Hey, awesome! First SFG with her grenade and now Wolkie with his shiv! Someone from Blizz is following our thread? 
Thanks for the smile, Taomist!
Quasi
Well about 40% through 82 (meaning on the way to 83). I have to say that i really liked Hyjal. I did every quest available i think. I did the first few quests in Vash’jir and i wasn’t really into it, so i think i’m going to deepholme next.
Also ran Blackrock Caverns & Throne of Tides. I thought they were both pretty cool, and am pretty impressed with most of the boss encounters… some cool mechanics and what not… looking forward to seeing the rest of the dungeons and seeing what these will be like on heroic. So far it feels like this expansion is really well done.
Haven’t replaced any gear yet, but some of the stuff has been really close, so i expect to start swapping some stuff out soon.
Finished plowing through the entirety of Thousand Needles, which is definitely my favorite zone of the revamped old world so far. And the new quest rewards look way nicer, visually speaking. Some excellent lore and plot quest chains come up in the latter part via the breadcrumb quests that send you from one hub to another. I will say that I’m a bit tempted to buy the little wyvern pet from the store after seeing the baby pridelings ingame. So cute!
The last quest in the zone, though, left me with a severe need to do the following (and I highly doubt I’m alone in the sentiment) :
Hunt down and kill Magatha Grimtotem with extreme prejudice. What a piece of work. :mad:
It feels really weird to see an XP bar again on my 80s. I suppose I’ll head over to the new zones tomorrow or so, but I seriously don’t want to deal with the crowds I’ve been hearing about. 
I was just leveling archaeology, minding my own business, went to the field of blood or something in the Barrens. “Oh, the sky is blood red, mildly annoying, but kind of cute given the name.”
“Wait… is that fir… wait is that Death… oh shit.”
Jsor got [Stood in the Fire]
Rather than hit the high level areas, I went for the new beginning and created a worgen. It’s fun so far, but I can’t help but notice that most of the Worgen starting quests involve “fetching” things. Seems kind of racist to me.
I only had a short while to play last night after getting the game installed, but I took my pally to Vash and did a bunch of the intro quests. Lessons learned:
-
I really, really should have remembered to buy the new level of skill for skinning. In Vash, there were so many people killing those skinnable crawlers and eels I could have just stayed there and filled all my bags with skins. I got a lot of them, but it would have been nice to get the skillups too.
-
I couldn’t find any vendors in the introduction area, so (with all the skinning) my bags are full. Kind of a pain. I’ll probably need to fly back to a city, clean out my bags and get my profession training before I head back.
Still not sure if I want to focus on levelling one toon at a time or rotate - I hate leaving my main (priest) behind. I might alternate between my pally in Vash and taking my priest to Hyjal, so I can see both - it just means a little longer grind to 85.
ETA: I think rolling Alliance alts on Quasi’s server is a great idea. He’s even got a guild for us already…
I finally did manage to get in last night. Sorta. Kept having huge lag and lots of random disconnects. Took my mage to the underwater zone. It’s…ok, I guess. Didn’t see anything that just blew me away with awesomeness or anything, but I only did the first few quests. Also dabbled with archeology a bit. Looks like my first artifact will be a wooden whistle. Yay? Dunno.
Think I’m gonna do the Hyal area with my druid. Those quests seem sorta druidy I think.
Then I rolled a Worgen Warlock (say that 3 times fast). Got him up to about level 6 when I ran into a roadblock. Apparently I am incapable of operating a catapuilt. The quest where you have to use a catapult to launch yourself onto the Forsaken ships to kill the captains? Yeah. Not happening. I grab a catapult, roll it close to the ship, put the little aiming circle right on the deck, hit the button–and the catapulty animation happens, but I don’t get launched. Catapult disappears, and I’m just standing there. Really hoping this is not like the DK starting area where you have to complete every quest…cuz if so, I’m screwed for Worgens.
Other thought–maybe the catapult problem had something to do with me not having the full download? Will see if that makes any difference tonight, unless somebody has a better idea…
I was playing yesterday with my new Worgen and there was an achievement award for the first 85 on the server…something like 8 hours after the release. I just can’t imagine blowing through that fast. I intend to take about a month to level up my only 80 to 85.
The new Worgen area and quest like was also pretty cool. Enjoyed playing through it. I managed to get to level 20 before calling it a night. Even that was incredibly fast to me…couldn’t believe how quickly the levels come now. I remember when it would take a week to get from 1 to 20 and it was a really slogging grind to do it.
-XT
Yes, they can.
I usually try to include the character name of the toon I was on, zone, and server time in my reports to help them a little. It’s probably isn’t fully necessary, though. (Did this a lot, way back when the gold sellers sent me whispers. Now they got a “report spam” feature.)
I saw multiple “realm first” 85s last night…Pally, Hunter, 'Lock, Mage for sure. I’m just not in that much of a hurry to reach the new level cap. I want to play through the new content and enjoy it. I figure it will likely be a year or two before the next expansion, so why rush? After I’ve done the 80-85 thing on my two current 80s, maybe I’ll grind out my next few max level toons, but the first time, I like to enjoy the ride.
