So now that the world has shattered, Deathwing is free from the elemental plane, there’s a lot of brand new smoldering gaping holes in the ground where lots of cities and zones used to be, and the battle between Horde and Alliance are themselves burning anew, how’s it going?
Seriously, earlier this week, most of us went to bed on Monday with one Azeroth – old Azeroth, the one we’ve known, many of us, for the past 6 years – and we woke up the next day to the world breaking while the servers were down. When the servers came back up, we got a brand new world, brand new zones, new character class and race combinations, and more. We essentially got a brand new game.
So how are you adjusting? Still overwhelmed with all of the changes? Already happily leveling your new gnome mage or tauren paladin? Or maybe you’re still keeping your head down and waiting for the fuss to blow over and the queues to dial down so you can get into your server? Sound off in the comments!
I’ve done my best to try to be non-emotional about what’s happening in World of Warcraft. I mean, it’s just game, right? I’ve tried hard to avoid reading much about the changes so that I’ll be surprised by them when I encounter them. The song is The Modern Myth by 30 Seconds to Mars. If you watch it, all the way through, the part where I lost all my composure was at the end.
For many of us, this whole Cataclysm thing is just part of the game. Everything changes, so why not the game we’ve all known for so many years. For any who’ve been around since the days of Vanilla, the game has changed a 100 times over. It’s really not that big of a deal. Except this time it is.
Zul’Gurub is gone. Hakkar is gone. The tiger mount is gone. The raptor pet, gone. The worst part about all of this are the regrets I will carry with me. All the questlines I wanted to do, planned to do, and never got around to it. I’ll never get to go back to Thousand Needles and do the Shimmering Flats quests. The goblin races will be gone, covered in water.
There was a lure about the game that kept all of us coming. We’d always get to see the same stuff, knowing if we made a Night Elf where our quests would take us. Or any of the others. Everything has changed. I’m a little sad at the loss of the game I loved and still love. While I will miss so much of the old Azeroth, and that video brought a few tears to my eyes, I look forward to discovering the changes over time. As I level new characters, in new combinations.
Okay, for those of you who read the title and were looking for the song that it matches up to, here you go. Still, while we’re all sitting here, waiting for the servers to come back up, waiting for our beloved Azeroth to change forever, and waiting for The Shattering, I figured I would ask everyone what they’ll miss from old Azeroth. You can see a lot of those responses over at Twitter if you’re following me (I’m @halophoenix,) but I asked the Twitterati what they would miss the most, and the responses were great.
I started the discussion with one of mine:
@halophoenix says: think the Crystal Caverns in Un’ Goro were the first place I saw and said “wow, that’s really really gorgeous.” #goodbyeoldazeroth
Here are a few or the responses I got:
@immamoonkin asked: “I wonder what’ll happen if I jump off this big tree.” #goodbyeoldazeroth
Which of course got her, myself, and a few other people talking about the quintessential newbie Night Elf experience: finding the branches off of the World Tree in Teldrassil and jumping off. The first time I jumped off was the first time I landed somewhere that I couldn’t wisp back to my body. I was so freaked out I thought I had broken the game. I even logged off for a while hoping I’d be able to sort it out when I came back. Yup – completely forgot about the Spirit Healer. We also discussed that first epic ride from Darkshore into Ashenvale, and the huge, towering, bright trees and winding paths we encountered.
Speaking of which, one of my friends had a minor freak-out about the event, and explained there were a number of things she’d miss about old Azeroth:
@tongarityphoon: – EVERYTHING. I don’t even know. Darnassus, Teldrassil in general. ASHENVALE. Oh my god.
– Mene hit level 20 and I was so fucking PUMPED for Ashenvale, it was BEAUTIFUL and I felt so big and strong ;;
– Oh gosh, and Blackrock Depths. THE PLAGUELANDS, those were always what made me feel like I was really reaching the high levels.
– WHAT ABOUT SCHOLO dear god I three-manned that once at level 60, pre-BC.
– AND I WILL MISS STRANGLETHORN VALE. I never thought I would say that but BOOTY BAY T_T OH GOD. And the cities. THE CITIES.
