The Cataclysm. Do you like it so far?

[Makoes]

I've done Vashj'ir and Deepholm, and am working on Uldum. So far I really love Vashj'ir for its stunning visuals. I really love the water and a real underwater zone is by far my favourite.
Deepholm, not so much, mostly since I had just come from the very bright scene to the darkest area...
I am sure If I'd waited a bit I would have enjoyed Deepholm more.
Uldum I am really enjoying, the sands, the Tol'var, its a really stunning area, and the harrison Jones quests are a lot of fun lol.

Sadly I havent been able to play my higher leveled toons so much since my Laptop keeps crashing, but my Worgen rogue is almost lv 50 and I am really enjoying playing one. Last rogue I had was a human that made it to lv 20, but ended up deleting her because I hadnt played her in almost half a year.

Started on my Worgen druid, and got from lv 1-19 in one day, yaya heirlooms. Though I wish I'd tried harder to get more duplicates of them since he's a feral running in spellcaster leathers, with the lava dredger mace, and the sp mace when the healer goes /oom.

One thing I really do not like one bit about the new changes is that healers are going /oom WAY TO FAST! I dont think I'll be playing my Druid (who is lv 80) until they fix the mana issue, since she will mostly be que-ing as a healer, same with my Shaman whom I leveled from 1-80 as a healer. So those two will stay lv 80 until the mana issue is fixed.

It was fun going through the new content on my hunter. being able to nab some of these rares before there where to many hunting them. All thats left on my list is Sambas and a blue dragonhawk. Late January I will be getting my new PC with a much better graphics card and memory so that I can play WoW in much graphics. Will probably get a better router to since the one we have only does 54Mbps, and we're on highspeed extrem...

Another thing that is getting very tiresome and another reason why I've left my higher toons alone, is the stupidity in the RDF...40-60+ min ques to have the group fall apart at the first boss and/or wipe. Honestly, you think that since its new content everyones re-learning how to play, and theres unbalances, people would have the brains to go slow and help eachother.

[Comett]

There's no mana issue as far as I can see. Healers simply can't spam nourish/flash of light/healing surge/etc any more (the quick heal each class has). It's an emergency heal only. In a way I really like that and I'm looking forward to playing my healer again... because finally mana is actually an issue again *lol*. Not that spamming chain heal or keeping hots on every member of the party/raid wasn't fun...

[erwil]

Aye, the mana issues are not as bad as it might seem. You need to be more careful with your recourses now and pop your cooldowns more efficiently. Lightwell = love. Only if I could get people to actually click on it in a burn phase..

One of our guild paladins was trying to heal a heroic with the old wotlk mentality and spells and kept going oom constantly. When we told him to go through his spell book and give the cheaper spell another look, he was all "O". He's doing a lot better now. I've seen some paladins still try to stack intellect, but I hope it's not going to take long for them to notice how valuable stat spirit actually is. I seriously don't want to see paladins go back into the "lol seethe /need" and mindless intellect stacking what wotlk was.

[TygerDarkstorm]

I don't really consider them "mana issues"--as in, it's not a bug and fully intended by Blizzard.

For example, while we were still leveling I dpsed a random with my guild and watched our druid healer go oom on just about every pull from trying to keep everyone at 100% and using regrowth a lot. I suggested for her to use nourish more and her reply was, "I have a system."

I respected that and let it be. I decided that I wanted to give healing a try since I had been reading about the new playstyle. Once I got acclimated to it, I found it to be almost just as easy as wotlk (not as mindless but nothing I'd call hard) and I had very few mana issues within two runs.

My guild recently downed Mobus and because of the kiting and positioning of him, everyone was informed that I would only be healing the tank and ignoring everyone else unless I had the spare mana; it was a very interesting fight and I got most of my regen back from innervate and nourish spam.

[Troubleshot]

I am LOVING the questing changes. Almost everything about them. The way a zone flows, the way each zone has a climax of some sort, and the cut scenes (although it got a bit crazy towards the end of the Harrison Jones stuff). Better quest drop rates and very few "go in there again" quests is awesome.

I have only seen a couple of normal dungeons to this point... I have no intention of hitting heroics until the points reward epic gear of some worth (which could be a year). I have plenty of alts to quest with and I'm currently finishing up the Long, Strange, Trip achievement on a few toons... so I have plenty to do while I wait on the heroics.