Yeah, I’m with your Oakminster. I’m in no rush, even if I was willing to play continuously (or knew enough about how to play the game to maximize my ability to level that fast in any case). I’ll get to 85 optimally a week or so before the next expansion is ready to ship…which is pretty much when I got to 80.
-XT
The first attempt at the download for Cat (after I got the DVD) got the dreaded “Connection Timed Out” error. That’s a chronic problem I’ve had ever since Blizzard introduced the new download tool; apparently it has something to do with my Kaspersky security software. The only current fix is to turn off the software while the download occurs. Yuck.
Anyway, on the second attempt the installer appeared to just be loading everything directly from the DVD. Then it started downloading 13.7 Gb of additional stuff, so we went to dinner while this was happening. (Fortunately for this part of the downloading, I can turn my security software back on). Got back and the game was in the “playable” mode, although there was still 5+ Gb to download.
So I hopped on with 4 of my level 80s and got the Old World Flying license. (My 5th level 80 - a rogue - is still running Zul’Drak quests in Northrend; didn’t feel like dragging her across the zone and onto a ship).
I figure the new zones are going to be swamped with people; so I can certainly wait a little while to start doing quests over there. I’m with Oakminster too - I’m not in any rush to get to level 85 with my toons - I want to get there eventually, but I want to take the time to enjoy the trip (as it were 
)
I also want to create a Worgen and a Goblin, and check out those new zones, though I’m up to 9 toons already though on my Alliance server (Windrunner). One of those lower-level toons may have to go bye-bye.
Just to keep things accurate.
I did the daily cooking again yesterday and my above post is wrong.
The healing you get from the food is like 65000 HP. The 96000 number comes from a couple of the recipes that are for mana regen only.
Still that is a ton of HP and mana. My 80’s are only in the low to mid 20000’s but I only have reputation, crafted and quest gear.
Maybe, maybe not.
But even here on the Dope we have users who try to find loop holes (using creative interpretation) within the rules to try a wiggle through.
There, like here, they wanted a list of banned words so that they could use other offensive words not mentioned. They misspell (like Wolkie’s example: “pussi”) to get around the language filter.
They debate ad nauseam whether a particular word is offensive, and who’s definition (sender or receiver) of offensiveness takes precedence.
They come up with over the top hypotheticals to try and get Blizz to give up on policing online language (Ex: “What if they got offended with ‘Merry Xmas???’”).
There was even a short stint of griefers doing or saying various things to you that tried to get you to violate the language rules, and then report you.
It (the WoW forum debates and crying) was entertaining for a while, but I haven’t been on those forums in years, so I don’t know if this debate still goes on over there. (I doubt it.)
I just want to say that i think they’ve done a great job making Druid Tanking fun again. Thrash is really cool, but since it and Swipe now have 6 second cooldowns I feel like i still have work to do to make sure i’m building threat on multiple targets (instead of just mashing swipe & maul like i did all through WOTLK).
Plus we’ve got Pulverize & Skull Bash to play with, not to mention the new Thorns mechanic…
I am a happy Bear 
I love playing tanks, and my favorite class is soopa-fun again!
Has Swipe always been level 36 (or thereabouts)? I found it really frustrating trying to beartank at level 20-ish; I was tabbing around like crazy and still couldn’t keep stuff from constantly peeling off to the healer, what with my only AoE of any sort being Demoralizing Roar.
I think that sounds about right, though to be honest i didn’t start tanking until experimenting with it as off spec in Karazhan & Zul’Aman at level 70.
Glyph of Maul, which I believe is available at level 15, is a big help. Though with it’s increased cooldown since 4.0 it’s not as OP as it once was.
First glyphs are at 25, and I haven’t tanked since getting it, since I was burning through the various Forsaken quest zones.
I’m confuzzled.
So I entered my Cata CD key and it told me to download the game client. But won’t that be a 15GB download like what Mister Rik went through? Should I install from the CD? Or if I launch the game, will the launcher and the background downloader be smart enough to know that I’m patched all the way up and just download essential files?
I can’t actually try any of the above at the moment, the game shipped to work and I just entered the key here.
The Worgen area is fantastic. I played through chunks of it three times just because I enjoyed it. I now present…
Well nobody, because apparently the game hasn’t recognized I’m level 13 and thus eligable to show up in the armory. Oh well.
Short version: Worgen Druid with Engineering and Herbalism.
Why? Well, Engineering is just awesome, and Herbalism has some pretty cool points to it. I can sell all my gathering stuff at auction, but I also get to enjoy Lifeblood, which is the single biggest haste buff in the game at max level, I think. I mean, it rocks. Plus, there seems to be a lot less competition for herbs, so it’s not as overfarmed as ore. Yeah, demand is a little less - but I already have mining on Dekkyr the Drae-Drae DK.
Plus, Engineering on a Drood is both funny, and awesome. Kitty or Healer needs a second of ranged DPS? I got that. Bear needs some AoE? I got that. Plus, I get awesome helmets and other cool bonuses. I’ve long wanted to try it but was put off by the cost.