for server firsts for leveling (though I hear that might not have an achievement this time) or professions. Personally, I’m going to take my sweet time with it. I have no desire to blow through the new content. I’m going to relish every moment I don’t have to farm Utgarde Keep or the Oculus. I’m sure I’ll miss my hunters 55% unbuffed crit and my Paladins ability to spam heals without caution once I reach 85, but I can’t lie; I’m pretty damn excited.

Even though I work tomorrow morning (the 7th) at 8am, I’m going to be at midnight release at my local GameStop and will be installing and playing (cross fingers/knock on wood/pray) tonight, likely far too late into the morning. So today, I read. I’m hoping to finish the Shattering novel and I’ve been reading almost all the guides that WoW Insider has up regarding the new content, professions, etc.

Speaking of that, you really should go here, to WoW Insider Cataclysm topic search. The have some good recent posts about the guild perks from guild leveling, some dungeon guides, class guides, and profession information. They also are running some great contests like THIS ONE for a 100$ Jinx coupon. I think they all end between tonight and tomorrow, so go check them out.

…and that’s all for today folks. Now I’m off to finish the book, maybe get my rogue to 80, and wait for the big release.

Hmm, that sounded worse than I meant it.

Daily Thoughts: Fears of the Cataclysm

I must admit; I’m a little bit afraid of the coming end of the world.  No, I’m not afraid of 12/21/12. I am though, somewhat, of 12/07/10 – the Cataclysm release date. Although the recent patch 4.0.1 brought about most of the major mechanical changes, Cataclysm will see the effects of those realised along with a host more. I going to talk here about healing/mana regen, sky rocketing health totals, and a couple other things.

I probably should add potential spoiler disclaimers to my posts, so here’s one for this. If you don’t want to risk spoilers for Cataclysm, you probably shouldn’t continue.

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