I do think that the whole crafting system needs some work (all of them really but particularly Archaeology).

I like the questing, the leveling, all that. But what I really don't like? How they dumbed everything down. I miss a lot of my spells, a lot of my spells OLD effects, I miss the old talent trees, I miss not being able to just randomly click while speccing and still coming out with something okay,...

It's funny, because the dumbing down is one of things I truly enjoy. There are a TON of non-damaging abilities spread across the many alts I play that I would love to have had over the years... but until now, there has never been any room for them unless I made a decision to do whatever I did (tank, heal, dps) at less than optimal capacity.

I absolutely LOVE the fact that now I can pretty much take ALL of the important spec choices and still have room for the utility (and sometimes just plain fun) stuff.

...and I hate some of the players that started in WOTLK/Cata. The kind that punch the sheep. The kind that corpsecamp me and then get their asses kicked by my guildie that then relog and call me all kinds of derogative words, and most of all the kind that have absolutely no idea how their class plays.

I don't like being 85. I liked being 23 more. I liked being 84 more. I liked leveling my engineering more.

To be fair, those types of players have ALWAYS existed (and always will). They are, by no means, exclusive to the LK era player. We are just noticing them more now with harder dungeons.

[Saturo]

Yes, they have always existed. But in vanilla and TBC the majority of them quit the game after reaching level 40-ish and realizing that they suck. WOTLK allowed them to get to 80 without any major problems, and I hate that.

[Troubleshot]

Yes, they have always existed. But in vanilla and TBC the majority of them quit the game after reaching level 40-ish and realizing that they suck. WOTLK allowed them to get to 80 without any major problems, and I hate that.

LOL... I think pretty much any lasting game is designed for people that suck to have fun too. I don't mind having people that suck in my dungeon runs unless it actually keeps me from getting to the end (or running up a huge repair bill for me).


I've seen a lot of bad playing over the last 5+ years, tried to help those who cared to improve, chuckled at those who were arrogant about being bad, and on rare occasion even caught myself being the noob... it's all part of the game.


It could be argued that people who suck actually encourage better game design... 5 years ago, only a VERY small percentage of us were getting anywhere at all in raiding... it's much better now.

[Saturo]

Call me elitist, but I liked it better that way. I know I'm not the only one either.

[Karathyriel]

I am one of those noobs, I guess.

So I can tell you, Sat, that I really appreciate what Blizzard did.

I really enjoy being able to go see some dungeons and raids now.
I'm glad I don't have to go raiding day and night and still be able to get some decent equipment by tokens.
I love to see 5K dps when I wear only greens.

There is only one thing I hate: You could tank and spank everything!
That led to people who didn't have any respect for healers or tanks anymore.

But this seems to be taken care of now. Movement, crowd control and less AoE are necessary now... Or so I heard.

If Blizzard wouldn't take care of their casual customers, they'd be screwed soon. Elitists may go for realm/continent/world firsts but let us dumb old idiots please have some fun too, OK?

[TygerDarkstorm]

As someone who plays pretty casually, I'm glad I can see all the raid/dungeon content if I want to. Now, I did think a lot of the free gear they handed out in LK was pretty silly and could have been handled better, but the only way the game will and has survived for so many years is because of casuals like myself. (Bah, this is phrased kind of funny, but basically the casual playerbase has grown substantially, and at the moment, many of us are what fuel the game. People just have a nasty habit of assuming that all casuals are bad players. =P)

If Blizzard catered the game only to the "hardcore" and "elite" I think they'd lose a pretty substantial playerbase. I know a lot of players look back on vanilla through rose-colored glasses (I know my boyfriend does), and I've heard all about the stories and everything, and I'm pretty sure that if they continued that style of game play, WoW probably wouldn't be the powerhouse that it is.

In reality, a lot of what I read about vanilla is that it was broken, boss fights were simple and buggy. You had huge guilds that had to fund 40 man raid groups. A lot of classes were only allowed to play one way if you wanted to advance anywhere in your guild. Paladins almost always had to be holy and they were basically OOC rezzers, as Alliance, you needed at least one dwarf priest for fear ward, etc etc.

I'm glad they've pushed away from that design and I feel that Cataclysm is headed back in the right direction. The content is more challenging and requires you to think more about what you're doing, and getting gear from dungeons before stepping into a raid matters again. And a bonus is that the content is available for everyone to see.

[Saturo]

I am one of those noobs, I guess.

