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!

My First Mistake…….. hahahahahahaha

Ive been looking at upgrades for my warriors tank gear lately (as its easier to queue as tank and get insta pops than as DPS) and spotted the quest chain for the Occulus which gives a good ring as the first step, then some defence plate for the last step.

So I got the quest and queued myself.  Insta pops are great.  I was soon inside the instance with a group of all 80s, which I thought was good as the Occulus isn’t all that hard but with all 80s it should go fine.

Well the whelps at the start caused some issues as the healer died once when I could AE tank them all at once but I soon got into the groove.  I really don’t like that people don’t assist the tank in WoW, they need a targeting system like EQ2 where you fight THROUGH the tank, ah well.

We progressed through the instance and got to the final boss.  This is where it got weird.  First off, the boss went into his little portal plane thing and summoned the orbs…. Which was off, I didn’t remember him doing that before,  but remember reading about it.

Then he died…. And I got the achievement for Occulus and Heroic Occulus….. yes that’s right I did a Heroic!  I wasn’t even defence capped and nowhere near ready for it (in my eyes) but I did it! I apologised profusely to the group after I realised, they just laughed.  In my excitement I forgot to stay in the instance for the end of the loot roll and left after rolling need on some Defence Plate and didn’t get it as I had left.. doh!

Still im coming along nicely now, im about ready to hit heroics properly, there is still a piece of loot I want from regular Champions Colliseum, (Plate belt which I lost to a DPS DK last night fucksake) and then ill start with the easier heroics.

Tonight is a raid night on EQ2, we are starting to struggle with numbers at the moment, now requiring extra healers, chanters and even now dps.  Im considering asking to main change to my Assassin, for added punch.  Ive made it abundantly clear that im unhappy on the inquisitor so all I can do is ask and be told no.

World of Warcraft: Mum Friendly!

My mum has recently decided to start playing World of Warcraft which is not in itself a bad thing.  

Way back when I got my mum into online gaming I steered her away from Warcraft due to the bad taste I had in my mouth from it when I stopped playing last and got her hooked onto EQ2 anyway.

However I have noticed her interest waning in EQ2 a little lately, and so I popped over and got her a WoW trial downloaded.  Now she is hooked on there, so much so she has got herself a 6 month subscription!

My only regret was not using her as a recruit a friend but we shall live.

So now my mum has a level 11 Night Elf Hunter which she is happily playing and enjoying the world.  Good for her, I have recently resubbed WoW myself and am enjoying the content as I see it.  Im still narked ill probably never experience Naxx but maybe in a few expansions and level raises I can come back and poke my head in to see what it was like.

Tonight is a raid night in EQ2, so I shall be doing that anyway, fingers crossed mum is ok, im sure she will be as long as she ignore all of the immature fucktards in chat.

Making too many plans makes me forget!

Rushing around trying to get a new Hockey stick for the tournament this weekend led me to forget about things I had signed up for in WAR.
Lets start over though, I eventually managed to get a new Hockey Stick and got home quite late.  I immediately jumped onto WoW and went on an Obsidian Sanctum 25 raid.

I must admit my DPS WAS lacking, I really think ill respec now.  Didn’t win anything but the fight….. god how easy, kinda disappointed with it really.

 

I then got reminded that I needed to go tank Lairs for our alliance.. whoops!

 

I got on in enough time to go to Tomb of the Sun.  We managed to down him (interesting mechanic, if your no good at jumping then don’t apply!) he didn’t drop a weapon anyone could use but the pocket item was kinda OP.  15 Secs where your opponent cant Block or Parry….. ouch!  Thank god I only PvE on my tank now!

 

Tonight im debating what ill be doing, Part of me wants to crack out some WoW but I need to go meet the Hockey team around 8.  Maybe I can play for an hour or two then head out.

 

We shall see.

Ding 80… again…

Well not so much again in WoW but again in the fact that im at level cap again.  Yay…….

