So This Is Cataclysm…

Well, long time no write. In my defence, so many more talented bloggers have been keeping us informed (and entertained), and I really haven’t had anything to add, other than a heart-felt “Is that it?”

Yes, I’m another person who’s underwhelmed with what Blizzard has brought to the table with Cataclysm, and I’m currently spending my time turning my small pile of gold into a slightly larger pile of gold through various machinations on the AH.

I’ve currently leveled Mingle to 85, and she’s decently geared for heroics (only two greens remaining, her wand and one trinket, and wearing the epic crafted healer belt). Her tailoring and inscription are both at 525, and inscription is proving a nice money-spinner with mysterious fortune cards and inferno inks.

Pringle managed to get to 82 in Vashj’ir, and has maxed jewelcrafting and enchanting. Prospecting ore is still more fun than milling herbs, by the way.

Dingle is still sitting at 80, having very briefly ventured into Hyjal, but hasn’t really had much more time spent with her.

Ringle has been through Hyjal a little further, but I just haven’t been interested in leveling her to 84, where she’ll need to be to gain access to the recipe vendors in Twilight Highlands (she’s currently sitting on 490 leatherworking and 511 blacksmithing).

The surprise has been Kringle, who I’ve enjoyed levelling the most – hunters are still the most solo-friendly class. It’s kind of telling that even so, he’s only managed to reach 83 (but has 525 alchemy, and switched from herbalism to skinning to help provide leather for Ringle’s leveling, reaching 525 in that by the end of Hyjal). Kringle’s currently sitting in Deepholm, having completed the first of the pillar quest chains (with a cute pet turtle from BFD).

I’ve also run a Worgen through the new starting zone (and been… underwhelmed by the theme-park linearity and the feeling that you’re along for the ride) and have a Goblin most of the way through their starting zone (also underwhelmed buy most, but not all, of the experience – still a themepark, but occasionally a fun one). All I can say is, they had to make those zones once-only events – when you’ve been through the ride once, there’s nothing to come back to (and I can see the need to go through the ride for new characters to be a disincentive).

Incidentally, who else can foresee Worgen being left in the background while Goblins get thoroughly integrated into the WoW lore in the same way that Draenei and Blood Elves came to be treated after Wrath? (No, I’m not saying “Blizzard love Horde more than Alliance”, just pointing out that they really dropped the ball with Draenei after they dropped them into the WoW lore with TBC, and from what we’ve seen of Worgen and Goblin presence in Cata so far, it’s looking like Goblins will be favoured in the same way that Blood Elves were)

Now, there have been quite a few things that I’ve enjoyed about the post-80 Cata experience – a number of quite fun moments in the various zones, and some fun new mechanics (although I’ve yet to abuse Lifegrip with Mingle). But on the whole, Blizz seem to have substituted the breadth of gameplay pre-Cataclysm (for example, wrath levelling which had multiple paths all the way from 70-80) with a very linear leveling path brightened with the occasional patch of polish and occasional illusion of choice.

Incidentally, I’m really surprised they let the issues through in the final release where if you miss a quest-giver, you’ll find yourself locked out of further questing in a zone until you’ve managed to find the lost quest-giver (with no suggestion from the game that this is the case). I’ve been caught out by this twice in Hyjal, but fortunately haven’t tripped over it in Vashj’ir yet (which is apparently problematic, with the 3d terrain).

I’ve managed to force myself to grind Mingle to 525 archaeology (over several days and many hours, with most of the time spent auto-flying while I read a book or played another game on my ipod touch – thank goodness for Archy, which cut-down on the time-wasting quite substantially), and it confirmed my suspicion that it was going to be less fun than fishing, and mostly just a massive travel time sink. (Seriously, who thought this implementation was a good idea?)

I didn’t have the confidence to do any LFD while I was levelling, and my experiences have consisted of a healing a single run of normal Lost City of the Tol’vir with Mingle – horror stories from guildmates about the new state of pugs (now that healers can’t heal through stupid, and being blamed and/or abused for wipes because of this change) and the challenge of Cata healing (with mana management being the new measure of a healer’s ability) really made an effective deterrent to my giving it a try.

