Oooooh, the game thinks I’m important enough to do an escort quest for <i>Lady Jaina Proudmoore!</i>.
Yeah, I might start trying to translate all the scary heroics and gear levels and stuff when I get to 80. For now I’m just enjoying mah quests.
Eh, level 60 - no Misdirection yet 
Oak being subtle is something like: You fucking pull aggro one more time, Ima let your stupid ass die.
Not really. It’s more like the grand finale of the Death Knight creation series of quests. The battle is scripted, and against NPCs, not horde. It’s a quick series of short quests, leading up to the scripted event…but it is lucrative too. Think there are at least 3 short quests worth 13 gold, and several others worth 6 gold each, plus you get an achievement after the battle is resolved.
I’m sorta hoping this is just the first step, and there’s going to be more to it…preferably more to it that also rewards Gnomeregan rep, as I’m still a long way from exalted with my own race…:o
I assume the next part (at least for Horde) will involve rebuilding. I’m not sure if this will take the form of quests or if it will be like the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj War Effort where it’s a bunch of turn-ins. Either way, I’m pretty sure it will continue, alone with other pre-cat quests that may turn up.
On the horde side at least, you also get a thingy that turns you into a Darkspear/troll warrior.
yeah…i got a thingy that puts me in some kind of gnomish radiation suit…looks kinda like a deep sea diving kit. Has something like a 4 hour cool down.
Though in one way I am happy Operation: Gnomeregan is here I was hoping to be exalted before it happened on my gnome 'lock so that I would have the ‘of Gnomeregan’ title. Though I am only 40 or so stacks of Runecloth away from exalted so maybe I’ll hit the AH before going tonight.
Thanks you for the DK tips I think I’ll add FS into my macros for now (only level 62) and RS when I get it.
Completed the new quests on all of my 80’s and it was super fun, I just wish the cloak was some sort of cover you could wear over your existing cloak. It’s a really nice design, at least the Sen’jin one is, I havn’t seen the Gnomergon yet.
Looks like my 10man ICC group is kaput, which is sad because we had worked really hard on the Lich King. Oh well, back to puging until Cata comes out.
Stumbled across these two videos late last night. The first video gives you a glimpse of Azeroth after the Cataclysm and the second video shows you snippets of the new areas. Shot in the style of the “Where the hell is Matt” video if you’ve seen it. I think I’ve watched them both about 10 times now and I keep seeing something new each time.
Sooooooooooooo apparently on BQL if you’re bitten and at the point where you need to bite someone and then get hit with [del]Legion Flame[/del] Totally Not Legion Flame Look It’s Purple it will mess with your bossmod, which will then not give you an alert. So if you’re coming out of a bite, it’s probably a good idea to check your debuffs.
I *may *have died in a puddle of lavender fire last night.
Yes, Salvs are common, and, for good raiders, using MD and Tricks on the tank (especially to frontload threat at the pull) is a baseline requirement.
Oh, I see, so subtle versus tracking him down IRL and showing up at the idiot’s house to ring his doorbell and punch him in the teeth when he answers. 
Any chance of keeping an eye on the realm forums for another regular group to run with? Or starting one yourself?
Yeah Shin, if you start one let me know – Kene hasn’t had much luck finding ICC runs lately. My schedule is probably too limited for you, though, come to think of it.
Thanks very interesting though I keep watching these Cataclysm snippets then wishing I hadn’t so it will be new to me.
wtb brain eraser.
I’m glad you said that, because (unlike when WotLK came out) I have seen very, very little about the upcoming Cata changes. I can’t access youtube or any WoW-related websites from work, and when I have time at home - well, I’d rather play then read about playing. So I feel unprepared, but I guess I should look at myself as “unspoiled.” It does mean I’ll probably have a lot of questions when Cata comes out, though. Like “what the hell is this?!”
I’ve read a little bit about the changes in Cata. Sounds to me like pretty much all of the talents are being completely revamped. Instead of the 71 points we have now (at 80), in Cata we’ll have something like 40-45 at Level 85. Think new toons and/or respecs will require that the first 31 points all go in the same tree, which must be chosen at level 10. Also at level 10, each talent tree will gain some “signature ability” that sorta defines the tree. For Arc Mages, I think this is Arcane Barrage. For Frost, I think it is the water elemental. For Fire, pyroblast.
Not sure about zone changes, but there are rumors that there will be a heroic version of Deadmines…
Not a rumor. Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep will have heroic (level 85) versions in addition to the normally-leveled versions that already exist. I’m looking forward to them!
