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.

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).

Wrath Release Date Confirmed

Woot! 13th November 08 is the date (maybe).

*books annual leave*

*buys new track suit pants, 55 hot pockets, a small fridge, and two buckets*

WoW Head has a huge splash page saying that its a hard date; and thats great but also odd. The page they link to has no announcement, and you’d think that this would be linked to an email campaign or an official announcement. Maybe it got leaked, or maybe the guys at WoW Head are creating site hype.

I don’t know, but also I’m so stoked that the wrath of the lich king is now a close reality that I’m not bothered either. So much so that I’m seriously contemplating a long weekend about a week after release (week 1 of these things are always a mess, but the 2nd will be gold).

Read it here at WoW Insider, and they even have a raffle for a beta key. Thanks to 70 Tauren Warrior, who blogged this first.

*runs in small circles, mouth agape*

*drool, jump, jump, spin*