Cataclysm has been out for two weeks now and I’ve spent a decent chunk of that time in game. Most of that time has been spent levelling my main. Of the rest, a lot of time has been spent at the auction house and crafting glyphs. I’ve been alpha testing a new auctioning/crafting addon which is proving to be very beneficial to my gold funds. Overall I’m up about 10k gold, which is after spending nearly that much on flying (2x 310% flyers) and the same again if not more skilling up engineering and making a start on other professions.
So what has Cataclysm brought? For max level characters there is less new content than LK. Five new zones. Several guildies are already Cataclysm loremasters. There is however about the same, if not more, crafting content. And of course raiding content. Seems like a poor deal on the expansion? That’s because the other half of this expansion is the complete revamp of class specifications (which came in the pre-patch), two new races, and the upheaval of the 1-60 areas and levelling process.
A lot of work has gone into quests. The quests are fun (though there are still plenty of kill 10 rats type) and the story is better handled than ever before. I barely read quest text and I’ve picked up on the storyline in both the 80-85 zones and my new goblin. On the levelling process there are many little UI improvements that streamline this, and the 1-60 quests storyline is much better handled. And of course there is the sundering of Azeroth giving new terrain to all the old zones.
I’ve got my healer geared up for heroics and even popped into a couple of raids with the guild, though no boss kills yet. Healing is a very new beast in Cata. It took me a while (and some more gear) to get the hang of heroics and build confidence, only to have it shattered again when we checked out the raid instances. Bosses there will need very different healing patterns to heroic bosses. Mana is going to be a serious issue.
We start raiding officially on Wednesday. I am not feeling prepared. Gearing up is going to take a while and be a bit grindy. Half of the factions that offer decent gear don’t have dailies so running level 85 instances for tabard rep is the only option there. And the heroic instances are tough, and long. I feel like I’ve spent 24+ hours doing heroics and only completed 3. One of those was chosen specifically for the guild achievement so I’ve only completed 2 randoms. Farming heroics for honor points and the epic gear is going to be a long slow grind.
I’ll do a separate post about my crafting experiences so far.