And yeah, you’re right–the talent trees are much smaller now–they’ve gotten rid of most of the useless talents you had to take to get to the good stuff, and now pretty much everything is useful. Each spec has a signature ability as you mentioned, and there’s also a new stat called Mastery (which you don’t really start getting until the upper levels, I believe) that increases other abilities (like X points of Mastery might give you X additional damage, etc.)
Another thing I really like about Cata is that they’ve revamped the questing experience and it’s much more fun now. The quests all feel unified, so you feel like you’re going through one long quest chain instead of the scattershot stuff that used to be true at low level. Also, gone are the days where lowbies have to run all over hell to finish quests. They’ve added new quest hubs and you never have to travel very far to get to the next one after you’ve finished one. In addition to leveling my DK tank and mage, I’ve also gone through the Goblin starting experience (great! Everyone should do it even you intend to abandon the goblin after you finish it), about half the Worgen one (not quite as great–much darker and less fun, but still very cool) and the Forsaken one (they’ve changed this a lot.)
Any other Dopers in the beta? If not, I’d be happy to answer questions if I can. I can’t guarantee I’ll know the answer, but I might be able to wander around and find out.
I would perhaps recommend doing this in another thread (“Ask the WoW:Cataclysm Beta Tester”?). At least one person just mentioned how excited he was to not be spoiled - and I’m sure others would agree. Just a thought.
Operation Gnomer and Echo Isles dropped? And me several thousand miles away from WoW for another week… /sigh
Rik, seconding the advice for tab targetting your ferocity pet through a pack of mobs – that worked for me when I was leveling with a raptor in tow.
SFG - I know right? I’m getting rather… antsy… about Loremaster myself. twitch
Killing gnolls in Wetlands prompted me to ask a question in a WoW.com Cataclysm article, and I liked the answer I got. I mentioned that in Vanilla, Blizzard had this fantasy that everybody was going to be questing in groups. Hence the mobs like gnolls, murlocs, Defias members, quilboars, harpies, etc. that are packed into tight little groups so that you can’t pull one without pulling all of them, and patrolling mobs that “run away in fear” as soon as you’ve almost got them down and then come back with six of their closest friends. It turned out that most people quest solo, and those kinds of mob setups were simply frustrating, or next to impossible for some classes. For example, trying to do those Wetlands gnoll-killing quests on a mage (at-level, of course) without getting killed myself involved picking off the lone patrolling gnolls, then sitting around waiting for them to respawn so I could kill them again. Pulling a whole camp of those gnolls meant pretty much instant death. And so in TBC and Wrath, Blizzard mostly did away with tightly-packed mobs and “runners”.
So I asked if, in the the Cataclysm revamp of the Old World, has Blizzard done away with these things there as well. I was told that yes, they have 
Something else I hope to see in Cataclysm, and this is a two-parter: When a quest calls for me to kill X number of a specific kind of mob, I’d love it if the game would actually spawn X number of them. There are a few quests I’ve run into where I know for a fact that the mobs in question spawn in one specific area (as opposed to multiple encampments), like the STV Alliance quest to kill Kurzen Jungle Fighters. I can be the only person doing the quest, yet I go through and slaughter everything that moves, and discover I’m still several mobs short of the number I needed to kill. Related to this are quests that want you to go to a specific area and kill mobs A, B, and C. You get to that area and find mobs A, B, and C, as well as mob D. I find it inexplicable that the questgiver didn’t also want mob D dead, and infuriating that mob D outnumbers mobs A, B, and C by a 3-1 margin. Essentially, mob D is there for no reason other than to deplete your resources while you’re hunting for the other mobs.
In the Kurzen scenario, the encampment where the Jungle Fighters are found is also crawling with Medicine Men, who you are not asked to kill (and it’s very bizarre that this little army has more doctors than soldiers), but nevertheless have to kill to get to the Jungle Fighters. And then you discover, after killing everything, you’re still several Jungle Fighters short of the number you need. On the Horde side, there’s a quest in Thousand Needles to kill centaur at the village closest to Freewind Post. The questgiver wants to you go in and eliminate the centaur threat and sends you in to kill everything … except those female “Windchasers” (or whatever they’re called). Yet you get there and discover there are more Windchasers than anything else. What, the questgiver didn’t think the Windchasers were just as much of a threat as the other centaur?
How long before WotLK came out did they announce the release date? I’m just wondering if anyone has narrowed down the ETA for Cata to drop.
The events appear to still be going today. I haven’t seen anything about how long they’re going to last.
ETA: I did the Gnomeregan event on my main last night. Geez, what a crowd!