Cataclysm

[Azazel]

I believe each expansion comes with a free month, so its more like paying $5 for each expansion, as long as you plan to sub for 3+ months.
This might have changed.

It's never been the case, and I've bought each expansion on release.

[Selby]

Can someone with beta experience tell me
A.  Is the game harder to solo now?
B.  Are group instances harder now, such as you MUST mez a mob or be overwhelmed?

A) No.
B) It's not an AoE-fest anymore and some instance do require some thought, but it's not the old days of mandatory classes (yet).  Tanks can still hold aggro provided DPS give them a few to maintain it (and not unleashing the instant they see a tank charge or D&D\consecrate go down).  Some people still complain about healing, but that's mostly because it's changing from what it used to be to something... different.  We'll see how this all plays out once it goes live naturally.

[dd0029]

Can someone with beta experience tell me
A.  Is the game harder to solo now?
B.  Are group instances harder now, such as you MUST mez a mob or be overwhelmed?

I love Wow, but if the instances are all srs bsns now then it'll be solo for me.  Wotlk dungeon finder instances were my preference.

The solo game right at the beginning when you are still in WotLK gear is a bit harder, but only a bit.  Mobs start with 30k health and they hit harder.  The days of deciding to kill all 10 champions at once for a fury warrior are gone.  Once you get the quest greens it is back to what you would expect.

[Azazel]

I just ordered 2 copies of Crackdown for 360, in anticipation of Cata being as good as the word on the streets suggests. 

[Dren]

I thought they had a "no more invites over 500" mechanism in place at WotLK release.

Yes.  We hit it all the time due to the high number of alts.  We scrub for inactives all the time too.  I don't understand the 600 comment either unless they are actually raising it from where it is today.

[fuser]

Goon Squad US had ~900 active characters last month. Taint & AIE have between twice and three times that. And that's a quiet month in the pre-expansion dead time.

I still find it hard to believe thats "active" characters and that would be a third or fifth of the server population in one single guild. Kick out all the bank and low level alts to get it down to a practical level. It's not like its useful in any scheme besides a giant chat room(I shudder at the "grats" on achievements), so create a server channel and start pruning the guilds. If you use a census (disclosure: its missing non active, its missing 1-10, and depends on user scan data).

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php
Total Horde:   14,946
Total Horde:   2,734 (taint) 10-80
Total Horde:   1,716 (taint) 80-80

So at worst it fractures to 3-4 guilds.

[NiX]

Y'all could also have someone try to send you a Scroll of Resurrection.  Not sure what the account limitations will be based on who's purchased what expansion, but if it works then you'd get to trial a few weeks.

Hrm, I wonder if that works on a new account with just vanilla WoW. Otherwise, doesn't help me because I don't recall my account or anything about it.

[Morfiend]

Y'all could also have someone try to send you a Scroll of Resurrection.  Not sure what the account limitations will be based on who's purchased what expansion, but if it works then you'd get to trial a few weeks.

Hrm, I wonder if that works on a new account with just vanilla WoW. Otherwise, doesn't help me because I don't recall my account or anything about it.

The scroll only works on account that are up to Burning Crusade. I know cause I tried it recently for a friend.

[Ingmar]

Yeah, the scroll of resurrection is a Burning Crusade trial, so it should work on a vanilla account.

[Xeyi]

Can someone with beta experience tell me
A.  Is the game harder to solo now?
B.  Are group instances harder now, such as you MUST mez a mob or be overwhelmed?

I love Wow, but if the instances are all srs bsns now then it'll be solo for me.  Wotlk dungeon finder instances were my preference.

The solo game right at the beginning when you are still in WotLK gear is a bit harder, but only a bit.  Mobs start with 30k health and they hit harder.  The days of deciding to kill all 10 champions at once for a fury warrior are gone.  Once you get the quest greens it is back to what you would expect.

It gets harder again once you get to uldum (level 83 ish?).  For some classes killing 2 mobs at once is pretty much the max at that stage, any more than that and you'll need to use cc and cooldowns etc.

I'm purposely avoiding a lot of 80+ content but I did do one normal instance, Blackrock Caverns.  That said 3 of the group were from my guild on live including the tank and healer (me) so it wasn't a pure pug.  Altogether things were slower paced than a heroic on live and we did use cc, however we also survived a couple of accidental double pulls so it wasn't all that bad.  My experience is extremely limited but I didn't see anything that couldn't be achieved by any half decent pug group. This was just one of the first dungeons though, and at level 81 as a healer I still had infinite mana at the time.  Heroics may be an entirely different kettle of fish.

[WindupAtheist]

I just ordered 2 copies of Crackdown for 360, in anticipation of Cata being as good as the word on the streets suggests.  

