FWIW, I was able to reach all my old FPs. Zoram Strand is still connected to Splintertree Post at the very least, and I was able to get there by going up the coast (Shadowprey->Sun Rock->Zoram Strand).
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!
My WoW-capable computer blew up several weeks ago and, just, AAAAAAAAAAAGH!
:eek:
I can’t get into WoW! This is TERRIBLE! Most of my toons are stuck in Dalaran! * >gasp< * I missed all the pre-Cat elemental invasion!* >sob<* I missed holidays! I NEED MY FIX!!! NOW!
:::runs down hallway screaming:::
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!
*:::falls down, foaming at the mouth:::
:::twitch::::
:::twitch::::*
Well, at least I remember where the zepplins are - that will take care of the “stuck in Dalaran” problem. On a more mundane (and calmer) note - have the portals between Shat and the old world gone away, too?
(My guild - who like me that much - are helping me get a system that can handle Cataclysm… but I may not receive it until mid-December. *>sigh< 
*)
I just realized I was exploring on my alt, not my main, and it’s entirely likely he’s never picked up Zoram Strand. Never mind!
Didn’t do much exploring on my main - just hearthed in from Northrend, was annoyed that my hearth had been reset to Silvermoon, zoomed to Org (admiring Brill’s new architecture from the zepplin), wandered around Org (pretty!) and stuck my head briefly into Azshara before logging and rolling a Troll druid mainly to see the Echo Isles. They’ve definitely streamlined the noob zone experience; you had one clutch of quests for each sub-area, none of this “kill five things, run back, oh go back and kill the boss now” stuff, and they had mini-taxis to take you between sub-areas as you finished one set of quests and were ready to move onto the new stuff. In addition, there was no grey or white equipment dropped, meaning the only stuff I was wearing at the end was the three or four quest rewards I got, but I also didn’t fill my backpack repeatedly with no bags to carry extra stuff. At the end of the run, without selling anything off, I had about 8 slots still free.
Also, baby raptors. SQUEE! I think they’re cuter than the baby Murlocs.
Also also, in the “Garrosh is a douche” department, everyone should roll a noob troll just to see Vol’jin’s conversation with Garrosh. Maybe you get to see it if you just run down there with your 80; haven’t tried. But anyway, worth a visit if you’re at all interested in the lore stuff.
ETA: I should note for Rik that at least Org seems to have about five different inns you can set your hearth to now.
My belief in her ability to learn from her mistakes died with Southshore and Gilneas.
Garrosh I can almost understand as a scared kid acting tough for the ghost of his daddy–too bad he’s throwing away everything Grom died for.
I still wish Thrall would have left Saurfang in charge.
Snails. Little level 5 snails. They’re adorable. (OK, I’m weird.) I saw a bunch on the beach around Zoram Strand and up into Darkshore. I wonder it they’ll be tameable?
I am interested in lore, and I’m convulsing with curiosity to see all the stuff going on, but THERE’S TOO MUCH TO SEE!!! I’m getting to be like my little cat when I throw 4 or 5 of her little toys at her at once: twitching with confusion and trying to catch all of them at once.
FWIW, I think the most notable inn is the replacement for the old one in the Valley of Strength. It seems like the same tired old (NPC) barflies are still hanging out there. Pitiful. Except for one. I haven’t seen it mentioned here, but has everyone noticed that Gamon is no longer a pitiful level 12 punching bag? But now an 85-elite killing machine with 1.9 million health? I almost did my friendly “kill you in passing” thing as I went into the inn. I’m glad I looked at his unitframe before I did. He’s become a city-raid boss. He still dies a lot, but it takes at least a half-dozen level 80s and some of those may die.
I /cheered at him when he killed one of his tormentors last night. There is a God, and he believes in rough justice.
I’ve always wondered about that. How the hell did a punkass get promoted over a veteran general of the Horde? I have to speculate it’s essentially tribal politics: Garrosh inherited the Chieftainship of the Warsong, and there are apparently only two Orc tribes left in the Horde: Warsong and Frostwolf. And a warchief apparently has to be tribe chieftain first.
Or not. Garrosh is certainly not very well qualified to lead. Saurfang the elder would have been a vastly better leader, but probably disqualified for not being “nobility”.
Like I noted before, I made a baby troll druid to check out the newbie experience. After the “replay” of Garrosh’s fight with Vol’jin, Vol’jin calls up the image of Thrall to try to contact him and let him know what’s going on. I realized that I already miss Thrall[sup]1[/sup]. sob
[sup]1[/sup] As warchief, that is. I know he’s still in Outland learning stuff. I miss him in charge.
I barely had any time to look around the changed old world yesterday, but I rode around Stormwind for a little bit, and WHOA. It’s actually at the point where I find myself getting constantly turned around, because all of the subtle differences means my brain just doesn’t recognize things anymore. The changed maps are making it harder for me to visualize exactly where I am, too. I can’t wait to get out and really explore–which might not be for a week or so, since my boyfriend is visiting for Thanksgiving.
Last night’s ICC raid was a backfill of 25-man drake achievements for those of us who still needed them. I picked almost everything I was missing: LDW, VDW, Rot, Fester, PP, and both the ones off of LK. The only one I’m still missing–and most everybody else who didn’t have their drakes yet, too–is All You Can Eat. Someone bought a Heroic Sindri kill from us… and failed to mention that he was going to have to do a server and faction transfer to get it, and did the transfer without telling us first. So the officers felt–and I think we all agreed–that it would be pretty shitty if we didn’t get him his kill ASAP. (Also, man, I can’t imagine playing on a server where there’s nobody who can kill H-Sindri, or paying over $100 in transfer fees to get the kill.) So we’ll go back in next week to finish that up.
