The Glade 4.0

So, I'm thinking about re-upping my WoW account for a bit, it should play well on my Mac Mini from what I can tell.

Anything you would consider notable? I played up through ICC release, some of the raid content and all the group content. Stopped playing mainly due to lack of interesting people to play with, and soloing all the time was only so fun.

Thinking about starting some new Horde chars and playing the game on up with them to "re-learn" things- I had a decent amount of heirloom gear around.

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

If you haven't seen Cata and the horrendous changes they made to the game... count yourself lucky.

Although, in a week or so(?)... Pandas.

_________________

Holy shitsnacks!

Hah. So no real rush to upgrade, eh?

I'll probably make some new alts, dick around for a few months and then get bored again. It's my usual pattern.

So that said, what are the horrible changes from Cata?

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

1. The talent system. (that they're making worse in Pandaria.)

That's the big one that hacked me off in Cata. I recall getting my DK to 85. She was mostly in quest blues and greens from Wrath. I hadn't raided or grouped with her too much and I got my *** handed to me in the first zones. Blah blah, ff to 85, After gearing a bit, was a bit easier. Ended up hitting 85 in Moonshade(?) The one with the dwarven wedding.

On my rogue, with full on 25m ICC(H) gear... I breezed through the initial content, rocketed to 85 and hit somewhere in Uldum, before realizing that I had another longass gear treadmill in front of me for faction, heroics, and raiding. It just wasn't all that compelling to me anymore.

_________________

Holy shitsnacks!

IMO the talent system is one of the BEST changes they've made. Rather than a cookie cutter build, its now a 'pick your playstyle' or a 'pick what works best on this fight' system. Don't let the naysayers dissuade you before you try it

_________________

Games about half downloaded.

Kinda sad, though... Looks like I could have gotten someone to send me a scroll of Resurection for a free copy of Cata and a level 80.

Oh we'll. I've got 3 80s already.

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Damnit, I still want my mount :\

If anyone else wants a Rez scroll please let me know

_________________

Haha, I'd offer to do it on my second acct, but... I'd probably just do that myself

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Ok, new question.

Currencies don't seem the same as I remembered.

I swear I had a number of Champions Seals and Frost Badges (Heroic Dailies) but now have none.

Did they change currencies and how they work?

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Generally all currencies get transformed into the latest lesser-type currency for the contintent.

As for Heirlooms, one nice change they made a while back is the ability to mail them to all of your alts on your server, even if they are on a different faction. This goes for all bind on account items.

One new change is that barring class mounts, all mounts and minipets are now shared across all your characters across all servers. Took the time to get the skeleton dragon mount from ICC on one character? Now all your characters have it.

_________________
Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

This is going to take some work. 20 minutes in game, and I'm confused as all get out- so many changes.

And all my hot keys are gone.

As to currencies- everything seems to be Justice Points now?

Riding skills seem to have changed some as well.

At least all mounts are useable on all chars now.

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

And yeah, awesome about the cross faction. Gonna start up a Tauren Paladin.

Figure it will help me relearn the basics, and be fun to boot.

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Also, Gladiator and Rated Battleground mounts are not shared

_________________

So all my Librams are grey items now? I assume they got rid of class-special slots?

Also seems they got rid of ranged slots separate from a weapon, so hunters have to choose one or the other.

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

No more head enchants as of patch 5. And all relic/totem-ish slots are gone too. I believe shoulder enchants are inscription's territory now? Not sure. Something like that.

Yeah, mounts are a bit different. If you really liked the look of a 60% speed mount (level 40 mounts in vanilla wow, now level 10 or 20) but did not like the look of it's 100% speed upgrade (level 60 mounts in vanilla wow), when you learn the better riding skill all of your slower mounts are increased in speed. So your "slower" mounts are no longer slower. Also, the slow flying mounts had a major bump in speed. They used to be as slow as the slowest ground mounts (60% increase of speed). They now move faster than the fastest ground mounts. The slowest flying skill grants you 150% speed increase, a big jump from 60%.

Also, the dungeon and raid finder can be very handy when you want to complete dungeon/raid content. There are(were?) daily dungeon quests that netted you justice/valor points. You also get justice/valor points for killing dungeon/raid bosses as well as extra points just for using the random dungeon finder.

You can also use the dungeon finder for holiday events, like the headless horseman.

Speaking of the headless horseman, they changed how he works too. Instead of a small chance of him dropping a pet or a mount and having the entire party roll on it, everyone who kills him gets a bind on pickup bag of goodies. The bag itself is now what has the small chance of dropping a pet or mount. Most holiday bosses work this way now (or at least they did as of last november).

Orgrimmar/Ironforge (I assume?) is the new Dalaran. All the big portals to different locations are located there. However, I still bind in Dalaran as there is still one portal left open to Orgrimmar/Ironforge. Having a hearth to Dal allows to you get to anywhere you need very quickly. Dal for Northrend content, quick hop to org to portal to burning crusade portal, as well as all the new portals all over the old world.

The reworked content for vanilla is actually pretty fun. They've made a lot of improvements to their quest engine as well as quest rewards. Bags are lot more plentiful at lower levels, as well as blue item single-player quest rewards. Use of the phasing engine is also present on Azeroth.

My biggest complaint is that a player typically outlevels the area far too fast to see the storyline to its completion, unless you don't mind doing grey quests. There are some really good and funny ones.

One in particular has you talk to a quest giver, and he asks you to take his place while he runs an errand. You suddenly become rooted in place with an exclamation point above your head. And then several interesting "players" show up at different intervals to get your quest content.

Sure, some classic quests are gone. But the new quests in general are a lot more fun and have much better rewards than they ever did. It was a such a treat leveling in the old world that by the time I got to Outland I felt like the quests there were boring and antiquated.

_________________
Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

So is the revamped old world stuff tied exclusively to owning Cata?

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Everyone has the old revamped world, even if you only own vanilla. Its a permanent change

_________________

Sweet.

I leveled my new Tauren Paladin up to 10 last night. Things are feeling a bit more familiar, now.

Jumping back in to my 80s was definitely overwhelming, though.

How are Paladins/Warriors/Hunters doing these days? I'm sure my gear is outdated, but I was in 232/264 on all of them.

I've also got a Shaman and Druid sitting in the mid-60s.

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Stormwind is the central hub for the Alliance.

_________________


Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

I started a monk on Terenas, about level 12 or so.

_________________

my bnet id is _omero#1770 (with the missing letter being J), if anyone wants to add me. Though I likely won't be on until I get back from my business trip in MI, which will probably this weekend.

_________________
Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

So I started playing with Battle Pets last night... They're a heck of a lot of fun.

You can fight any creature in the wild, and either capture it or kill it, and your pets level accordingly.

There's also a questline where you go from zone to zone fighting "pet masters" and their local pets, like Old Man McClure and his Chickens and Harvesters.

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Oh, random name generator. You so crazy.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

That's classic!

On a side note, I can barely control the character. Skyrim has created way too much muscle memory!

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So Pet Battles have consumed my last two days (and nights).

It's more addictive than leveling was, by far.

Up to 60+ pets, and got my "team" to level 12, with a bunch of others close.

Using a Mechanical Yeti, Blizzard Bear and Spriteling as my 3 main ones- they chew up most of the different things I encounter.

_________________
Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.