Advice needed - havent played much since WOTLK release

[ShenMolo]

Hello all,

So the idea of playing goblins and exploring the new areas/changes has got me interested in WoW again.

I've got a few old 70's and  a few 1000's in cash laying around, with a bunch of crafting materials etc that were high value way back then.

I'd like to start up again with my kids when the Cataclysm happens, re-rolling as a trio of goblins.

Rather than asking 'Whats changed?" I would like to ask for simple advice you might give to prepare for the expansion. Twinking advice etc, builds, what to do between now and then to prepare, etc.

Thanks

[Morfiend]

I would say maybe play the AH?

Sell off all your old crap?

Since you are basically planning on starting fresh, and you don't have a max level character, there isn't much for you to be doing. You could try leveling one of your 70s, so that you have some backup for you baby Goblins when you start leveling them.

Also, you are going to want a decent amount of gold, if you plan on leveling the Goblins to max level. Around 12k gold for each character for the various riding skills.

Another thing you could do is gather crafting materials. If you know what crafting professions you guys are planning on taking, you could be gathering with one of your 70s, so that when you start the Goblins, you will have a stockpile of crafting stuff ready to go.

*edit*

You could also just go exploring. Since the old world is going to change forever, you could go see any place you haven't, as come Dec 7, the whole old world will be different.

[Paelos]

1 - Sell off all your old shit that isn't related to crafting. Clear out that inventory space.
2 - Level one of your toons to 80 for support purposes.
3 - PuG the shit out of heroics. Get points to buy heirloom items.
4 - Buy heirloom items.
5 - Profit.

[Minvaren]

2 - Level one of your toons to 80 for support purposes.
3 - PuG the shit out of heroics. Get points to buy heirloom items.
4 - Buy heirloom items.
5 - Profit.

Beat me to it.

[Kail]

*edit*

You could also just go exploring. Since the old world is going to change forever, you could go see any place you haven't, as come Dec 7, the whole old world will be different.

Off topic:
I haven't been following Cataclysm all that closely, but I recall hearing early on that the old world was still going to be present (implied that it would be through some sort of Caverns of Time portal or something).  Is this not the case?  That seems like a lot of content to throw away...

[Rendakor]

That is not the case. Let me see if I can find the blue post.

[Paelos]

Off topic:
I haven't been following Cataclysm all that closely, but I recall hearing early on that the old world was still going to be present (implied that it would be through some sort of Caverns of Time portal or something).  Is this not the case?  That seems like a lot of content to throw away...

No. Caverns of Time will allow instances of previous things, but that's a dungeon device, not a world.

[dd0029]

After leveling in the beta with heirlooms, I'd pass on them.  The quest rewards have been redone so there are no real crap items.  No more spirit rings or axes.  Additionally, the zones are fairly tightly tuned in terms of XP rewards.  The zones also have their own fairly integrated stories, so it feels a bit odd breaking off in the middle of something.  With my shoulders and chest piece, I out leveled Darkshore about 1/4 of the way through it with one dungeon run.  Speaking of dungeons, there was one Wailing Caverns run where I leveled twice.  Granted I did go in almost at a new level, but with completing two of the four available quests I came out with 1 and 1/3 levels worth of XP with the heirlooms.

[Paelos]

After leveling in the beta with heirlooms, I'd pass on them.  The quest rewards have been redone so there are no real crap items.  No more spirit rings or axes.  Additionally, the zones are fairly tightly tuned in terms of XP rewards.  The zones also have their own fairly integrated stories, so it feels a bit odd breaking off in the middle of something.  With my shoulders and chest piece, I out leveled Darkshore about 1/4 of the way through it with one dungeon run.  Speaking of dungeons, there was one Wailing Caverns run where I leveled twice.  Granted I did go in almost at a new level, but with completing two of the four available quests I came out with 1 and 1/3 levels worth of XP with the heirlooms.

Damn, you're right. All that fast levelling must totally suck the fun out of the game. 