However, doing a normal run at 85 wasn’t excessively painful, aside from half-expected mana issues (there was just one wipe, but a couple of the dps had a couple of extra deaths while I was trying to keep up the tank). The problem for me is that healing just (as I’m hearing increasingly often) wasn’t fun. The change from “I want to decide who lives and who dies” from Wrath healing to “I hope I don’t run out of mana, and and please please please let the dps remember to run out of the fire” hasn’t been especially entertaining (especially as someone who used to LFD almost exclusively).

Currently? I’m mostly logging in to prospect for, cut and sell gems. And transmute Truegold. And mill herbs for cards and inferno ink to sell. And I’m hard-pressed to raise the enthusiasm to run alts through the new theme-parks level up other characters, as there’s nothing of interest for me at 85. The thought of hardmode raiding makes my skin crawl, and even normal modes aren’t appealing (although I suspect finding a guild which is just running normal modes may be challenging). Heroic 5-mans? Pugging them isn’t something to be done voluntarily (especially as a healer), but I have no interest in guild runs (probably because I still don’t feel comfortable in this guild). Normal 5-mans? My single attempt just didn’t engage me, even though the group did manage to complete it. (I’ve also heard a number of complaints about the length of Wrath 5-mans – do they need to make them quicker? Or is that solely a result of group competence?) Rep grinds? Well, if you’re not doing Heroics, they’re not really needed.

The sad thing for me is, there just isn’t really anything else. I’ve never been interested in achievements (aside from Loremaster on Mingle), I don’t collect pets, and… My dream of levelling more Dwarves lost substantial momentum when I realised that the revamped 1-60 levelling, while a substantial improvement over vanilla, was a lot more linear than I cared for (although not as bad as 80-85 has turned out to be).

I think I’ve run out of interest in WoW again – which is kind of unexpected, considering how much Cataclysm promised. Unfortunately it would appear that much of what it offers has a real lack of replayability for my playstyle, and I’m starting to run into that already.

But hey, it’s looking like there could be some interesting new titles in the near future - DC Universe Online (check out TotalBiscuit’s beta footage of the character creator and starting zone footage if you’re curious) and Earthrise come to mind (along with Rift in about two more months) - not to mention the substantial number of games recently on sale on Steam and other digital vendors (I’m currently knee-deep in Darkstar One and revisiting City of Heroes briefly).

WoW, on the other hand, is just something I’m playing if I’m feeling bored (or more accurately, until I get bored, which isn’t taking long). Cataclysm might have changed the world, but it wasn’t really a change that’s worked for me.

/wave

WoW: Guess What’s Hiding In 4.0.1

Post soundtrack: “Moondance” by Van Morrison

I noticed something interesting while 4.0.1 was installing, and now I’ve found a working version of WoWModelViewer (the ‘DEV WORK’ version, so you should be surprised if it works) I found something veeeeeeery nice.

Isn’t Miss Goblin cute?  And she has company.

Meet Mister Goblin.  Some great little touches in his animations – I particularly love the way his ears sag when he cries, it’s quite touching.

Mr Worgan.   Pretty much what you’d expect.  And last, but not least…

And Ms Worgen.  While she’s still prone to lycanthropic Chihuahua-ism when viewed from certain angles (and some of her animations have clipping issues with her armour that you wouldn’t believe), she’s not as poorly modeled as the initial screenshots of her from the char select screen would suggest.

She does seem to need a good few layers of polish, though.

Roll on 4.0.3!

/wave

WoW: The Coming Add-on Cataclysm

Post soundtrack: “Cataclysm” by Blizzard.

There’s nothing like visiting the PTR to convince you it’s time to re-subscribe to WoW. Hence I’ve returned (albeit not especially triumphantly).

