Cataclysm

[kildorn]

I don't know your gaming tastes, but a Prot Pally is a godless, remorseless killing machine now.

Yeah... my protection pally was soloing the elites in Redridge Mountains yesterday due to my buddies all having vanished leaving me in a lurch.  It was a bit of effort but I did it without too much problem.

I actually died a few times tanking instances last night on my pre-20 no twinking palatank.

Mostly because on half the pulls the priest didn't have to heal me, and didn't remember to do so on harder pulls. That and not being crit immune yet (ow two 300ish crits in a row in deadmines on a trash pull)

[AcidCat]

I'm impressed, and I've barely scratched the surface of everything new to see. I like the new Undead starting experience - you actually start dead, and a few of your first quests are dealing with fellow newly-forsaken who are having a ... rough time accepting their new fate. Hillsbrad is overrun with Forsaken, it was weird seeing Southshore and the nearby farms in such a state. Orgrimmar is just incredible in every way - love the new interiors - love the Goblin Slums - speaking of which I never really appreciated Goblins until I saw their models ingame.

[kildorn]

New Org confused me a bit.

New Troll Here land was impossible to level in, due to a few really dickish quest chains requiring everyone to stand in line waiting for a slow spawning mob.

[Yegolev]

I like the new Undead starting experience - you actually start dead, and a few of your first quests are dealing with fellow newly-forsaken who are having a ... rough time accepting their new fate.

What was the previous startup like?  I seem to recall starting out dead back in 2004...?

[kildorn]

I like the new Undead starting experience - you actually start dead, and a few of your first quests are dealing with fellow newly-forsaken who are having a ... rough time accepting their new fate.

What was the previous startup like?  I seem to recall starting out dead back in 2004...?

Dunno what the new one is like, but the old one was "you awaken in a crypt, walk out, go to town"

[fuser]

What was the previous startup like?  I seem to recall starting out dead back in 2004...?

Dunno what the new one is like, but the old one was "you awaken in a crypt, walk out, go to town"

Just tried it out, this time your lying down outside in the graveyard and then you start 2-3 quests around the graveyard before heading to Deathknell.

edit: Side note, this expansion did the exact opposite of what PoP did for EQ. All the quick travel is gone, now there's a market for druid mage ports.

[DraconianOne]

Reading around it says that people are already able to raise Gilneas / Bilgewater Cartel and, in the case of the Gobbos, get their racial mount when Exalted. Is this the case? Is the mount in the game before the race is?

[Draegan]

the fastest way to farm trike, which will probably be hotfixed:

1 get the pilgrim rep buff (sit in each chair in a table and eat 5 servings of each food)
2 go to BRD, and the 7 dwarves event. kill 6 of the dwarves for 66 rep each (60 w/o buff), then go hide in a corner for the 7th dwarf. it'll reset after a minute, talk to the guy to start it up again.

no worries about instance lockouts, you can get 8-10k rep an hour so you'll be done in around 4 hours (33k rep to grind? or 39k?). Nothing to loot either.

Keep in mind however that if you are already exalted with all your cities (hi2u Argent Tourney) you can just wear your tabard while leveling instances 80-85, and probably hit exalted that way too. But I guess 3-5 hours isn't too bad to grind for the trike (is there an alliance worgen mount?) right now.

Here's a way to do to it apparently.

[kildorn]

What was the previous startup like?  I seem to recall starting out dead back in 2004...?

Dunno what the new one is like, but the old one was "you awaken in a crypt, walk out, go to town"

Just tried it out, this time your lying down outside in the graveyard and then you start 2-3 quests around the graveyard before heading to Deathknell.

edit: Side note, this expansion did the exact opposite of what PoP did for EQ. All the quick travel is gone, now there's a market for druid mage ports.

The portal market will die in two weeks. Right now it only exists because they yanked the portal system out, but the 80s still need to be in northrend. Come the actual expansion, the 80s will move back to the old world and fly themselves around.

[AcidCat]

What was the previous startup like?  I seem to recall starting out dead back in 2004...?

Yeah I mean now you actually start like, a corpse in the ground and have to click on a spirit rezzer to rez yourself.

Everything just looks ... better, like they added better textures/color/something? The grass/ground clutter also seems improved. I really can't wait to fly in these zones.

[Yegolev]

What was the previous startup like?  I seem to recall starting out dead back in 2004...?

Yeah I mean now you actually start like, a corpse in the ground and have to click on a spirit rezzer to rez yourself.

I don't know what that is, so... OK.

[Ingmar]

To someone who didn't play through WotLK getting raised by a val'kyr probably doesn't have any  value, yeah. To give you some context the thing that rezzes you is from a 'race' of undead that were exclusively working for the lich king until recently.

[Rendakor]

the fastest way to farm trike, which will probably be hotfixed:

1 get the pilgrim rep buff (sit in each chair in a table and eat 5 servings of each food)
2 go to BRD, and the 7 dwarves event. kill 6 of the dwarves for 66 rep each (60 w/o buff), then go hide in a corner for the 7th dwarf. it'll reset after a minute, talk to the guy to start it up again.

no worries about instance lockouts, you can get 8-10k rep an hour so you'll be done in around 4 hours (33k rep to grind? or 39k?). Nothing to loot either.

Keep in mind however that if you are already exalted with all your cities (hi2u Argent Tourney) you can just wear your tabard while leveling instances 80-85, and probably hit exalted that way too. But I guess 3-5 hours isn't too bad to grind for the trike (is there an alliance worgen mount?) right now.

Here's a way to do to it apparently.

