Wednesday 2 February 2011

A Cataclysmic Return


Well here we are again, after yet another 11 month hiatus we have yet another Return to Azeroth. So where on Earth/Azeroth have I been? Well, being a father mainly. I must confess I also lost interest in Wrath of the Lich King after dragging my sorry dead cow ass up to 80. I think it all began with my first foray into WotLK heroics. I cranked up a bit of gear and ran through a few with my friends who were working on [Glory of the Hero] had already elevated themselves into the glorious realms of Kingslayer-dom. That having gone pretty well I pottered into the LFD tool and signed up for a random heroic, got a nice group, had a nice time and got helped through by some kind people. Great! Another! Againagainagain! Second group, we hadn't even begun when I got a “Lol DK ur GS sux, leave nao, my 78 shaman has better gear than u”... oh dear, what could I do except leave the group – I really didn't want this imbecile ruining my run by continually spamming recount data inevitably showing my dps somewhere between the tank and the healer (if I was lucky)...

So I sulked off, completely demoralised and spent the closing days of Wrath with a Herding Cats offshoot called Knew The Risks (KTR) on EU-Argent Dawn where we ran dungeons starting at the beginning using only DPS... as was rightly said – we knew the risks! It was fun and it also let me explore making some hefty gold which was something I'd only ever intended on doing.

With the launch of Cataclysm, I've gotten really really excited again. The old world (that's right kids, that's all there was when I started playing this game, actually can't remember the date now but I think it was just after patch 1.10) is amazingly redesigned, and you can fly in it... that does spoil my old hobby of climbing things that were never intended to be climbed: remember Ironforge Airport, ooh it was cool trying to get there wasn't it? Pah, that's nothing... get there and now climb the tallest part of the wall leading up to the mountain peak – THAT's climbing! I think my computer may have eaten the screenshots, maybe they're on photobucket, I will have a look and post them later if they turn up somewhere.

Anyway, that digression aside, old world flying is awesome for power levelling professions (more on that in a later post), particularly if you have some form of epic flyer.

I started into Cataclysm pretty fast with Hjaern my DK, and jumped in on the Herding Cats Sunday evening dungeon progression runs. As usual however family stuff meant missing a couple of runs and I found myself a very easily obtainable couple of levels behind. Well that wasn't much of an issue but then I got a /t from our raid leader asking whether she could make a “PITA request”... oh dear – what's it going to be?

Basically the group was still down a healer but all the DPS and tank spots were filled, did I have one somewhere I'd be willing to transfer? Well poor little Gwenddydd was still skulking at 54 on EU-Steamwheedle Cartel (A) so that meant: Faction Change, Server Change, Power Level, Gear Up... What the hell! Lets do it!

Faction change was easy peasy and went through almost instantly. Server change was pretty straight forwards apart form the fact my idiot bank (you know who you are!) decided to flag my card as potentially fraudulent because I'd tried to make 2 payments to the same website, I only discovered this in Tesco's the next evening while trying to buy baby food... grrrr. Well long story (and several angry phone calls) short, it eventually went through ok.

So, 31 levels, a hell of a lot of profession points to get and obviously gear to obtain when I get there it's a big challenge. Ten days in to the process (and not that much effort as yet) she's sitting pretty (as pretty as anyone who was a Night Elf and is now Tauren can be) at level 64 (level a day so far – not too bad – could be better) with some much better profession scores and a good deal more cash. I'm going to be upping the tempo a bit now I think as there's still a way to go and powering through Northrend might be interesting.

I'm going to save some of the levelling tactics for later posts but with a helpful guild behind me and Northrend rapidly looming into vision I'm hopeful of getting Gwen healing guild runs very very soon. Watch this space.

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