So I’ve started tidying up some loose ends on my old main characters on alliance side  and have been trying to get my solitary high-level horde alt (ding 64!) up in level enough to do the new troll quest chain (despite the likelihood that it’s probably going to be just as truncated and as underwhelming an experience as the Gnomes failure to recapture Gnomeregan was).

But my limited time on the PTR reminded me of one important little detail: when Cataclysm strikes and (insert rampant hyperbole here, describing how things changing ruins the game you know and love, while simultaneously bitching about the game you know and love because it’s all the same and nothing changes and… oh, wait), it’s also likely going to be losing a number of the addons we currently know and love.  (Ask yourself how long it’s been since some of the addons you may be using have been updated? My oldest was last updated Jul 2008…)

I transferred an 80 rogue and 80 priest onto the PTR, and while I can play a rogue with the default UI (well, I can solo; raiding would probably be kind of difficult) there’s no way in heck I could even heal a 5-man without Vuhdo. Looking at the collection of addons in my live install, it’s clear I’m going to have a lot of work ahead of me to get ready for Cata, not just in winnowing out those which are now unsupported, but also in searching for the new and improved.

There are three parts to the UI that my UI layout revolves around:

• Action Bars: The default bars are almost the only part of the UI that I leave untouched – not only are they perfectly functional (and guaranteed to work the day after a big patch), but I also like the art used when you’re controlling vehicles.
• Player/Target Frames: While sparse of information and truly awfully positioned (especially for classes with rapidly changing resources to manage, such as rogues, hunters and warriors) they do the job; in the past I’ve usually replaced them with XPerl, which is the best implementation I’ve come across so far of “It Just Works” in terms of unitframe addons. I find unitframes, once more sanely positioned, are best supported by a HUD in the centre of the screen, so important information is located where your attention is focused. (MetaHUD is my current HUD of choice, having dropped DHUD which hasn’t been updated for a while)
• Raid Frames: I rely upon these for my healing, and experience shows I perform best with spells bound to all four mouse buttons (left/right/forward/back) with shift/ctrl/alt modifiers. My addon of choice for this is Vuhdo, which handles both frames and mouse-over healing quite capably (but isn’t currently PTR-ready, although apparently there’s a version for the Beta).

After those, it starts to get cosmetic.  Unlike minimalists, I like having access to more information than the default UI usually reveals (although not necessarily displayed all the time).  A Data Broker bar addon (and assorted modules) is great for this, my current being ChocolateBar.  The minimap gets replaced and moved to the centre-top of the screen, cue Chinchilla. A more detailed buff/debuff display, Elkano’s BuffBars. Replace Blizz’s Floating Combat Text with MikScrollingBattleText.  Replace chat windows with Prat and WIM. Then there’s Auctioneer, of course. And who can forget DeadlyBossMods?

To that you can add convenience addons like Atlas/Atlasloot, Fishing Buddy, Mapster, Opie, Outfitter, Skada, and little things like No Gryphons. And that barely scratches the surface of the various bits and pieces I’ve accumulated – I have 235 folders in my Addons directory, probably representing near on a hundred addons installed.

Methinks ‘tis time to cut back. And hey, what a great opportunity for it!

/wave

Cataclysm Raiding May Not Kill 25-Mans

Post soundtrack: “The Ewok Celebration Song” by Crackerjack Junction

Yes, I’m still here; I was just being lazy.  Anyway, here’s a little opinion piece about the latest Cataclysm preview.  Enjoy.

So there’ll be no more separate 10-man/25-man raids in Cataclysm?  It sounds good to me, and while in the near term the effect may be cataclysmic (see what I did there?), it’s quite possible there are blue skies on the horizon.

From what I’ve read, reaction to the changes (announced here) seem to be divided into four camps:

1. Oh no!  25-man raiding is doooooomed!  No-one will do it if 10-mans offer the same rewards.
2. Yay, 10-man raiding will no longer be raiding-with-training-wheels!  Equality at last!
3. …
4. Profit!

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

Seriously though, I’m not usually an optimist but I’m finding myself leaning towards the thought that these changes could be a good thing for raiding in future, and here’s why.