Thanks for that, I was frustrated that the rep gains weren't working in NR and saw that just using Strath for rep (and Baron's Mount runs) would take FOREVER. Is there any trick to getting these guys to reset? I've literally never done BRD before.

[Fordel]

I don't know your gaming tastes, but a Prot Pally is a godless, remorseless killing machine now.

Yeah... my protection pally was soloing the elites in Redridge Mountains yesterday due to my buddies all having vanished leaving me in a lurch.  It was a bit of effort but I did it without too much problem.

I actually died a few times tanking instances last night on my pre-20 no twinking palatank.

Mostly because on half the pulls the priest didn't have to heal me, and didn't remember to do so on harder pulls. That and not being crit immune yet (ow two 300ish crits in a row in deadmines on a trash pull)

The way lowbie Prot Paladins work is simple.

If the damage incoming can't bring you below half life in 10 seconds, you will never, ever, die. You generate holy power on Crusader Strike (or hammer of the righteous) activation, not hit. Word of Glory will heal you for at least 50% of your health pool, if not more, without any crits or anything. You also have nothing but WoG to spend your holy power on till like level 40.

[Yegolev]

To someone who didn't play through WotLK getting raised by a val'kyr probably doesn't have any  value, yeah. To give you some context the thing that rezzes you is from a 'race' of undead that were exclusively working for the lich king until recently.

[Lantyssa]

To someone who didn't play through WotLK getting raised by a val'kyr probably doesn't have any  value, yeah. To give you some context the thing that rezzes you is from a 'race' of undead that were exclusively working for the lich king until recently.

Can I play one of these or a banshee yet?  That might get me back on a non-trial basis.

[Fordel]

I have no idea what that picture is supposed to represent, but it is cracking my ass up.

[Ingmar]

I have no idea what that picture is supposed to represent, but it is cracking my ass up.

This.

[Chimpy]

Maybe it is a lol-oremaster?

[apocrypha]

I concur.

Plus, peacebloom vs ghouls pet is awesome!  

[Chimpy]

I think Ingmar should make that picture his forum avatar

[01101010]

Starting at scratch with an orc shaman last night, hit 22 earlier this afternoon without having to poopsock it. Quests flow, however the familiar ones are all tweaked and I found myself running to a place I recalled the quest was talking about only to find that that spot is either -not there- or the quest mobs/NPC are elsewhere. And this is WITH reading all the quest text. I have to say I'd be in the late 20s by now had I click crushed through and used the stupid map waypoints instead of reading the text. So far so good.

fakeedit: 80 tauren paladin - seems cheap to just transform over without having to cut your teeth with the lore and such, assuming they didn't have a 80 tauren already though. Still, very odd to see, as well as troll locks and orc mages and the one lonely tauren priest I ran into today. 

[K9]

I've been trying some of the zone quest series; they're really polished and actually make me want to give the levelling thing another shot (which I swore I'd never do after the second time).

Blizzard has definitely done some good work there.

[Merusk]

The portal market will die in two weeks. Right now it only exists because they yanked the portal system out, but the 80s still need to be in northrend. Come the actual expansion, the 80s will move back to the old world and fly themselves around.

There will still be a market to hop continents, unless you're able to zone across while flying or have dual hearths (Shaman, Druid, DK) so you can hop continents on your own.   It just won't be as expensive as it is right now -  2g per port on Alleria.

 

Everything just looks ... better, like they added better textures/color/something? The grass/ground clutter also seems improved. I really can't wait to fly in these zones.

Yes, they redid all the textures along with reworking and remodeling most, if not all, of the zones.  The new ground clutter is a result of being done for the upgraded graphics engine vs the one from 6 years ago.

[Fordel]

The downside of course is if your machine is on the older side, the new stuff can really eat your FPS in certain zones.


Any of the forested zones (I'm looking at you Ashenvale) can drop my FPS by a good 20-40 points now.

[WindupAtheist]

I am REALLY not happy with either having to do a bunch of grey lowbie quests or else not see the same things as people who come up afterward. Sure you can see the people, but the scenery is different. Depending on when you leveled and what zones you did, you pretty much don't live in the same world as most other people. Between shit like this and instant dungeon/battleground queues with random people from any server in the game, why is this even a traditional sharded MMO at this point?

[Rendakor]

Why the fuck do you keep harping on that? How often do you really try to quest with some random noob but can't because he did one quest that you didn't?

[WindupAtheist]

Because it shits up the consistency of the world. One can't even make a definitive statement about it like "There orc camps in Redridge" without it being a "Whoa hold on, when did you level and as what race?" kind of thing. Phasing was one thing when it was in a few places that pretty much every character was going to do. Now it's pretty much like a single-player game, where you'll be flying over Azeroth and what you see depends on whether or not you've done every quest in the game.

[Rendakor]

Except the "world" has been pretty much a single player game for a while now, and the phasing makes it a better one. If you wanna play with other people, do BGs, dungeons, or raids.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Old troll is old.

[Ratman_tf]

I'm on the fence about Cata. My guild is promising to get into PvP with the expansion, and I love raiding with them, but the single player is so that I'm not looking forward to 80-85.

[Ingmar]

I think Ingmar should make that picture his forum avatar

[WindupAtheist]

I'm not trolling, you just have to understand that I'm damaged this way. As far as I know the "official" version of the state of affairs in any given zone is always the one that takes place after a given quest is completed. So now if I want to see the "real" version of the world I have to do every single quest that involves phasing. It's like being in Hell.

When I troll you, you'll fucking well know it.

[Rendakor]

Consider it an excuse to get the Loremaster achievement.

[Fordel]

The alternative would be to just auto-complete those quests for 80s and then you would have people bitch about not being able to do the new content on their character that they've played since release and etc.