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Twas The Night Before Cataclysm…

Hey guys! I played from server launch last night up to about 10 AM this morning, when I fell asleep, exhausted from work.

Here are some brief impressions of my first six hours with the game. Unedited since I must go back to leveling!

Monday Night, Preparing for Launch

My laziness knows no bounds– I had reserved a copy of Cata at the local Best Buy, but I didn’t want to leave my apartment. So I didn’t. Trashed my preorder and ordered it online. It took about ten seconds. I regret a bit the whole waiting in line with real life wow players, but I got that at Blizzcon. Way to go with the digital downloads, Blizz!

I also cleaned out my bags and bags of gear.

So much gear to trash. So much. I sold the vast majority of what you see here.

Stuff that was hiding in my bank:

  • My old block set
  • My old avoidance set
  • My Ulduar tier gear
  • Five entire 264 tokens
  • Tons of 264 items which I had upgraded to 277
  • Three copies of Harbringer Bone Band. * (kidding… kidding…)
  • No less than five separate weapons for Ret, all ilevel 264 or above.

Tear. Goodbye, my gear. My guild was calling me a hoarder…..

So — I was ready. So ready. Armed with snacks, smokes, and empty bags, I made my way to Orgrimmar to wait for launch.

3 AM Madness — Cataclysm Launches!

The servers came up at 3 AM my time. Of course, until 3:18, all I could see was this:

Dual monitors: my xmas present to myself! Twitter on the left, wow on the right.

In the words of a twitter friend:

When the servers came up, I found myself at the flight master like the other million and a half people on Lightninghoof. And he was dead. Dead! Thanks, allies! I gave up on flight and went off to Vash’jir to get my leveling kicks.

Vashj’ir Blues

I was pretty frustrated for the first two levels of my Cataclysm experience. Sure, the cinematic going out to Vash’jir was awesome! And the zone itself is really, really cool.

But my idea of fun is not getting ganked repeatedly by an army of jerkfaces:

Or, waiting 25 minutes to tag a quest mob with an item before the other hundreds of people get it. Or, disconnecting upon login for over an hour straight. I just couldn’t get into the game. I suspect my little graphics card can’t really handle both monitors, WOW Cataclysm zones at max settings, and sixteen hundred people AEing their opposing faction all at once. I finally got my graphics turned down and managed to stay online.

5 am rolled around. I was tired. I wanted to sleep.

Then one of my guildies whispered me– “Ana, come tank for us! Please!”

Tanking… sounds good!

Five Man Dungeons Make Everything Better

I ended up in a group with my favorite boomkin, in his healing offspec, a rogue and both of our DKs. Armed with our still-overpowered gear and a thirst for new content, the five of us ran Thrones of the Tides.

It was so much fun! I can’t remember the last time I had such a good time in a dungeon. “I’m just glad this isn’t ICC,” one of the DKs sighed happily, and I completely agreed.

Throne of the Tides — First impressions

Throne of the Tides is beautiful. Absolutely stunning. Really, it’s just amazing. It’s also easier than Blackrock, so go here first imo.

I was playing the tanking safe. I was even marking my first target in every trash pull, a habit I fell out of months ago in ICC and which I believe will find new life here in the Cataclysm world of trash. We didn’t have to CC anything, but I have a feeling that’s just a matter of time.

In general, there’s a ton of fire in Cata, both on trash and on bosses. It’s MEAN fire. The fire hits hard. DPS, your ass will die if you stand in the bad. Also, especially in Throne of the Tides, there’s a lot of poison on the ground, which leads to confusion when you’ve got a druid healing you: is this good green or bad green? Will this green heal my ass or kick my ass? Maybe both? Maybe neither?

Throne of the Tides was an awesome experience going in blind. “What’s this?” One of my DKs said. “Defense system?” He activated it, and triggered a freaking badass cutscene. SO COOL.

Then a boss FELL FROM THE CEILING ONTO US. OH, SHIT!

Thone of the Tides — Boss Fights

Preparation? Psh. I knew nothing. “I don’t know what the fuck this boss does, but I vote we pull and let God work it out.” I said. I wasn’t even tabbed out looking for strats. “Pulling.”

DBM will pretty much warn you about all the major stuff. Nuke coming? Interrupt that now!! Unless your healer says something like, “Wait! I want to see how hard it hits her! Don’t interrupt that next one!” The answer is not very hard, in most cases, if you’re curious. Of course, like I said before: 277 gear.

One of the bosses enraged at the end of his health. “Cooldown,” I said. “You didn’t need to do that;” says my healer, disgustedly. “Come on!” I whined. “It makes me feel all special…”

Our healer was having an absolute blast. “Healing is so much fun again!” He kept gushing, and that’s saying a lot considering healing is his offspec. All I know about the healing is that I’m happy when my healers are happy… and he was happy.