I think that, while 25-man raiding will be facing quite a shake-up (probably equivalent to the transition from 40-man in vanilla WoW to 10- and 25-man with TBC) there will be a new equilibrium after the dust has settled, and there’s a good chance it might leave 25-man raiding in a stronger place (albeit with a smaller population).

At the moment 25s are driven (progression aside) by the fact that the best gear is exclusive to 25-man raids, and because of that it’s where the majority of players are going.  Not just the good players, but also the…  shall we say, “less than talented.”  (Incidentally, a lot of complaints I’ve read about the current state of recruitment for 25s currently seems to revolve around the difficulty in finding (and keeping) competent players, often leaving a number of raid spaces being taken up by people whose lack of skill acts as a drag on the genuinely capable players but who are almost guaranteed a space because they show up for raids)

With 10s and 25s sharing the same level of rewards I suspect there will be a sudden drop in the number of players willing to carry others in order to acquire epics for themselves.  Soon after Cataclysm launches (when the population of 85s starts to stabilise) I’m pretty sure there will be a sudden increase in the number of 10-man raiding guilds, as like-minded players will start to gather together.  It’s also possible that these new 10-man guilds will start forming earlier, when the pre-launch 4.0 patch goes live, if the promised guild-leveling mechanic is launched with it.

The side-effect of 25s no longer being mandatory for top-shelf gear, is that players looking for easy loot may find themselves doing 10-mans more often.  And with a smaller pool of players wishing to do 25s, it’s not impossible that they may find themselves combining forces (without the less skilled players who now focus on the convenience of 10-mans) to focus on 25-man raiding.  It might be too early to say that Cataclysm could be a new ‘golden age’ for 25-man raiding like TBC was, but if the random factors align it could happen.  (my fingers are crossed on this one)

The downside to this will be that players who aren’t as skilled will find themselves having to work harder for a raid space, or will come to rely increasingly on pugs.  Fortunately Blizz have said that the initial raids will be balanced toward players in blue gear, so pugging them shouldn’t be too much more difficult than Naxx 2.0 was.  After that?  Well, there will be badges which will likely be farmable in heroics and the beginner raids.  Time will tell, I guess.

I like what I’ve read so far, and it’d be nice to get back into 25-man raiding with a group of like-minded players.  Am I being foolishly optimistic?  Maybe.  But I’d like to think this could be the expansion that brings dedicated raiders back together.

I Want Patience And I Want It Now

Like many others, I’ve been following the announcements at Blizzcon about what to expect with both Cataclysm and the much closer Icecrown patch.  All I can say is summed up in the title of this post.

Bearing in mind that what was announced was (in the case of the expansion) very much open to change between now and release (the closest they’ve come to a date has been “targeted for a 2010 release date” (as mentioned here), there’s not really anything they’ve said that I’m not interested in seeing.  Between the class changes (yay, more Dwarves!), leveling in the new old Azeroth, the new profession and Paths of the Titans, guild experience and leveling, and ranked battlegrounds, there' will not only be plenty for level 80s to do when the expansion launches but there will also be a lot of appeal to level new characters from scratch.

But that’s a long way off – and patience was never a strong suit for me.

The Icecrown information looks interesting, though, but the downside for me is having to endure the Coliseum raid for a couple more months – I’m seriously not looking forward to the hard-modes.

Icecrown Citadel – Raid

• The dungeon will have 4 different floors.
• There will be 12 "Epic" boss encounters.
• There will be an epic cinematic for defeating the Lich King.
• Waypoints from Ulduar are being used in this instance.
• Sindragosa, the ultimate Frost Wyrm is one boss in Icecrown.
• The Spire with the frozen throne on top runs through the entire instance.
• At one point you will board an airship with your faction leader, and race the opposing faction to the top of icecrown.
• There are cannons and rocketpacks and catapults to aid you in your battle with the opposing faction.
• The 3rd floor has 3 wings.
• Parts of the platform on the 4th floor with the Lich King will break apart and fall during the encounter.

