Cata Rep and Normal Gearlist

A guild forum discussion started about where to get gear while prep’ing for heroics. This will probably form the basis of my activity after hitting 85.

Here is a few WoWHead item searches listing all the Cata items obtained by Rep, ordered by slot. Use the class / spec select in the filter to change the priority of the items.

www.wowhead.com/items?filter=qu=3:4;sl=1…5:25:23:21:20:8;gb=1

Then the same search, with the items that drop from Normal dungeons added, so a list of gear to aim for.

www.wowhead.com/items?filter=qu=3:4;sl=1…5:25:23:21:20:8;gb=1

And now any items that also are crafted or quest drops, added into the mix.

wowhead

Happy hunting

Warcraft Propaganda Posters

I’m running a guild competition for folks to create original Warcraft Cataclysm Propaganda posters. It is actually a lot harder than I thought.

Prize will be a Blizzard Store pet, and to get the ball rolling I thought it best to try and create some. Images are a (ahem) draft creation, limited by rather bad tools and worse skills.

First thoughts on Launch night

Logged in late-ish due to real life, but was able to get almost all the way through level 80 in about 4 hours time. So levelling will be faster than I expected if that remains consistent. My guess is 4-6 hours per level if doing chained quests and instances.

• Login took about 15 minutes.
• This is the first launch night I’ve been able to play, and I did not have a single crash or outage. That is both as it should be and impressive.
• The two new dungeons I tried were good, with solid basic mechanics and only a small amounts of trash. If you followed the strategy they were very easy, with only a small chance of major screw-up, if you don’t then everyone will be in pain. That is the lesson we need! With the gear we have they can still be brute forced, but I suspect/hope that will be different for the heroic modes.
• The giant tentacles and the jelly fish lift in the water instance where the source of a few off colour jokes. I had to mute vent when the “Cave Penis” comments started, especially as the tentacle has a knockback affect.
• I suspect that the drops we saw are not upgrades on 251+ gear, but they are usable by level 78s and there was a huge amount of BoE blues and greens dropping, so I’d say that my alts will be well geared when they need to start. Any gear around 245 might be replaced though, which is great for characters using 187s and 200s.
• Thus far the new gear models are nice.
• Flying in old world is great.
• Going back to Dalaran was the quickest way I saw to learn the new Blacksmithing, Mining, First Aid skills above 450. I have both a Kirin Tor ring and the Argent Tabard, so getting back to Northrend is easy. Likewise getting to the old world with the Death Knight gate spell. No idea where to set my hearth to as yet.
• Player compression in the new zones is as expected, and will stay heavy. I was still able to get some of the quests done, but decided that doing the 5 mans was a better way to spend time.

Lil’Rag pet is actually useful

I’m not an obsessive collector of in-game pets. If I can roll on one, or get one easily then I’ll do it, but until now I’d never considered doing anything difficult or paying for one.

The Lil’ Ragnaros pet is the concept that broke my resolve. I love Molten Core, and Rag was the first raid boss who impressed me. This pet is a reminder of the real Ragnaros.

He also happens to function as a cooking fire, which I find helpful and somewhat silly at the same time. Nice job Blizzard.

Will I now be a pet collector? No, not unless we see the pets adding more clever and useful abilities. I’d pay again for a pet that could function as a Blacksmithing anvil or other location requirements of trade skills.

How to define Tradechat?

A brief definition of Tradechat:

Like watching a Lord of the Flies movie if it was rebooted by the creator of the Human Centipede teamed up with Uwe Bol, and then sent to William Burroughs to fix the continuity.

Trade chat today was dreadfully rude, and I think we’ll see new levels of disgusting and vile in the lead up to Cata release, then an unholy mess in the first few weeks. Trolls will return like everyone else, and the feeding frenzy of shuddering verbal grime will come with them.

Like a train wreck, sometimes you just have to look…even just to be reassured that there are a huge amount of sick people out there, who are thankfully at home indoors (and probably in the basement).

Silence is Golden and Restive

It has been quiet of late in the Eye of the Storm.

