The picture above is one that even long-time veterans of WoW are just now getting familiar with: a view of Stormwind from above. For all the new content Blizzard has included with the Cataclysm expansion, it’s amazing that this seems to be one of the most common things people have been most impressed with. Is it a testament to Blizzard’s ability to make the old feel new, or an indictment that the new zones aren’t drop-dead stunning? Probably a combination of both, but that’s not going to stop the masses — myself included — from diving in headfirst. Here’s part 1 of how I spent Cataclysm‘s launch day.
False Start
Having read online accounts of the European launch 9 hours earlier, we suspected there might be hiccups at the midnight launch. Basically, there’s an in-game message saying “Cataclysm content is now live,” signaling you to log out and sign back in for changes to take effect. Or in other words, the game tells an entire continent to hammer the login server at once. Our guild’s midnight crew was having a little launch party via Ventrilo voice chat so we could chat through any downtime, and it took most of us about 20 minutes of disconnects and delays before we were able to get back into the new world.
Thinking we could get a head start on leveling, many of us had completed quests in Icecrown in advance, with the idea that once Cataclysm went live, we’d turn them in and get a small chunk of XP to get rolling with. There had been reports that Blizzard was going to nerf the amount of XP these quests gave to discourage people from doing just that, and it seemed they did so, as I didn’t get a single point of XP for the 23 quests I turned in. As it turned out, this just was a bug that stopped people from getting XP for a short period of time, as other people were able to turn in Icecrown quests for XP a few minutes later. But I got a huge chunk of gold for turning in the quests, so it wasn’t a loss by any stretch.
Fishing For Fun and Profit
Once I’d turned in my quests, my initial plan was to take my 80 warrior to the new Hyjal zone and spend the night leveling towards 82. But while reading accounts of the European launch, I considered a new plan: chasing down the “Realm First” achievement for leveling fishing from skill level 450 to 525.
In particular, European players reported that Cataclysm had an accelerated skillup format where you could max out fishing in under two hours — a trivial amount of time for a profession that’s historically been a massive time sink. In the WoW fishing community, it was generally believed that Blizzard wouldn’t leave fishing this “easy” for long, so I felt it was worth jumping on early. In a worst-case scenario, I’d get fishing maxed out early, and in the best-case, I had a rare chance to get a Realm First achievement.
But I really blew it with lack of planning. After spending 15 minutes turning in my initial quests, finding cooking, fishing and flight trainers, and dealing with a handful of worgen looking for guild invites, I picked the worst spot in the world to fish: the lake in Stormwind that also happened to be the location for the daily fishing quest. So for the first half hour, I had a parade of people fishing on top of me, which probably cost me a few casts here and there.
And proving that there’s a bottomless pit of jackasses who play WoW, one guy had nothing better to do at 1AM than try to grief me by parking his mammoth on top of my fishing line. This is why you showed up for the midnight launch? To run around and be a dick to other people? No stranger to this type of stupidity, I threw some Baby Spice on the guy to shrink him, which apparently earned the dumbass’s respect. “haha baby spice pro move” he said as he rumbled off.
As I sat there blazing through fishing, I watched server announcements for many of the Realm Firsts for other professions fall quickly. Cooking was gone within five minutes. Skinning took about a half hour, followed shortly by mining and then herbalism. Fishing finally fell at 2AM, with me trailing about 15 minutes behind. A little bummed but not surprised, I headed to Hyjal to finish up the fishing achievement and get some useful catches for the new cooking recipes, and then called it a night, saving Hyjal questing for the next day. Â
(next up: Hyjal)
Cataclysm: The First 24 Hours (part 1)
The picture above is one that even long-time veterans of WoW are just now getting familiar with: a view of Stormwind from above. For all the new content Blizzard has included with the Cataclysm expansion, it’s amazing that this seems to be one of the most common things people have been most impressed with. Is it a testament to Blizzard’s ability to make the old feel new, or an indictment that the new zones aren’t drop-dead stunning? Probably a combination of both, but that’s not going to stop the masses — myself included — from diving in headfirst. Here’s part 1 of how I spent Cataclysm‘s launch day.
False Start
Having read online accounts of the European launch 9 hours earlier, we suspected there might be hiccups at the midnight launch. Basically, there’s an in-game message saying “Cataclysm content is now live,” signaling you to log out and sign back in for changes to take effect. Or in other words, the game tells an entire continent to hammer the login server at once. Our guild’s midnight crew was having a little launch party via Ventrilo voice chat so we could chat through any downtime, and it took most of us about 20 minutes of disconnects and delays before we were able to get back into the new world.
Thinking we could get a head start on leveling, many of us had completed quests in Icecrown in advance, with the idea that once Cataclysm went live, we’d turn them in and get a small chunk of XP to get rolling with. There had been reports that Blizzard was going to nerf the amount of XP these quests gave to discourage people from doing just that, and it seemed they did so, as I didn’t get a single point of XP for the 23 quests I turned in. As it turned out, this just was a bug that stopped people from getting XP for a short period of time, as other people were able to turn in Icecrown quests for XP a few minutes later. But I got a huge chunk of gold for turning in the quests, so it wasn’t a loss by any stretch.
Fishing For Fun and Profit
Once I’d turned in my quests, my initial plan was to take my 80 warrior to the new Hyjal zone and spend the night leveling towards 82. But while reading accounts of the European launch, I considered a new plan: chasing down the “Realm First” achievement for leveling fishing from skill level 450 to 525.
In particular, European players reported that Cataclysm had an accelerated skillup format where you could max out fishing in under two hours — a trivial amount of time for a profession that’s historically been a massive time sink. In the WoW fishing community, it was generally believed that Blizzard wouldn’t leave fishing this “easy” for long, so I felt it was worth jumping on early. In a worst-case scenario, I’d get fishing maxed out early, and in the best-case, I had a rare chance to get a Realm First achievement.
But I really blew it with lack of planning. After spending 15 minutes turning in my initial quests, finding cooking, fishing and flight trainers, and dealing with a handful of worgen looking for guild invites, I picked the worst spot in the world to fish: the lake in Stormwind that also happened to be the location for the daily fishing quest. So for the first half hour, I had a parade of people fishing on top of me, which probably cost me a few casts here and there.
And proving that there’s a bottomless pit of jackasses who play WoW, one guy had nothing better to do at 1AM than try to grief me by parking his mammoth on top of my fishing line. This is why you showed up for the midnight launch? To run around and be a dick to other people? No stranger to this type of stupidity, I threw some Baby Spice on the guy to shrink him, which apparently earned the dumbass’s respect. “haha baby spice pro move” he said as he rumbled off.
As I sat there blazing through fishing, I watched server announcements for many of the Realm Firsts for other professions fall quickly. Cooking was gone within five minutes. Skinning took about a half hour, followed shortly by mining and then herbalism. Fishing finally fell at 2AM, with me trailing about 15 minutes behind. A little bummed but not surprised, I headed to Hyjal to finish up the fishing achievement and get some useful catches for the new cooking recipes, and then called it a night, saving Hyjal questing for the next day. Â
(next up: Hyjal)