[Rendakor]

I see his point; I was going through the undead quest areas (Tirisfal, Silverpine) and the pacing felt perfect. If I had gained extra levels in dungeons I'd have outleveled the content and been tempted to skip ahead, which would really interrupt the flow of the story. My point isn't "don't buy heirlooms", but if you don't feel like grinding to 80 then grinding heroics, you're not going to be totally fucked because the Cataclysm quest progression is spot on.

[Paelos]

Oh I get his points as well. However, if story is your thing, you can just continue at your own pace even if the xp is lesser. My guess is that the majority of the playerbase isn't going to care, since the quest writing is generally ignored.

[Ingmar]

Unless you have 3 accounts and can get heirlooms on all 3, skip the XP bonus heirlooms if you're going to be leveling together.

[ShenMolo]

Unless you have 3 accounts and can get heirlooms on all 3, skip the XP bonus heirlooms if you're going to be leveling together.

Yea I have done a little research about the heirlooms for leveling new alts, but unless all three of us could do it (and we can't it seems - only one account with anything above level 30) it would unbalance our progression.

The gather for crafting idea is a great one. Low level crafting mats will probably be highly inflated when all the new alts are crafting after the expansion, and when the three of us are online together we won't be spending time gathering mats.

[SurfD]

You could always buy one piece of heirloom gear per character (maybe just the chest, or just the shouleders).   Or you could buy a weapon, as they dont give the EXP bonus.  One of my favourite things about heirloom gear is that it has NO durability.  Meaning that you never have to repair it.

[Xuri]

The XP bonus from heirlooms is pretty negligible. The only real bonus is that you won't have to worry about replacing those items every three levels. Unless you like doing that, in which case it's not really a bonus.

[Ingmar]

Disagree. 20% more xp from quests and kills is not negligible at all. I just hit the end of the first blood elf zone on an alt priest at level 15 - the first couple mobs I saw in the NEXT zone were grey. It speeds you up quite a bit, especially if you have rest XP on top of it.

[Sjofn]

Your whore priest is level 15 already? I better get moving on my sissypaladin.

I also agree that you don't really need to worry too much about heirlooms if it's your first time back in a long time. Heirlooms are for like ... your third alt, when you've seen all you care to and just want to speed up the process ... plus they're more expensive than I think they're worth now, they'll be a lot easier to earn at 85.

[K9]

If you know what classes you plan to play (I'm guessing a trio of hybrids, or at least enough to offer the possibility of either a tank or healer, maybe both) pre-stocking mats to level a fitting profession could be a good idea. If your high-level main has a crafting profession then herbing/skinning/mining could be useful for your toons. Alternatively, given that a lot of people will re-roll or swtch professions come the expansion, having a stockpile of levelling mats to sel could turn you a tasty profit. If only one account has characters above 70 I'd probably pass on the heirlooms, the only ones worth having might be the trinkets I'd say, especially if you plan on rolling a class with an eye to tanking. The Eye of the Beast heirloom (x2) does about 5% of all the healing done in instance runs on my DK, and helps a lot when questing. You might find it handy if neither of your kids fancy healing or tanking.

Can you do recruit a friend multiple times? If you can start new accounts and RAF both you get fun mounts and an XP bonus and other nifty abilities and such. Might be worth looking into.

[Ingmar]

Yeah pre-stocking is a great idea. The demand for low level crafting mats will probably spike when everyone is rolling new characters to see the new content, so getting ahead of the game either for selling or for being able to skill up without paying inflated prices is a good plan.

[Merusk]

It's definitely a good plan.  People mocked me for stocking one alts worth of blacksmith crafting mats pre Wotlk but I made about 8k gold in 3 hours on copper ore alone.     Moving forward better armed, I've been stocking low level enchanting mats from alts, thorium, mageweave and any gems I've mined. Now if only I had a guild bank to store more in.