– Stormwind and Darnassus not so much Ironforge OH GOD AND ORGRIMMAR and the UNDERCITY Thunder Bluff, meh. I MIGHT CRY
– THE DEEPRUN TRAM AND THE SEA CREATURES YOU CAN SEE THROUGH THE SIDES OF IT I already miss running to Ironforge as a baby for AH
– WINTERSPRING AND ITS LUDICROUS BEAUTY
You can see she’s a little distressed about the whole “end of the world” thing, but then again, who wouldn’t be?
I have to admit, I’m right there with her though – I remember the days of having to make the Wetlands run from Menethil Harbor all the way to Ironforge as a lowbie, with crocolisks on your ass the whole way. Oh, those were the days.
I took the opportunity to remind her that Orgrimmar is currently on fire. I’m not mean, am I?
@errant_pastor said: sob. uh. everything. ;_; so many goals unaccomplished. sob
And @immamoonkin had another one for me – one that reminded me of me back in the vanilla days:
@immamoonkin chimed in: I got another: “Oh… there’s a FERAL and RESTO tree? Uh… *continues to put points in balance*” #goodbyeoldazeroth
Yeah, this was me with my first hunter way back in the day. My horrifically embarrassing n00b claim to fame? For a while there I never trained traps. I was level 60, and my hunter main couldn’t lay a trap to save his life. I looked at them as optional: I didn’t NEED them for anything, and I had gotten this far without them, so…why bother? When I went into an instance with a PUG and they asked me to lay a trap to CC a mob, I sheepishly admitted I didn’t know the skill. Yeah, you can imagine how well that went over. But it did get me to train them up right quick!
@Raevyns had this to say over IM:
– The calm green purple of the forests around Auberdine..
– Hours spent in the Barrens, killing Quillboar…
– And those loooong twilight’s hammer quests in Auberdine and Silithus…
– Being pounced by Tiny in Ungoro
I wish I could say that Quillboar were going away, or their horrific dying scream would be changing, but alas, I know from what I’ve read about the Tauren starting quests now that we’ll still hear from the Quillboar, whether we like it or not.
And oh, “Tiny.” Tiny was our name for any of the three devilsaurs that roam Un’Goro Crater – their massive hulking frames scaring the bejeezus out of characters who ventured into the crater for the first time. They’re huge, they make the ground shake, and they had a HUGE aggro range. Yup – when you’re level appropriate, those guys are seriously OP.
We waxed rhapsodic about the time in the game when you HAD to get faction with the Timbermaw to get through their tunnel, and that was pretty much the only way to progress in the game – sure you could try and do other things, but all of your level-appropriate quests were in Winterspring, and well – good luck getting there if you weren’t a Druid.
My friend Syddie took the high road though, and reminded us to not look back, but look forward to all of the new and wondrous things we would see in Cataclysm!
@thesyddiegirl said: I’m going to miss being able to somewhere and have certain memories tied to it but really looking forward to changes as well!
– There’s just too much that is new and exciting and revitalizing for the game for me to fuss about things that are going away.
She has a good point! The world will change, but now there’ll be much much more to explore and see!
So what are some of your memories of old Azeroth? What will you miss the most, and what will you be looking forward to as soon as the shattering is all finished and the realms come back up again? Let us know in the comments!
Just in case you were wondering, all that rested experience your level-capped 80s have because they spend most of their time either in dungeons or in instances and raids? Wiped when Cataclysm officially launches. This sounds bigger than it is – Blizzard is just making sure that everyone has a level playing field to get from level 80 to 85, and the world first 85 won’t be because some random person leveled to 80 right after Wrath launched and has enough rested experience to carry them through the next five levels.
There’s no explicit word as to whether or not the rule applies to lower level characters as well, but it likely doesn’t, since those other lowbies can still use the rested experience to get to level 80, where they’ll probably find themselves suddenly out of it. We’ll see how Blizzard implements it though.
The folks over at MMO Champion uncovered something interesting: BatTroll! You’ll likely see him swinging from spires in Ogrimmar fighting crime by the light of the moon, striking fear into the hearts of any Alliance who would dare attempt to sneak through the gates and lurk about the city at night.