Icecrown Citadel – Dungeon

• There are three different wings in this dungeon.
• You must progress through the wings linearly.
• An "epic" quest series unlocks the wings.
• 8 bosses in total

On a more personal note, I think I’ll stop with my glyph sales reports after this week’s one; I’ve proven to my satisfaction that not only is Inscription profitable, it’s consistently so.  And to be quite honest, it’s almost turning into bragging, so I think it’s time is done.

For the seven days from 17th August – 23rd August:
Total glyphs sold: 1882
Average price per glyph: 10.37g
Average sales per day: 2787.71g
Total income from the AH: 19,514g

Let’s compare that with my first report:

For the seven days from 21st June – 28th June:
Total glyphs sold: 622
Average price per glyph: 9.74g
Average sales per day: 865.86g
Total income from the AH: 6061g

I have to say, I love being fiscally self-sufficient, and the process has become a lot easier to manage compared to when I first started.  And, if I can do it, there’s little to stop anyone else from doing so.  (Other than the ability to come up with a system, to manage their time effectively, and to pony up with the gold to get stock to start with.)

Moving on, I’m looking at the possibility of un-retiring paladin Bingle from bank-alt services, and getting her to 80.  I’m also looking at the possibility of giving a Death Knight another try.  The biggest issue I’m finding is that I’m running out of character slots – 10 sounds like lots, but if you’re as serious about high-level alts as I am, they disappear pretty quickly.

I currently have 6 level 80s, one 70 bank-alt, and the 35 druid bank-alt – Snowfall, my Blood Elf hunter, has been removed from my roster in order to free up her slot, as the BE aesthetic was just too unappealing to level her any further (that darned matchstick).  That leaves 2 free slots on this server, and while I’ll have the Dwarven shaman and mage to make space for, that’s quite possibly a year off.  For now I’ve rolled my DK (I’m sure I’ll introduce you to Ninglethouse, eventually), and my current plan is to level her to 70, then decide who to take to 80 first between her and Bingle.

But errands await, and I think it’s time to put off making today’s glyphs in order to get some more PvP time on Pringle.  (I’ll probably put together a Rogue’s starter PvP gear post sometime soon)

/wave

On Cataclysm, Commenters, And Lore Changes (Oh, And Gold)

I’ve been perusing the various comment threads of people’s posts regarding the rumours about the Cataclysm expansion, and a couple of things have come to my attention.

There seem to be a few categories* into most of the commenters seem to fit (although some manage to fit into more than one), and here’s what they look like from my perspective.  (Consider my tongue planted ever so slightly in cheek while you read this)

• The Lore Lawyers – These people are very much fixated on what currently exists in-game (and sometimes in previous games such as Warcraft 3), and refuse to entertain the possibility of anything that hasn’t been seen already.  They can use their knowledge to both support and refute any rumoured changes (sometimes simultaneously).  Can end world hunger if they use their powers for good.
• The Druid Denialists – A sub-category of Lore Lawyers, they may be much more open-minded about most things, with the exception of non-Night Elf and non-Tauren druids, which Blizzard would obviously never do.
• The True Believers – If it’s on the internet, it must be true.  They take the rumours as gospel, and have a lot of posts containing “ZOMG!!ZOMG!!”
• The Imagineers – A sub-category of True Believers, they love what they’ve read, and then they take the ball and run with it.  Posts which expand on the rumours with a lot of wild speculation (sometimes reading like a fan-boy’s wish-list) can usually be traced back to them.
• The Pessimists – Another sub-category of True Believers, they can usually be recognised by their “-Change X- sounds awesome, but Blizz will ruin it like everything else they do” posts.  Firm believers that every silver lining has a cloud.
• The Skeptics – They may admit that the rumours look interesting, but they don’t believe anything until it’s confirmed officially.  Possibly the most boring to read (Kidding! I’m kidding!), but they help keep the True Believers grounded.
• The Denialists – A sub-category of the Skeptics.  While they may say the rumours look interesting, they don’t believe Blizzard would ever make changes so sweeping to a game as established as WoW.  If the rumoured changes are confirmed, may still not believe them until they’re actually playing the expansion.
• The Logisticians – A sub-category of Denialists (which makes them a sub-sub-category of the Skeptics, I guess), they believe the reason Blizzard would never make the rumoured changes is due to technical issues.  (“Instance full”, anyone?)
• The Politely Hopeful – With no visible sign of hyperbole, they just say “It sounds good, and I can’t wait for official information at Blizzcon.”  (Probably your favourite category if you’re an over-worked forum moderator)