Still once hitting 80 I worked on my hit gear (which actually involved dumping on a load of my level 70 raid epics again haha) and then went to heroic Utgard Pinnacle… what a way to learn a zone! Heroic!

Well I was top DPS, and second on overall damage (I was dead for the whole 3^rd boss) but won a nice staff.

My main aims are to level my tailoring so that I can make my own gear then just work on getting badges for other pieces.  As soon as my hit is capped ill look at trying to get a raid spot somewhere.

Im considering swapping out of Demonology too into maybe a destro spec again, ill do some number crunching to see how it stacks up.

 

Might not be a Lost Vale run tomorrow now as I have a hockey tournament all weekend.

Final Stretch

Here I am again then, one level away from cap.  Again its in WoW.  After the debacle of our internet dying I dedicated my time to levelling some more in WoW.

I am in Zul’Drak at the moment and managed to hit level 79, ive only got just over 700k exp to go to cap yet again.

I did get that final level feeling that I usually get, the one where you know every little bit of exp is a little bit closer.

 

I should get it tomorrow as tonight will be trying to hit wing 3 of LV in WAR.  Ive been told that the timer goes poof tonight so im hoping there is enough time to go in, I don’t want to lose out on the whole wing due to my net being crap.

 

Ive starting saving hit gear for my lock too, my aim is to get as close to cap come 80 as possible with the gear ive got, then move on to upgrading around it.  Ive seen a couple of tailoring things that look good so ill most likely level that next.  Then we shall see where we go from there.

 

Im actually looking forward to LV as I got my DP shoulders on the last run and haven’t tested them yet, bah get me in there!!!

 

Rock on

A Plethora of Levels…. and Lewt!!

I don’t know if Blizzard has made the levelling game significantly easier in wrath or whether my new questhelper mod is making it quicker, but im averaging 4-5hours a level.

 

Now I remember levelling my Lock in Vanilla WoW and the exp from 59-60 took me 6 hours, although that was pure grind.

 

Anyway im now level 78!  I cant believe how good levelling is with your flying mount again!  So much easier, im still happy with the quests in Northrend too, ive only just started in the Sholozar Basin (2 levels to go and still got like 4 zones to do hahaha) and will hopefully get the exp needed for 80 in the next day or so however that all depends on the next thing:

 

LOST VALE!!!  Last night I made a few leadership fuckups which meant that I had to bench Mrs B from the team, which she wasn’t happy about at all…..  The reason being I was attuning two other alliance members and wanted to bring them into the second wing, yet I had also promised a spot for wing two to our usual Choppa.  Mrs B sat out on the proviso that I didn’t think we could get past Gorak with our Dps (Group setup was:  Chosen, DoK, Shaman, Magus, Magus (3GW), Choppa.  Well Butcher died on 2^nd pull after I asked for AOE to stop as the Gnoblar was dying WAAAAAY too fast.

Then we hit the wall that was Gorak.  Without me being able to Co-ordinate mine and Mrs B’s Morales (she blows on 2^nd tank phase a dmg reduction for me) I was eating the floor, that and the healing was lacking any big punch that our Zealot normally provides.

However through co-ordinating with the DoK (Hitting his 30 second block/parry/dodge increaser) and using our main Magus with his pets Taunting, we managed to down him, I have a funny screenshot with my party chat ill dig out lol.

 

Then onto the Tree who has the good graces to drop CHOSEN SHOULDERS!!!!!!!  I cheered out loud!  That was the ward I was concerned wasn’t working, but now ive got it covered, im now 2 pieces DP! (3 with belt).

 

We are hitting wing 3 tonight and if I can find a replacement for the DoK then the husband/wife team of the DoK and Magus will sit for hun.  It may end up that we have our usual team for this instead of the team we were rocking.  Im pretty sure that whatever team we take that we will down everything up to Nkari, but wont kill her.  That’s the way the cookie crumbles but I really do think I need an OT to start with on this one.

 

I forgot to say that Friday was uneventful wing 1 down no problems at all, no decent loot at all.