The last boss was slightly confusing. Add waves. Tank adds. Bad adds channel bad things; kill adds; do not stand in black void zones. Then suddenly the room turns all dark, you get FREAKIN’ HUGE, you get a nasty stacking dot, and… the first time we did it… nothing happens! We ran around, wondering where the mobs were, and finally the dot stacked up to something like 120 on each of us and killed us.

“What do we do?” We wondered. “Is phase 3 bugged?” It was our first wipe of the night.

Nah… we did it again and figured it out. The phase 3 boss is in the goddamn wall! He’s a huge octopus. You just DPS it until you kill it dead. Easy peasy. We just didn’t know what to hit.

Blackrock Dungeon — First Impressions

This dungeon is a lot meaner. It was nigh on 8 AM by the time we got in here, so I don’t remember everything, but I remember enough.

Everything is darker. More caster pulls on trash. Bosses that hit hard. There’s an ogre friend in here who will kill a lot of the trash for you, too. A very different experience from Thrones, and equally cool. Some of these bosses might actually kill you if you’re not paying attention.

The Boss With The Fire

This one stumped us. Karsh Steelbender.

He is encircled by two Fire Elemental looking things which circle around him and activate oozes on the ground into Quicksilvers which do a nasty, nasty debuff to your health.

“Any thoughts?” I asked in vent, where two other people were hanging out, two people with beta experience. Someone had explained the tanking mechanic, where you have to carefully debuff the boss, without letting it stack too high. I knew what to do with the boss.

But what about these damn fire guys?

“Maybe they can pull separately,” I said cautiously, and pulled one. We killed it.

“Crap, it respawned.” Someone said. So it had. Lo and behold, there was another one.

“Damnit,” I sighed. “I’ll tank it all. Let’s do it.”

In went two wipes with near-immediate death. Jesus. That quicksilver was deadly. And none of the boss fight guides I read online mentioned how to deal with Fire Elementals or Quicksilver! The guys on vent didn’t remember either. “Umm… kite them? Make Morvain go tank and tank them on the side? Burn them down first?” We all had no idea.

As we were preparing for the third pull, I noticed something and immediately started laughing. “Guys. GUYS.” I was laughing so hard, I was almost crying. “There are two of those assholes! Look! Two fire elementals!!”

“What?” They looked.

“That first one didn’t respawn at all. It was just the second one we saw!”

“OH GOD!”

“We can pull them separately after all!”

After laughing for about ten minutes, we did the fight the right way – carefully pull trash and kill trash. Then kill the boss. He’s really not all that hard.

In the words of our healer: “Jeez. We might as well be demoted to Social Raider.”

December 7, 2010

20 Comments

Leave a comment
  1. Rhidach
    December 7, 2010 at 3:39 pm #

    You didn’t have to CC in Throne of the Tides, are you kidding me? I had to CC in beta! Arrgh

    • Anafielle
      December 7, 2010 at 3:59 pm #

      Yeah, it was really easymode. No CC needed. It was a little bit more important to keep aggro off the DPS, but not all that much harder.

      Ichi was healing a ton, though. I know he was working harder to heal than he usually does.

      I think at 80 our gear was still OP for the dungeon. Nothing that dropped was an upgrade.

  2. Vespers
    December 7, 2010 at 3:53 pm #

    Hahaha; my group did something similar on the core hound boss and wiped like a bitch.

    Also, I kept nearly dying. I’m changing mains this xpac from retpally (best gear possible without many hard modes) to mage (dinged 80 on sunday, mostly outland+northrend quest greens). Cata mobs hit me like a truck full of anvils.

    • Anafielle
      December 8, 2010 at 6:29 pm #

      Now that I respecced ret and I’m leveling in Deepholm, I see exactly what you mean. Shit, I’m in 264/277 ret gear and I’m still sometimes worried. Word of Glory and post-pull heals are my friend. Leveling alone on a character that can’t self-heal would be much much harder.

  3. Resonate
    December 7, 2010 at 4:08 pm #

    I guess I lucked out with the login servers. I got the Cataclysm notification message at 12:01, quit the game, and then restarted it and got back in fairly painlessly (though, the login process did take about twice as long as normal, it still let me through the first try). I guess that after that happened, it must have started getting hammered harder and harder.
    .-= Resonate’s last blog ..A New Day- A New Expansion =-.

  4. Salmorian
    December 8, 2010 at 6:28 am #

    I started questing out in Vashjir, and i’ll have to say while it’s a pretty original zone, I’m not diggin’ it. It feel…. awkward…. goofy… Spongebobee! But I gotta complete the zone for the achieve so i’m gonna stick it out.

    Also did the Blackrock dungeon, I enjoyed it alot. I like how you have to wait for pats to pull a group. It’s nice coming up with a course of action to take down trash. Although our group was quite rusty and very used to the “run and gun” feel of wrath.

