This weekend I have been mostly playing… World of Warcraft – Cataclysm beta

That’s right folks, ive got a closed beta invite to the Cataclysm beta!

So how did this all roll around then?  Well back when Starcraft 2 was in beta I logged into my account manager on battle.net and enrolled in betas.  I wanted to try SC2 having been a massive SC1 fan and spent many summers playing that over the LAN (Yeah… LAN Blizzard!) with my friends.  I didn’t get into the SC2 beta though, but now its released yay!

So anyway, I was thinking of transferring my priest (old OLD main from back in Vanilla) over to Wildhammer so I could send it some heirloom gear so went onto my account management to do it….  Lo and behold there is a new option under wow:

CATACLYSM BETA!

I checked my emails quickly, and I can tell you this for a fact, I could not find one from blizzard telling me I was in.  I did however have a lot of email from Blizzerd, Bliazzrd, Blizerd and the like all telling me to click their bogus links.

So anyway, this was Friday night, I sent the download off and went to bed. 

I have now spent all weekend playing and digesting the beta including the following:

Full Worgen starting area

Full Goblin starting area

Both dungeons currently in game

Some of Hyjal quest lines

Some of Vashjir (didn’t spend much time there so cant honestly remember the name!)

Ill give you the rundown of what I have found.

To start, I transferred over my Draenei Warrior and my Gnome Warlock to see what the gear reset and relative strength of the mobs is like at this point in the beta.  Ill start with the warrior.

My Warrior isn’t the best geared, he runs approx 4k gearscore in normal WoW.  Well in Cataclysm with the changes to stats, he really feels weak again.  It’s the normal Warrior reset.  I specced my main spec Fury and then the offspec Protection. Heres what I find.

Fury:  Currently little different in the Fury spec of Cata to the Fury spec of Live sure the talents are condensed but the feel of fury is still there.  My damage was low against mobs but the most amazing thing is I CANT DIE!  Fury has had a HUUUUUUGE survivability buff.  Blood Craze + Bloodthirst + Victory Rush = Lolwin

Victory Rush has been changed to heal you for like 10% of your hits when you land it, this makes AOE grinding a cinch. With mobs hitting for 200-300 and bloodthirst healing for 300-400 its so lolworthy.

Protection:  Tanking has supposedly changed in cata to be more crowd control based.  Well I haven’t managed to tank anything yet but the only major change worth mentioning at the moment is the thunderclap change.

You can spec in the prot tree to turn Thunderclap into a pseudo consecration, leaving this lightning ring on the floor which pulses damage.  Right now I don’t think its implemented fully as it hits for 10 damage at level 80, but it IS going to make AOE tanking easier. If we get to AOE tank that is.

I cant talk about Cataclysm without talking about the Worgen and Goblin.  I finished each of them this weekend from start to finish and heres how I found it.

First off both do a very good job of introducing you to the key fundamentals of the game, namely not standing in the fire!

Anyway on to the Worgen area.

You start off as human, years ago as the Worgen infestation is just beginning in Gilneas and it is your job to help try to stem it.  Well eventually you get bitten by a Worgen and end up turning.  The game is missing a few cutscenes at the moment but its pretty good.

The whole Worgen area was covered in rain when I was playing, and its got this really dirty, dark feeling to the whole thing.

There are some stand out quests though.  One quest has you taking on Heroic Abominations by throwing barrels of gunpowder on their heads.  As soon as you tag one, and NPC will shoot the barrel, blowing the abomination to smithereens! Its cool!

Another quest just AFTER the cataclysm has hit, has you rescuing survivors in the water where the buildings have just sunk, well this quest is bugged but completable.  There are maybe 50 npcs in the water who SHOULD be saveable but only 1 or 2 currently work.  Making this quest take me a grand total of 20 minutes to complete nearly put me off but I persevered.  This is the only real bug in the whole experience but you can see that more polish is needed.  

There are no female worgen at present, as well as no option to change your appearance. Hopefully this will change soon.

The Goblin Area:

I had a LOT of fun in this area making myself a little Female Mage. You start off on Kezan and are apparently a high ranking goblin on the island, having parties and running little quests in your CAR (Yes you get a car, and it rocks and I miss it!)

Until you manage to blow the island up by kicking a football bomb at it (don’t ask)  You then manage to buy passage off the island (which I miss, it rocked) but get shipwrecked when the alliance and horde have a tiff mid journey.
Your journey then is spent re-making a town (awesome concept) and trying to solve the problems on this rock.  Eventually again leading you to blow up THIS island (WTF is it with this goblin!) and rescue Thrall in the process.  This all ties up nicely into how the goblins join the horde and the whole area is terrifically well done.

The goblin racials are cool, I love the rocket belt jump!

So after playing those areas I fancied seeing the new Troll and Gnome starters as they are making a push for their old homes, except that due to the new starting area you cant make a troll or gnome without the game breaking, it took some jiggery pokery for me to even be able to log my Warlock in!

So you will need to wait till I can be bothered before I write about those.

I will give some props to the Hyjal area, seeing Deathwing and Ragnaros again brought back memories, as did seeing Baron Geddon. But the biggest memory hit from Vanilla came from my first foray into the Blackrock Caverns.  

This instance as many will have seen from Videos is in Blackrock Mountain, its got some AOE pulls and some cool throwback scenery.  Well my first wipe hammered home the old Vanilla feeling.

YOU REZ AT THORIUM POINT!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!

I didn’t go much further than the first boss in here due to people leaving but I did shove my head into the Vashjir instance.  All I can say is CROWD CONTROL IS BACK BABY!

The very first pull in the instance is like 2 tank mobs and 2 healers. The healing mobs heal so fast and for so much that its nearly IMPOSSIBLE without Crowd Control some move major description to stop one to kill.

Our group was something like 2 warriors, 1 hunter, priest and paladin.  Our crowd control consisted of tank interrupts, fury interrupt and interrupts over the board.  Sure a GOOD hunter would frost trap an add, but we had a huntard.

Pummeling one healer to silence the school led to the other healing like a madman and vice versa.

Once I realised that I was in a group of morons I left. Im sorry but as a tank I know what interrupts and stuns I get and how to use them.

I really am looking forward to doing this again. But I can see that unless you have a good Hunter, Mage or Warlock with seduce it will be tough going if the interrupts aren’t right.

So what am I planning on doing further? Well looking at the new Gnome and Troll starters and looking at some more quests in Hyjal.  More updates with some screenies maybe later on!