What are your initial thoughts about the Cataclysm expansion?
It’s a topic you can take anywhere you’d like. What’s your favourite new zone? What do you think of the instances? Any screenshots you’d like to share? Anything you’re excited to get started on? Whatever might come to mind regarding the main question
This is likely going to be a massively long post, with pictures and all, so I will be placing it behind a cut for you to read over at your leisure 😀 Follow me through to my initial thoughts on Cata during day 1 and 2 of my experience.
To make this a more comprehansive topic, I created a goblin toon as well and played through the starting area to get a better feel of what changes have been made, some of the things were before Cata in the last patch, but to me they make up the cata offering, so please don’t get pedantic about it being released 2 weeks before cata 🙂
Anyone who knows me or has read some of my blog will know I love WoW, there would have to be massive issues for me not to be happy with the game. I like the added convenience they are adding into the game, yeah it’s making it easier as well, but it’s a game and to be fair, i kind of like having a hard Real life to handle every day and coming home to Azeroth where it is fun, light hearted and i don’t have any issues to worry about, other than sh0uld I spent all my cash on the flight training I need? WoW is almost the perfect game in my eyes, and everytime they bring in changes they make it even better than I thought it could be. I am not the type to complain; bitterly, loudly and multiple times in the public eye, about small niggly things in the game when if you stand back, objectively, and look at the amount of work, effort, time and dedication Blizzard put into it, I believe they are doing their best to make it balanced for everyone and keeping it fresh imust be hard. They have done a great job with Cata and here is why I think so.
The new features of the questlog and tracking are the best things I have found so far. As per the image below, if you need to kill a person the quest log shows you who that is. That is just the beyond awesome, I have so many hours clocked up running around looking for specific mobs – it used to be a pet hate until I started using wowhead ages ago to look them up and see what they looked like. I love this functionality.
The second feature I noticed was the quest completing whilst not at a questgiver. I am yet to do some research into what conditions it can happen under, however sometimes a quest will pop up a little box saying you can complete it. This had me cheering in real life about the convenience of not having to run back to the quest giver all the time. I know it isn’t such a big deal if you have multiple quests on the go and you are running back and forth all the time anyway, but I like it. I like the convenience of getting that done and not having to think about it once it is complete.
One of my favourite things from the Goblin start area is the Cola!! It gives you a great idea when you drink it….refer to images! I grabbed a stack whislt doing a quest I was on, hoping they are still there today, but OMG I just want to keep drinking it for the funny stuff that comes out. It’s the small things that amuse me 😀 I also love the homage to BSG with the Buccaneers making an appearance who are going against the sharks, well at least I hope that is a BSG reference otherwise I am just going to take it as one anyway 😀
I was questing in SS the other day on my mage and had a few experiences with new videos. Instead of just reading the quest text to find the story out, on a few occassions, videos actually played the story. I loved the added touch of making us feel more involved and not just letting us move past the actual quest text – let’s face it not many people read it. (speaking of which, there is an awesome quest in SS now where you ARE the quest giver and you just mock people for not reading the quest text – had me laughing). The quest chain then advanced with me in the video on a mount with the quest giver heading to a different section. I can’t wait to see how many more videos are in the game now, or did I just happen to strike one of only a couple? But that is a lot of work and effort involved in creating all these different videos and I am entirely grateful for them. They have added another element to the game to really make me feel part of Azeroth.
After all the excitement of worgen vs Goblin, I decided I had to create a Goblin and see what all the fuss was about with the new starting zones. I was not let down. I may play through the worgen area as well, just to see it, but if it is as good as the goblin area it will be awesome. I feel bad for the Goblins being blown up – twice – but well dangerous times we live in! hehe Not sure if it is just me, but do the quests seem smaller to you? I felt that most of the questing I have done – both as an 80 and a new goblin, was long horrible drawn out quests. It seemed like smaller amounts were needed, or in the case of large numbers they were easier to get in large quantities. I just felt that I was completing quests faster and getting through more of them. The goblin start area took me about 3 hours to play through, including stopping to take pictures and actually reading the quest text. I have made it to level 10 and have just gotten to Org, so will now see what all the new flow for quests is like, but so far I was impressed. Although who wouldn’t be impressed driving around in a car most of the time, which when you bumped into citizens they advised they were going to sue 😀
My mage was about the same in the new area, I went and started in Hyjal. I spent about 2.5 hours solid questing and was about a third of the way through level 80. Bearing in mind, I was completing with every other person camping mobs as well, so quests were taking longer anyway, I was also helping the hubby out, who was on call and his phone kept ringing, so he was on follow to me and I would kill everything then have to swap to his pc to get him his loots etc 😀 I might have gotten more done had we not had that issue. Again the quests felt smaller, like less work to get them done. I am not a fan of levelling, I took 4 years to get another toon past level 30, how I ended up with 2 other level 80’s is beyond me, so anything that makes the levelling less painful is fine by me 😀 I want to level my pally as holy this time and basically just run instances and learn how to heal, I want to bring my warrior back out of service as well and keep her as prot instead of my pally. Questing, as it is in the first few days, is awesome, the areas are shiny and new and very pretty to look at, they seem to have made levelling not horrible however, there is one small issue.
People are, in large groups, idiots. We have known this for a while, but the idealist in me always hopes that it will be different and people will learn from last time, but nope. Finding a quest helper takes longer than actually completing the damn quest because of the 45 hundred people standing right on top of the quest giver, mounted and not moving. It pisses me right off, however that is not really something that can be helped. I have seen a few others say the same thing, so I know I am not alone. So that made my experience slighty more annoying than I would have liked. They need to phase the quest givers so we can only see them and not the hundreds standing on them….
My other small whinge, which if I look into some more I may not need to actually whinge about it Archaeology – has anyone found an actual dig site? I guess I am not entirely sure how it is supposed to work, but I have been trolling around on a few different toons and I have not seen anything that lookd like a digsite yet? Are they obvious? WHERE ARE THEY!?!?! You see my issue with this, is that i can’t level my profession up and I hate that on my mage. I can’t have a profession that isn’t completely levelled, it may send me insane. I am a serial achiever. Yes I have a problem, but it helps keep my OCD under control…..I can’t handle this profession not being compelte. I must remember to do some research and see if I can find out anything 😀
In conclusion, I think there are many aw
esome things in this xpac which have given us a better feel in game, I am impressed they have managed to fit so much into it and still keep the feel of Azeroth. I love the changes and I can’t wait to get into the instances and then actually see all the new quests from start to finish on my mage to get through all the new achievements they dumped on me 🙂 I think Cata is awesome, I love it and I love the changes. I think they did a brilliant job with improving graphics and game time for all the other addicts. Yes there are a few quest hiccups that annoyed me and some smaller things, but overall they don’t outweight the above cool things they added into the game.
Sorry this post ended up being so massive, I just got carried away I think 😀
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