[ShenMolo]

If you know what classes you plan to play (I'm guessing a trio of hybrids, or at least enough to offer the possibility of either a tank or healer, maybe both) pre-stocking mats to level a fitting profession could be a good idea. If your high-level main has a crafting profession then herbing/skinning/mining could be useful for your toons. Alternatively, given that a lot of people will re-roll or swtch professions come the expansion, having a stockpile of levelling mats to sel could turn you a tasty profit. If only one account has characters above 70 I'd probably pass on the heirlooms, the only ones worth having might be the trinkets I'd say, especially if you plan on rolling a class with an eye to tanking. The Eye of the Beast heirloom (x2) does about 5% of all the healing done in instance runs on my DK, and helps a lot when questing. You might find it handy if neither of your kids fancy healing or tanking.

Can you do recruit a friend multiple times? If you can start new accounts and RAF both you get fun mounts and an XP bonus and other nifty abilities and such. Might be worth looking into.

I'll definitely look into this!

Also the mat stocking sounds like something I could get into between now and December.

We will probably play as a classic tank/healer/dps team, as my oldest loves to heal and my youngest loves to blow stuff up.

[Azazel]

3 - PuG the shit out of heroics. Get points to buy heirloom items.
4 - Buy heirloom items.

Check out the Heirloom thread for how cockstabby this has just become with the last patch. I was doing the same, right up until they quadrupled the price/heirloom. 

[ShenMolo]

Question:

If you are creating a new account, with the idea of playing a goblin character who will likely never get above level 60, and wanted to experience the changes in the old areas (not outland or WOTLK areas), could you do so by purchasing the original WoW box and the Cataclysm box only?

[K9]

As far as I know WoTLK and TBC will be bundled in with Cataclysm by default; I'm not 100% sure though.

[ShenMolo]

As far as I know WoTLK and TBC will be bundled in with Cataclysm by default; I'm not 100% sure though.

That would be awesome. I asked the same question on the official forums and was told you needed to have TBC and WOTLK unlocked on your account before you can install Cataclysm.

[stu]

Heroic dungeons don't start until you get to TBC, right?

[K9]

The mechanic wasn't added until TBC, although in Cataclysm there will be heroic versions of vanilla dungeons (Deadmines and SFK first, then others I think).

[Ingmar]

The mechanic wasn't added until TBC, although in Cataclysm there will be heroic versions of vanilla dungeons (Deadmines and SFK first, then others I think).

Those will be level 85 dungeons though, so you'd still need to have everything to see them on heroic.

[Merusk]

As far as I know WoTLK and TBC will be bundled in with Cataclysm by default; I'm not 100% sure though.

That would be awesome. I asked the same question on the official forums and was told you needed to have TBC and WOTLK unlocked on your account before you can install Cataclysm.

This is indeed the case. You'll get the world changes for free, but to get a goblin you need Cata, which requires TBC and WOTLK.  If considering creating a new account, it'd be best to wait for the battle chest edition that includes the first 3 for one price.

[Xanthippe]

I played my daughter's hunter yesterday in Outlands.  Gained a level pugging two dungeons.

Very quick xp.  I don't recall it being quite this fast the last time I leveled up a character (pre-patch) through Outlands. Did they once again change the xp curve?

How about Northrend?  Is it also changed?

[Sheepherder]

No changes since Wrath launch, where they dropped Outland experience required by a ton.

[Numtini]

I've been levelling a priest just in some spare time and Wrath is like hitting a wall. I'm actually finding that questing seems to be faster than instancing if I don't have rested xp.

[ajax34i]

Call me weird, but I kinda liked some of the quests in Northrend.  The opening areas were pretty fun, and the XP wasn't too bad just doing quests till about level 73-4 when it became grindy and a bit less fun.  You could just explore / quest with one of your 70's, who knows you may end up 75 or so by the time they relase the expansion, and with quite a bit more gold, craft mats, etc.

[K9]

Overall the questing in Northrend was done really well I thought. Dragonblight was really the only zone that dragged on, but I think that's because it's really the only 72-75 zone. The fact that you have two zones for pretty much every other level is really nice, and gives you a lot of variety in questing. They also did a lot of work on logical quest hubs and variation in the quest styles.

[Ingmar]

You can typically skip either the west or east half of Dragonblight, too (assuming you're willing to skip the Wrathgate event), so in that sense it sort of is 2 zones.