    • Anafielle
      December 8, 2010 at 6:31 pm #

      Careful with Vashjir, I heard the quest achievement wasn’t working because there weren’t enough quests… not sure as I left when I got to Abyssal Depths in favor of going to Deepholm.

      I too liked Blackrock a lot, especially doing it again the next day. The place doesn’t kick your ass (on regular), but it does make you think a little! We even used some CC as practice.

  5. Falowin
    December 8, 2010 at 12:30 pm #

    I had a lot of fun in our 5 man as well. Especially after spending 30 minutes trying to get or turn in quests while being AOE’ed by Allys.

    By the way, if you are Alliance and are reading this, I hope you die!

    • Salmorian
      December 9, 2010 at 6:15 am #

      Lol, I’m pretty sure i can say the same for you horde, I personally tried to do my own thing, but it’s a warzone out there!

    • Anafielle
      December 10, 2010 at 8:10 pm #

      Part of the reason why I had so much fun is because me plus you four are pretty much the five most awesome people in guild. Not gonna lie. Everyone knows it’s true. Capping off the night with fun dungeon runs was the perfect way to end the evening.

  6. juggerdin
    December 8, 2010 at 1:36 pm #

    what got me was how fast some people hit 85. They say they were just questing but I call bs. The first 85 was at 4pm by 6 we had 3 more.

    • Anafielle
      December 10, 2010 at 8:12 pm #

      The first five people on our server to hit 85 clearly dungeon farm’d their way to the top in roughly 12 hours. Absolutely insane. Everyone told me questing is “faster”, but if you go straight dungeons I think and farm farm farm, you’ll be a more effective leveler. It sounds really boring though, so I certainly didn’t want to do that.

  7. juggerdin
    December 9, 2010 at 8:27 am #

    did an all guild run of throne of the tides. Beautiful instance. Dps commented it didn’t play any dif than wotlk 5 man content. But me tanking noticed a bit more damage. And I think on herioc mode it’d be a challenge.

  8. Doxa
    December 9, 2010 at 8:48 am #

    Hey.. we’ve got the same mouse. I miss my Logitech G5 though.

    • Anafielle
      December 10, 2010 at 8:12 pm #

      I love my mouse :) Apparently it’s the inexpensive gamer mouse that just about everyone has. I had used cheapo $10 mice before I snagged it and it’s such a nice piece of equipment.

  9. Hernus
    December 9, 2010 at 3:37 pm #

    Must be terrible dealing with the ganking. I’m on a PvE server and people were complaining about getting quest mobs and loots ninja’d. Can’t imagine questing on a PvP server.

    I leveled by chaining dungeons with guildies until 30% into 84. Only had one legitimate wipe so it went by very fast. The questing in Twilight Highlands after was brutal though. Mobs had a ton of hp and hit like a truck. I pretty much had to use all holy power on WoG and still came out of each fight with half health. I was also doing about 2.5k dps to mobs with 80k hp, not having anticipated the questing to pick up dps gear (we planned on dungeon chaining till 85). Because of that I was short by 1.1% when server first paladin was taken.

    Anyway, great post! If you have any question about dungeons in the future, feel free to ask on Twitter. I’ve done all of them except Throne of the Tides and Halls of Origination, both of which I’d done on beta. I also did half of heroic BRC last night. It was hard.

    Keep up the good work!

    • Anafielle
      December 10, 2010 at 8:16 pm #

      Wow!!! You were within 1.1% of server first paladin? Well, even though you didn’t get it, way to freakin’ go! I’m impressed!!

      The ganking was absolutely insane in the first, oh, 2 questing zones in Vashjir. But what I failed to mention in the post (because it was not true until the next day) was that, after the first zones, Horde and Alliance had an odd truce going. I didn’t hit any Allies I saw, and they never hit me, regardless of groups. In fact, when we were gathered at quest givers, I’m sure I accidentally melee’d one or two – and they melee’d me – and no one ever retaliated. I was so proud of my server. We were good little kids and played nice all through the later zones. I guess we were all focused on leveling. I even traded quest mobs with allies sometimes and /waved and made pleasant emotes.

      I might complain about the ganking, but it adds some (occasionally annoying but always exciting) spice to my life.

      Another twitter friend!! Adding you so I can spam you with questions this weekend as I dungeon run :)

  10. Dproject
    December 9, 2010 at 11:00 pm #

    Wow pretty impressed you sold your block gear, even tho block doesnt exist anymore on items it crushed me trying to delete my block gear, so I kept it in my bank. Tho I hardly have the space for it, I got 2 guild banks full with TBC and wotlk items.

    It took me ages to farm for my block gear and a whole guild to help me in ulduar and even some nax items.

    Nice site btw
    .-= Dproject’s last blog ..Offline website =-.

    • Anafielle
      December 10, 2010 at 8:17 pm #

      There were some items I could not abandon too. Not the block gear… but I couldn’t sell my Ardent Guard… I loved that thing *tear*

      We tanks do love our gear.

      Thanks for the compliment!

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