I never called anyone a noob. Please don't put words in my mouth, it's rude.

A lot of classes were only allowed to play one way if you wanted to advance anywhere in your guild. Paladins almost always had to be holy and they were basically OOC rezzers, as Alliance, you needed at least one dwarf priest for fear ward, etc etc.

I liked that design. Sure, I can agree that the other specs shouldn't have been so worthless, but I much preferred when each hybrid class "leaned" towards a certain playstyle, without excelling at anything, instead of now, that hybrids can do each role with the exact same proficiency as a dedicated class. And FYI, I was sad to see the priest racials go. I liked that bit of customizibility.

I'm dropping the topic out of fear of starting a flamewar.

[Karathyriel]

The point of WoW ist, it tells you constantly how awesome you are and gives you some nice gifts.
From level 1 to the (current) end of it.

That's what makes it so addictive. That's what keeps people playing it.

When the real world teaches you what kind of a loser you are, you can always go back and have Thrall, Garrosh or even Jaina and Varian tell you, what an awesome sauce hero you are!

Making it hard to raid or to play dungeons isn't productive.

Look at it like that:
You made a game. Your players are 10% elitist hardcore gamers and 90% casuals.
You can create the game for 10% and piss off the other 90%.
Or you can have 90% players with a smile and 10% grumpy.

Now ask yourself: You wanna tickle some egos or you wanna make some money?

Easy choice, isn't it?

[Karathyriel]

I never called anyone a noob.

No, you didn't.

I did.

I called myself a noob because that's what I am.
Or at least, that's what people tell me all the time when I say "I've never been in this dungeons. Please explain if I have to be aware of something."

I don't mind being a noob. Not at all.

I'm proud to be one. I'm proud that I still see WoW as what it is. A game. Something you do for fun. Something you do in your leisure time. You get nothing from it so why trying so hard?

But that is just my opinion and if you wanna drop it, let's drop it.

'Nuff said!

[TygerDarkstorm]

If this expansion has my boyfriend interested in it when his interest was pretty much dead in WotLK and he only played for me, I figure it can't be too bad at all. ^_^

I like where Cataclysm's headed. Now if they'd just shape up the older player models, I'd be a happy camper. I hate looking at the old models in game and in model viewer and the poor things look so shabby next to the goblins/worgen. =(

[erwil]

I called myself a noob because that's what I am.
Or at least, that's what people tell me all the time when I say "I've never been in this dungeons. Please explain if I have to be aware of something."

I don't mind being a noob. Not at all.

^- (Although I don't think you're a noob. ) People need to be able to say "I don't know. Could you help me?" sometimes. I'm often very unsure about new content and I do my best to read up on things. More experienced players are usually very happy to share tips about a class or a certain boss. I'm always happy to learn new things and it's always an amazing feeling whenever you take a boss down you've worked hard on.

What frustrates me about some people (in growing numbers during wotlk), is when you're supposed to know everything from the start and then more and more people started calling others names and harassing them if they asked for help or made even the smallest mistake.

What Bliz did with the content though, was the right choice in my opinion. If only 1% of the player base is capable of proceeding to the end game content, it's a failure. Wotlk was a bit of roflstomp overall, and I'm hoping that won't be the case in this expansion.

I'd really like to see the older player models updated as well. Even Sambas has got more pixels than my troll. ;^;

[TygerDarkstorm]

Off-topic, I know, but I made a sig for my guild forums last night of my troll druid, and it was immensely disturbing that my troll didn't blink once while I had her pulled up in model-viewer.

[Troubleshot]

Call me elitist, but I liked it better that way. I know I'm not the only one either.

Consider it done.

The point of WoW ist, it tells you constantly how awesome you are and gives you some nice gifts.
From level 1 to the (current) end of it.

That's what makes it so addictive. That's what keeps people playing it.

When the real world teaches you what kind of a loser you are, you can always go back and have Thrall, Garrosh or even Jaina and Varian tell you, what an awesome sauce hero you are!

Making it hard to raid or to play dungeons isn't productive.

Look at it like that:
You made a game. Your players are 10% elitist hardcore gamers and 90% casuals.
You can create the game for 10% and piss off the other 90%.
Or you can have 90% players with a smile and 10% grumpy.

Now ask yourself: You wanna tickle some egos or you wanna make some money?

Easy choice, isn't it?

I could not have said that better if I had tried.