I’m sure any number of my more literary readers could add more categories (and probably more amusingly).

Personally, I’m somewhere between a True Believer (my inner fanboy is going “ZOMG! Dwarf Shamans and Mages!”) and Politely Hopeful (a new, old Azeroth sounds verrrry interesting).

One thing that I think gets missed by a lot of the people who’re saying Blizzard would never do “X” because of existing lore, is that it’s Blizzard’s sandbox and they can do anything they want with it.  If they disagree, I’d suggest taking a good look at the Draenei, pre- and post-TBC.  Ret-con much?

Do they want Space Goats arriving on Azeroth to bring Shamanism to the Alliance?  Done.  Elves joining the Horde, giving them Paladins?  Done.  Compared to that, are Troll Druids and Gnome Priests really all that outlandish?

Anyway, on a completely unrelated matter, as it’s the start of a new week it’s time to gloat over sum up my glyph sales for the week just finished.

For the seven days from 10rd August – 16th August:
Total glyphs sold: 2073
Average price per glyph: 8.84g
Average sales per day: 2616g
Total income from the AH: 18,312g

The irritating undercutter who was listing glyphs at a flat 3g/ea has been and gone, and been replaced by another merchant who sits in the AH and undercuts almost immediately upon my posting.  I have a contingency plan for this situation, but time will tell if it’s actually needed.

Needless to say, I’m kind of overwhelmed by the sheer volume of gold that’s passing through my hands currently (even after taking into account the expense of restocking).  The only down-side is the amount of time it takes to mill herbs and make inks – thank heavens for updates to Skillet and Panda.

I invested a few thousand in retraining Bingle in the noble arts of Transmutation-Specialised Alchemy last night – about 3.5k in mats and training to 450, and 1k for a Tome of Cold Weather Flight so she could get to Dalaran for the epic-gem transmute quest.  I don’t think I’ll be making the training costs back from transmutes any time soon, but on the positive side it gives me an additional transmute cooldown to play with (and completes the trio of specialists, with Elixir-specced Kringle and Potion-specced Fingle).

As I mentioned in my previous post, Pringle is now a happy little level 80 rogue (and is still nursing a hangover of world-shaking dimensions, but Dwarves are used to that – it’s the reason they’re stereotypically so dour).  I’m looking at gearing him up for PvP, and in the crafted gear he’s wearing so far, my experience is that rogues are ridiculously squishy.  Seriously. you’d think he was wearing cloth.  Or possibly was naked.  Rogue PvP is nothing like the fun of disc priest PvP, at least in his beginner-gear.

Also, in the mail today (the RL mail, not in-game) my Authenticators arrived.  Yes, I’m practicing an additional layer of account-protection (and it was pretty painless to setup).  I’ve taped it to the keyboard, as it’s not something you want to lose.

Well, my chores await (not least of which is milling my fingers to the bone), so it’s time to go fake productivity.

/wave

* – There are two types of people in the world.  Those who divide the people of the world into two types, and those who do not.

I Can Has More Dwarves?

I’m hoping the leaked information on MMO-Champion regarding the next expansion is accurate…  Goblins and Worgen are nifty and all, but I’m hanging on for the dwarf shamans and mages!  Yes!  More Dwarf classes!  (WTB more character slots – 10 might not be enough…)

And speaking of characters, meet my newest level 80.

Celebrating as Dwarves celebrate everything, with a mug in hand.

/wave