Seriously, the video above is of the epic flight form that Troll Druids can expect to earn for themselves when they level to the point where they can get it – since currently the only Druids in the game have unique flight forms for their races, you can expect to see more epic flight forms come down the pike before Cataclysm is released next month – now less than a month away!
Still, you have to admit – those guys look ugly as sin, don’t they? Although I admit, seeing them swooping down on me from the skies in PVP would be pretty terrifying.
Blizzard unveiled the new World of Warcraft Community Site yesterday, which completely revamps the interface, updates the look specifically for Cataclysm, and among other things completely revamps the forums and the software that back-ends them.
The new community site looks cleaner and is definitely more up to date and interactive, includes more features and links to featured news, is easier to link to, and all in all performs much better than the old site. The site has a blog embedded on the front page with links to news that you can get from the front page and link around the Web more easily.
Perhaps most notably though are the changes to the forums. Take a look here:
The new forum layout is definitely different, but it’s much more well spaced and has a number of hover-over features that allow you to see recent posts in a specific thread and visual cues to let you know if the thread is active or has been posted in recently.
All of these new previews herald the eventual lock and removal of the old forums and the decommissioning of the old community site. Don’t worry, change may be difficult, but I don’t think you’ll miss the old site very much when you see the new one.
So the end is near, the elementals have started attacking, and the cultists are making their voices heard, and the authorities of the Azerothian factions and groups are busy making sure that the cultists don’t get enough of a voice to turn people to their side, or frighten the masses into panic. And in the middle of it all, you’re there to help.
Now that the world events are starting – the ones that you know already will inevitably lead to Cataclysm – what do you think? Are you ready for the expansion? Do you just want it all over with so the fun can begin? Maybe you’re not even looking at it until the expansion launches fully?
Sound off in the comments – let us know how the end times are working out for you!
The video above broke yesterday, featuring – finally – the animated dance that the female Worgen will get in Cataclysm. Who is it from? Yup – it’s Lady Gaga.
We’ve long been reporting that female Worgen animations simply haven’t been finished and are some of the last things that will likely be ready for the expansion, but here we are with the double-dose of the video above showing off their dance (which is pretty sharp, I might add) and the news that they’re available to play in the beta and the dance is in the beta as well, so if you don’t believe your eyes when watching the video above, you can roll one now and give it a try yourself!
So it might still be a little early to ask the question we always ask after every major content patch or series of changes, but we’re going to ask it anyway: How’s that patch 4.0.1 working out for you?
See that image up there? If you haven’t been paying attention, Druids lost the ability to permemently stay in the Tree of Life form, and to boot, they lost the familiar old stubble-legged tree that we’ve come to know and love. Now, when they turn into a tree, they become the model you see above (with different colors to match their character appearance) and can only stay in the form for 30 seconds. Makes staying in tree form during boss fights pretty difficult, don’t you think?
In 4.0.1 we essentially all got a brand new game. Add-ons are still largely broken for a large part, the UI and graphics have been updated remarkably, Archeology has been added to the game, and all in all the groundwork has been laid for Cataclysm to be released.
In the interim though, what do you think? How have your characters been adjusting to the changes? Any highs or lows to report? Are all of your add-ons still busted or did you make it through the changes unscathed? Sound off in the comments!
Today’s the day folks – patch 4.0.1 lands today, and with it every single one of us gets to learn how to play all over again. Significant changes are afoot in the new patch, including brand new talent trees, new currencies, new talents and specs, and just about everything else required to lay the groundwork for Cataclysm. Patch 4.0.1 will be the last significant overhaul patch prior to the expansion, although we’ll likely see at least one more prep-patch that includes some events and activity leading up to the big event come December.
If you haven’t logged in for a while, this is the patch to log in for – partially so you don’t have to re-download it when Cataclysm comes out, but partially so you can familiarize yourself with all of the myriad changes that have been made up to this point so you’re ready when the expansion hits.
Oh, you want to see the patch notes? Head here or click through the jump.