I guess the overall point I would add is that, when you get a few years under your belt, you realize that pride in your ability to play a game is kind of fleeting and silly.

Games are for fun, games are for memories, but no one will be impressed in 15 years when you tell them you were there for the server first kill on Brutalis (although you might get a blank stare). You will have plenty of other real-lifey things to be proud of (finances, ownerships, relationships) that will long outlast any game... regardless of how cool it was or how good you were at it.

I guess the one possible exception is if you end up playing that game for a living... which so few actually do.

[Karathyriel]

Exactly.

Anyone here old enough to remember "Commando" on Commodore 64?


Yep kids, we old people thought, these graphics were awesome!

I played it day and night, i rushed all levels (there were 3, if I remember right) without even looking anymore.
I even reset the score counter 3 times in a row (meaning 3 million points) when you got 50 points per kill.
My friends thought I was so cool.

Today, those same friends look at my and say: "What is Commando? Hm, I don't remember."
There goes my awesome childhood ability of gaming...

[VelkynKarma]

I called myself a noob because that's what I am.
Or at least, that's what people tell me all the time when I say "I've never been in this dungeons. Please explain if I have to be aware of something."

I don't mind being a noob. Not at all.

^- (Although I don't think you're a noob. ) People need to be able to say "I don't know. Could you help me?" sometimes. I'm often very unsure about new content and I do my best to read up on things. More experienced players are usually very happy to share tips about a class or a certain boss. I'm always happy to learn new things and it's always an amazing feeling whenever you take a boss down you've worked hard on.

What frustrates me about some people (in growing numbers during wotlk), is when you're supposed to know everything from the start and then more and more people started calling others names and harassing them if they asked for help or made even the smallest mistake.

So much this! And sometimes it doesn't matter HOW much you read up on a boss fight or a particular dungeon engagement; you just have to see it and experience it once before you really get it. Not experience it through text or watch it on a tiny youtube screen, but really EXPERIENCE it. It's at this moment that you might realize, "Oh...the guide said to not stand in the purple fire when boss X throws it at phase 2, but it looks more like purple OOZE to me. Okay I know what to keep an eye out for now!"

But it can get pretty aggravating all the same when you genuinely want to learn a dungeon encounter and people get all elitist on you because what, you don't know this all already?

As for the original topic, I've only had Cata since Christmas, but I already love it! I've played in Vashj'ir so far and really loved the scenery and the setup. I loved that quests would keep you seamlessly moving from one quest hub to the next, so you never feel lost or get stuck with a 'what now' moment (well, mostly. Apparently I have 16 quests left to take care of in Vashj'ir to get the zone achieve and have no idea where they are since my questline kinda...ended).

The new mechanics are great. I love pop-up quests, they're very convenient. I love the new 'red exclamation point' monsters that let you know 'oh hey....killing this gives you a new quest!' I LOVE the random little interspersed cut-scenes that are all over the place, and the fact that they've added more voice-acting to the game besides just the MAJOR characters like Thrall or Garrosh. I love that starter gear doesn't look ugly as hell anymore and that my characters can have actual CAPES before level twenty instead of a small scrap of cloth hanging from the back of their neck. I love the revamp of the zones and how they work so much better for both runners and flyers. I love new race/class combos. I love Archaeology!

In short I pretty much love 95% of the new stuff they've done with Cataclysm. Blizz did a fantastic job with it Now I just have to work up the nerve to step into a dungeon and maybe I'll love even more

(But man Blizz. Give us back our Shatt/Dal portals plz. Leveling in those zones is such a pain in the ass now!)

~VelkynKarma

[Royi]

but I much preferred when each hybrid class "leaned" towards a certain playstyle, without excelling at anything, instead of now, that hybrids can do each role with the exact same proficiency as a dedicated class.

I agree with this, it should be jack of all trades, master of none. Not jack of all trades and master of all trades. (basically Paladins are OP and always have been)

Rogues, hunters, warlocks, and mages should always be tops in DPS for raids and such since they don't have any other choices to do other things.
Then Dks, Warriors, Priests, and Shaman should be next in line since they each have 2 different roles they can pick.
Then Druids and Paladins should be generally last in dps, since well they can do all 3 roles.

I'm not saying a substantial difference, but there should be one. there isnt good reason that the Blizzard-confessed 3 specs that lack in DPS for fights are 2 hunter specs and 1 mage spec.