I know I'm biased since I'm deep into "Nerf my class you pricks? I'm going back to UO!" territory, but I'm just not picking up much buzz for this either. The vibe I'm getting from the boards and shit is a sort of "sitting there with a puckered ass hoping for the best" one.

[Ingmar]

I figure if they break my class, I can enjoy the shiny new 1-60 content on something else and by the time I exhaust that my main will be fixed. Everything I've heard about the content has been great. Everything I've heard about the mechanics screams 'work in progress'.

[Tannhauser]

Put me in the camp of being a bit concerned over the changes.  I mean Blizzard wouldn't screw up their cash cow would they?  Would they?

[Azazel]

I thnk Ingmar is likely pretty close on the money. Hence my concentration on gathering Heirlooms over the last month. I think one of the major issues with pugs will be that the vast majority of players are trained by now not only into the AOE tanking "pull moar mobs" mode, but also that normal dungeons aren't worth doing and that you MUST immediately dive into heroics.

I've noticed even over the couple of weeks or so, that the quality of players in heroics has taken a sharp drop in boh gear and quality. I put a lot of it down to people getting their alts to 80, then immediately diving into heroics to gear up for the expack asap. I also notice that despite me telling the average pugs "hey want to do all the bosses, since triumphs = frosties next week after the patch?" most still want to barrel through to the boss as quickly as possible. 

[Sjofn]

Yeah, the content half sounds pretty good and interesting and fun, the class balance shit sounds pretty fucked up. I would probably care even more about the class shit if I PvP'd, but I don't, because PvP in WoW is stupid.

[Lantyssa]

Put me in the camp of being a bit concerned over the changes.  I mean Blizzard wouldn't screw up their cash cow would they?  Would they?

They have their A and B teams working elsewhere and they've more than made their money back.  Would they care?

[Ingmar]

Put me in the camp of being a bit concerned over the changes.  I mean Blizzard wouldn't screw up their cash cow would they?  Would they?

They have their A and B teams working elsewhere and they've more than made their money back.  Would they care?

...yes? No company is going to throw away a positive revenue stream like that. Hell *original* EQ just came out with an expansion.

I've never seen any real evidence that they're on their "C" team with this, either. Other than Tigole (who I think it was *good* they moved off of WoW frankly) I'm not sure who is supposedly not working on WoW anymore. The same people seem to be in charge of raid bosses, class design, etc. etc. Even the Evil Kalgan is still hanging around.

[Fordel]

God Damn Evil Kalgan! 

[Azazel]

Put me in the camp of being a bit concerned over the changes.  I mean Blizzard wouldn't screw up their cash cow would they?  Would they?

They have their A and B teams working elsewhere and they've more than made their money back.  Would they care?

This strikes me as a bit of an odd statement. If they didn't care, they'd surely ditch it and sell it to SOE for their station pass. 

I'd wager that WoW, as a continuing monthly revenue stream, makes more money overall than anything else blactivision put out, including the COD brand.

[Lt.Dan]

[...]I think one of the major issues with pugs will be that the vast majority of players are trained by now not only into the AOE tanking "pull moar mobs" mode, but also that normal dungeons aren't worth doing and that you MUST immediately dive into heroics.
[...]
I also notice that despite me telling the average pugs "hey want to do all the bosses, since triumphs = frosties next week after the patch?" most still want to barrel through to the boss as quickly as possible. 

Not such a big deal.  Cata dungeons have average iLvl checks so you won't be able to go straight to heroics at 85.  That and the first Cata quest rewards are iLvl 272 greens replacing ICC25M loot by killing 8 foozles. 

[Setanta]

Not such a big deal.  Cata dungeons have average iLvl checks so you won't be able to go straight to heroics at 85.  That and the first Cata quest rewards are iLvl 272 greens replacing ICC25M loot by killing 8 foozles. 

Good... but depressing. I think I say that with every expansion though :)

Question: Can someone please break down the rumours I've heard about tanking not working that well at the moment. From what I can see druids look ok except losing swipe spam (fine if they want us to go back to Vanilla and early BC play style), Pallies I'm hearing mixed reports and warriors/DKs seem quiet. Currently I play each tank class with druid and pally as my favourite so I need to think about who I go with first in cata.

[Paelos]

I'm hearing nothing about warriors, so I assume they are fine as usual. They don't really screw with us too much.

[Fordel]

Prot Warriors are sorta kinda possibly immortal in pvp in beta currently.

[Azazel]

Not such a big deal.  Cata dungeons have average iLvl checks so you won't be able to go straight to heroics at 85.  That and the first Cata quest rewards are iLvl 272 greens replacing ICC25M loot by killing 8 foozles. 