Warlock Ding 75, and Hello to an Old Friend

I had so much fun in WoW yesterday, sure all I was doing was grinding quests but the thing that made it an outstanding evening?  My friend Avoghaia came online since he finally got my email and we chatted for a good two hours.

 

He also followed me round on his flying mount (damn you Mel!) whilst I piled through quests and even rezzed me when I decided to BASE jump off of a cliff and forgot to SS myself.

 

No real stand out quests for me last night, just happy to get 75.

 

There most likely wont be a lot of WoW played tonight as its Lost Vale night, im taking a couple of new guys in so im hoping we can update their quests sufficiently.

My main aim is to down the first wing for them. If time allows ill take a look at the 2^nd wing but im not optimistic,  one of the ranged DPS only has 2 wards which means her DPS will be lacking, and imho Butcher and Gorak are dps races from the 2^nd wing.

 

Well lets see how far we get anyway

Wow…. Just wow

Bit of a double meaning to that title but here we go.

 

Last night was spent in WoW, like I thought it would be, I don’t feel the need right now to be in WAR, WoW is holding my attention.  Im still looking forward to the new LV run tomorrow but for now im in WoW.

 

I managed to hit level 74 on my Warlock and must admit the levels come fairly easily, im steadily saving the gold needed for my cold weather flying when I get there, and this is a guy who struggled to have 100g in his pocket in TBC HAHA.

 

The other wow of this title is for the Wrathgate quest.  I sat there in awe as the cinematic played out, shocked to the core.  Then meeting Varian and assaulting undercity… classic.

 

I also made the trip to Dalaran and made it my new inn, its about time really, I was still bound in Shattrath, it’s a shame to see how desolate it is now, but that’s how things change I imagine.

 

Not much else to report, will see about 75 tonight, wish me luck.

LV Almost Clear

Doh so close!

 

Monday night saw the team try to continue with the 3^rd wing of LV.  Except there was only 5 of us online.  Our Choppa couldn’t make it, which isn’t as bad as say, a healer.

A quick yell in the alliance turns up no replacements, we decided to run 5 man instead.

Now not the best choice I could have made as the group leader but it actually went well.  We managed to kill off every boss up to Nkari.  Sechar gave us one wipe where I didn’t realise he was going to spawn when he did and so hadn’t explained the fight yet.

We did actually manage to get the Zealot helm, so grats to Bob for that.

 

Nkari was a different kettle of fish. Im not sure how I can solo tank this at all.  After a couple of wipes with the circles and being thrown, we all learnt that but those damn orbs!

The first orb spawn I had no trouble grabbing the pruple orb, boosting my HP to 16.5k, but the second and subsequent spawns it just would not let me pick it up.

Apparantly I was having a blue orb spawn on me and I kept getting that, but I honestly didn’t see the buff on me.

I managed to live through the Dev phase once without the orb when I popped some morales but no chance in me living.

 

I think ill need to research the orbs more as if I AM grabbing a blue on the spawn then its my fault.  I think it might be as on the first orb spawn im instantly getting the purp one without having to move, we shall see.

 

New run scheduled for Friday. Lets see how we do

 
Ive also been playing more of WoW and managed to get my Warlock to level 73.  This is actually pretty good for me, ive been trying to find a UI I like and may finally have found a good one.  But overall Wrath has been pretty good.

Blizzard have learnt from the years of WoW and made quests that are a lot better than kill X and harvest Y.  So far the assault on the Dragon Tower thing (yes it’s a daily but I like it) was great, as was rescuing villager by pulling them onto my griffon! Very cool Blizz.

 

Ill probably play WoW tonight, get some more questing done, im really kinda itching to get myself 80 and start to gear up as I have my eye on a guild already.

 

Oh quick apology, I noticed the custom UI ive been using had blocked out all chat channels.. and I mean ALL! /say /yell /tell /1 /2 /3 all unable to be used… I thought it had been quiet… I hope no instance groups whispered me, im not rude honest it was my UI!!