Lost 150 nerdpoints overnight with the patch–dropped from 8500 to 8350 (bumped up partway again by the achievements last night). 
Getting so close to the elusive 9k… What I really need to do is just start busting my ass for PvP achievements.
I totally forgot The Park in SW was getting creamed–I wish I’d remembered to go say goodbye.
You know that you don’t lose any durability when you’re killed by another player, right? So unless you’re getting killed by guards, it shouldn’t cost you anything.
Almost every single class and spec got hit with nerfs. Excpect to see a lot of rebalancing, both nerfs and buffs, over the next weeks/months as we all level to 85 and they work on getting everything working like they want it.
Rested XP is calculated as a percentage of the total you need to level, not a raw amount. So it shouldn’t be affected at all by Northrend XP changes.
Are you sure the repair NPC is a repair NPC? If she was before the sundering, it doesn’t mean she still is.
The horror! The horror!
I believe the portal changes were originally announced as removing the portals from both Dal and Shatt, yes. Otherwise there wouldn’t be much point–we’d all just move back to Shatt.
Are these the same model as the baby raptor pets that were introduced a while back? Tiny, big heads?
Yes. There’s a quest in Echo Islands where you have to go to a neighboring island and blow a whistle to round them up. They. Are. ADORABLE!
ETA: Oh! Another new thing I like…in the troll starter quests, at least, when you have a particular individual you need to kill, there’s a 3D portrait of the NPC attached to the quest dialogue pane. Coooool…especially the model for the Sea Witch.
I certainly noticed. The past few days I’d taken to wandering by and if he was alive, /yelling stuff like “I KNEW IT! IT WAS YOU BEHIND THE INVASIONS ALL ALONG! FOR BETRAYING THE HORDE, GAMON, I SENTENCE YOU TO DEATH!” before, you know, casually murdering him.
And since I’d been playing a lot of Dragon Age lately, I accidentally right-clicked him as I was checking to see how much life he had now. Oops.
Unless I’m missing another entrance, there’s only one way into Org now by foot (where’d you enter if you took a zeppelin, I can’t find the other old one) and level 85 guards are all over it. The guards kept on killing me, and it took me a couple times before I realized I was being stupid and needed to go naked times. I kept my shirt and my tabard 
On the official forums people are saying they’re getting it if they can get further into the city, so I’ll try again tonight.
The actual players were very nice, no one tried to kill me. They just all hung around while the guards did it.
There’s a back door from Azshara; however, I don’t know how well-guarded it is.
I understand it just fine. I just disagree. And Blizzard has changed their policy on things like this in the past. Just a few months ago you could press one button and cancel all of your auctions. Now you must press a button for each auction. I believe that pressing one button and causing 5 characters to cast a spell simultaneously is automation, for any reasonable definition of the word. You disagree, and I’m fine with that. 
We are not disagreeing here. I said that Blizzard has decided that multi-boxing doesn’t impact game-play balance enough to be worth it to give up multi-boxers money. In three years of playing I’ve seen 4 multi-boxers (three in lower-bracket BGs, one leveling). It’s just not a big enough problem for them to care. That doesn’t mean I can’t find it unsporting to use in competitive play - it allows one group to have a resource that the other team does not have access too.
Anyway, that’s way too much said about such a silly topic when there is so much new to see and do.
Ohshti, I forgot they were bumping the guards up to 85. Doing naked runs is probably the best route, then. Don’t forget that you can leave anything equipped that doesn’t have durability–which includes Heirlooms, if you’ve got any on alts that you could send to this character to give it a bit more staying power than ye olde birfday suit.
There are actually TWO other entrances to Org now. One is a bridge across the river, like before (maybe further north) that leads to the Valley of Spirits, and the other is a wide open door that opens into Azeroth from the Valley of Honor(?). They’re both guarded but probably easier to get through than the main entrance.
Of course in two weeks you can fly in. Hmm, I wonder how that will affect faction raids? Imagine a whole raid of Allies just flying in and landing on Garrosh’s doorstep.
Was that the change? I thought the change was that previously addons could automatically cancel auctions that had been undercut, which would definitely be more like the Blizzard definition of automation.
ETA: The point also has to do with taking multiple actions *on one character *with a single keypress. Consider the following scenarios:
1.) Five people in a room, all playing WoW together. One person calls out buttons for everyone to hit.
2.) Five computers in a room, all being played by one person. They have a mechanical device that depresses keys simultaneously and identically on each of the five machines.
3.) Five computers in a room, all being played by one person. They use equipment that allows one keyboard to give the same input to all five machines simultaneously.
Do you feel differently about the three scenarios? If so, how and why?
There’s an entrance in Azshara now, too. I don’t know if it’s any worse guarded.
At least 2 level 85s that see through stealth. That bloody patch in the middle of the gate with cat fur stuck to it? That was Oakbrow. Ended up flying to Ratchet and riding up to Org to get to the tables there. Then rode all the way over to Thunder Bluff. Then swap continents and do the same for Silvermoon and Undercity. Spent a lot of time travelling, but got the achievement. Now just need to turkeyize a gnome rogue and one of each Horde rogue race for Oak’s first title. As this event doesn’t count towards “What a long strange trip it’s been”, I am prolly not going to repeat the effort on my mage.
Incidentally, the move of Grommash Hold from Valley of Honor to Valley of Strength (a sly editorial reference to the differences between Thrall and Garrosh?) makes a raid to kill Garrosh somewhat easier, since you can just storm in the front gate and he’s right there in front of you.