I'm not especially worried about that, myself. I just want heroic groups to not be a pack of incompetent idiots and kill bosses so I can get my bloody heirlooms before the 4.0 patch/class changes kill pre-Cata pug groups dead. 

Are warriors fun? I've been tossing up starting one. But they always seemed a little bland to me back in the Vanilla days. How do the DPS versions play?

[Shrike]

Warriors be OK. I haven't played fury since the second week of TBC (which sucked), but arms and protection are pretty good right now. Prot is stupid fun to grind with and tanks pretty well, though you have to work at it some--unlike facerolly pallies or DKs. Arms is hella fun in PvP...IF...you have a dedicated healer or two. If not, it's just fun. Mostly.

I haven't heard diddly squat about warriors in Cata and haven't even looked at the talent trees, so can't comment at all.

[Merusk]

Not such a big deal.  Cata dungeons have average iLvl checks so you won't be able to go straight to heroics at 85.  That and the first Cata quest rewards are iLvl 272 greens replacing ICC25M loot by killing 8 foozles. 

Good... but depressing. I think I say that with every expansion though :)

Question: Can someone please break down the rumours I've heard about tanking not working that well at the moment. From what I can see druids look ok except losing swipe spam (fine if they want us to go back to Vanilla and early BC play style), Pallies I'm hearing mixed reports and warriors/DKs seem quiet. Currently I play each tank class with druid and pally as my favourite so I need to think about who I go with first in cata.

I'd heard a lot of DKs were quitting the class (and jumping back to hunters ) so that might account for some of the quiet on that front.   Hell, even the EJ thread on 4.0 tanking is only 13 posts long.  That's not a good sign.

[Selby]

I'd heard a lot of DKs were quitting the class (and jumping back to hunters ) so that might account for some of the quiet on that front.   Hell, even the EJ thread on 4.0 tanking is only 13 posts long.  That's not a good sign.

They aren't boned, the runes just respawn (one has to finish refreshing before the other of that kind can start to refresh) at a different rate so it isn't a button mashing exercise like it used to be.  Threat is fine in blood, but the Icy Touch spam is gone again.  Basically it's like it was in WotLK with slower rune respawn rate.  Heart Strike is godly.

[Merusk]

Well that's heartening. I've only been messing with the DPS specs on test because I despise learning while in pugs and trying to test tanking without doing instances is like sex in the back of a Yugo.

The lack of button mashing in DPS I enjoy as I figure it's going to drive people away (as I'm hearing it is) so I guess it figures that is translating to tanking as well.   As far as threat, I just read that blood pres is being boosted to 200% instead of just 120%, so are you overgearing the people you're testing with?  That would explain why you're not complaining but others are.

[Ingmar]

PTR today buffed tank threat back to roughly live levels so I wouldn't worry about it too much now. Rotations and such will be different, and I'm sure there will be some aches and pains with that, but the threat numbers are a lot closer than they were even a week ago.

[Setanta]

Cheers - good to hear seeing as the first 3 chars I plan on taking through are tanks.

Warrior was quite bland in Vanilla to respond to an earlier question, so bland that I hated leveling mine in TBC and gave up and rolled a druid tank and didn't touch the warr until a few weeks ago. Now I wish I'd just gone prot to level as it is stupid fun to level. More tricks than a Druid to hold aggro and almost as easy as a Pally to tank with. Having said that, I haven't got it to L80 (only 76 so far) let alone run ICC where my Pally and Druid hang out.

Warrior is fun - especially when a shadow priest 2 levels lower sees you on 3 mobs and tries to gank you... only to die (ok, his dots got me before I could kill the mobs and eat, but a kill is a kill, especially when you are prot :p I made the mistake of buying 2 arcanite reaper heirlooms to go fury - waste of tokens that was :D

[Sheepherder]

Prot Warrior was terrible until patch 3.0.

[Azazel]

Oh yeah, which classes/specs are the ones who can dual weild 2-handers in Cata/4.0?  

[Rendakor]

That'd be Fury Warriors (still).

[dd0029]

I'll say my Fury warrior is doing fine at the end of Hyjal.  The big change for solo/grinding is that Victory Rush is now a self heal for I think 25% of your health.  That plus the shorter CD bloodthirst means I am just about never low on health.  Though with Bloodrage gone, there's no reliable way to trigger enrage for Enraged Regeneration, but the change to Victory Rush makes it mostly unnecessary.   Just questing, I will say they kind of missed the boat with spammy and Fury warriors.  I have something to push every GCD. 

[Morfiend]

One thing I am not super happy about is just how much better the new races racials are for almost every class. Hello Worgen 1% crit and 3 minute cooldown sprint, or the Goblin 1% haste.

On the bright side, I have a feeling that Worgen will pull the population back from the Blood Elves a bit.