My primary reason for this is because I’ve been very busy in real life will all sorts of distractions, and both blog time and game time have been greatly reduced. But that is not the full story.

The deeper truth is that nothing in the recent month or so has been worth commenting on in detail. Frankly it’s been better to play far more casually when I can easily fit it in and just wait for stability and consistency in the game, than get in and try to adapt to or work around all the changes and updates. A recent patch tweaks some of the classes, but the pre-level 81 wait is entertaining but not critical.

All the balance issues, strange affects, bugs, and outright rip-off prices of items will change in time, so there is no real point stressing about it now. Stepping back for a time now was a darn good call, and I am looking forward to the new game.

In a few days we’ll have rounds of patches, mod updates, and all sorts of malarky (my new favourite word), so I plan to relax and laugh through it.

So in brief:

Cata planning

• Choice of main: I’ve all but deciuded that my Death Knight will go forward first as into the Cataclysm expansion. It was a hard choice, but the class is still the most entertaining of my current 5 level 80 characters.
• The system requirements for Cata are not altogether restrictive, and I’m darn pleased that my current system will run the game. I suspect that if you’re playing v4.0 now then Cata will run the same. Huzzah!
• I’m doing a bank clean-up now, keeping the odd stuff and quest items that might be handy later, but otherwise.
• The dragon trailer is excellent, good stuff. I liked it, glad it was created, and look forward to the game even more because of it.

Blizzcon

• Not being there I can only reflect on the information that has been posted since; and it was underwhelming. Now I’m not surprised that it was a very dull Blizzcon in terms of revelations and changes, because frankly we’ve had a huge amount of information released already, and it is so close to the release of Cataclysm.
• I think it is also OK that the event was not a Warcraft event, and that it has a focus across all the Blizzard games, rather than just their golden goose.

Patch 4.0, 4.0.3a, then patch 4.0.0.0.0.b…etc

• The Cog Wheel of Death, which freezes the pc is just plainly unacceptable. I don’t like it, and it makes the game harder to play. A bad bug which was made far worse by the Headless Horseman which was released at basically the same time. Glad they fixed it, but that was trash.
• Gear reset, was good in the end and a blip in terms of the classes I play regularly. Reforging is an excellent addition to the game, and something that I think will be copied into almost every other MMO in the future. Its game changing in a balanced and good way.
• Class reset, I guess Paladins got a good work over, and that always happens in each expansion, and Hunters have been majorly adjusted to be less like casters which feel right to me. Stay tuned for more class tuning.

Guild planning

• My guild is asking all the tough questions about what we do for Cata raiding and teams. An expansion is the perfect time to throw all the previous structures and plans to the wind and re-build. Even when the process is painful, I like that it is happening.
• If your guild is not doing this, then you might want to either ask if it needs to, or consider another guild – I say this because I think the overall affect on guilds is huge in Cataclysm.
• We’re also seeing some drama through this, but nothing that won’t be resolved soon, and a storm in a teacup in a month or so.

I’ll be posting and raving at a normal pace soon, when we have all sorts of new leveling junk to ponder.

Happy killing, have a great silly season, and I hope Deathwing kills you in glorious fire.

Guild Ethos – Scrambled Eggs

You can’t look at a character’s Armory profile and know if they will fit your guild; any more than you can look at a person’s shoe size and know if they prefer scrambled eggs.

Like almost every detailed application process, the way somebody fills in the application sometimes tells you as much as the information they provide – look for the context, thinking, and subtle indicators, and then reap the rewards.

Google results are a tad stale sometimes

The search for a Warcraft Blog turns up with some known names, but their content is old and not regularly updated.

e.g. Search for “Warcraft blog”

I’d rate that over 1000 easily findable blogs should be above blogs that are infrequently updated or been retired. Top three have stopped posting a long while back.

That Google Search algorithm is something that evolves, and I don’t think it is walking on two legs just yet. I love Google products, but that search is so basic, it should be far better, such as including a measure of the date of the most recent posts as a highly regarded component of the ranking.