The Cataclysm arrived in its full form about a week ago and I swear to you that I have had to update the Questie addon twice a day, every day, since then.

The cataclysm is real

Questie puts up an apologetic message on loading that says that the quest data for the addon has been built up via private servers and Cataclysm isn’t popular in that domain so the new quest data is a lot rougher than past outings.  Another argument for “classic” ending with Wrath I suppose.  But I give them props for the updates.

Otherwise things work… or at least are not egregiously broken.  At least not after a couple of updates.

Out in Vashj’ir there were few oddities with quests not running right on the first pass, the occasional quest window that wouldn’t go away when accepted, and one quest where the object given you wouldn’t perform its task.

That led to a point in under water where I was without a connecting quest in the chain to send me to the next location.  After some going back and forth I gave up and managed to pick up the quest chain… or at least a quest chain… further on down the zone, so could carry on.

This got fixed later and I was able to go back and pick up the missed quest, so my ability to get the achievement for doing the zone quests won’t be blocked… by that at least.

There are other, more general failings in this zone, but they are more by design than by failing to replicate a stable, playable version of the original.

I also learned, in playing the DK, that path of frost might not be the most useful ability in Vashj’ir.  I had it up when I hit the zone and, once in the capsized boat that is the first quest hub, found I needed to dismiss it to jump back in the water.  Go figure.

I did find it a bit amusing when my DK, the first of my characters to level up, was congratulated on hitting level 0.

Still, that is a hefty load of hit points

I figured that was a minor oversight, something easy to fix.  But as the week went on and I hit 81 with three more characters, then 82 with a couple, I began to suspect that this might be a symptom of some more fundamental conflict with Cataclysm code running on the current retail framework.  For users it is cosmetic and doesn’t appear elsewhere, but it is one of those things that if I were the project manage, I would be asking the devs to explain what this really meant.

That said, and my tepid engagement with Cataclysm as a whole aside, I have been putting some effort to get into things.

Being only a 5 level expansion, people were hitting level cap on opening day.  The opening zones of Vashj’ir, while not empty… there is always that guy there to snipe that last mob you need it seems… was certainly over the first day rush very quickly.  Even the weekend failed to bring much of a surge to the game that I could detect.

Then again, we are on Bloodsail Buccaneers, the PVE-RP server, which according to Ironforge.pro, which uses data from Blizzard’s armory site to try and estimate populations, isn’t exactly a booming metropolis, reporting in about as about 1.4% of the population of the US Cataclysm servers.  If you want an active US server you need to land on Pagle for Alliance and Faerlina for Horde.

The numbers as I write this

The numbers also show Cataclysm Classic being slightly more popular in the EU than the US… by very close to the ratio of the population difference between the two regions.  I find that both normal and odd at the same time.

According to the demographics, Cataclysm is also more than twice as popular than classic era vanilla but about half as popular as Season of Discovery.  And while I am skeptical that those numbers absolutely represent the player base, the ratios may be okay if they are generating all the numbers in the same way.  The usual “even data collected incorrectly can be useful in some ways if it is collected consistently” argument I make applies.

I have been sending characters up both the Vashj’ir and Hyjal paths for their first zone and the xp is such that it appears you need only do one or the other before moving on to Deepholm, so it is probably good that achievements are shared so I don’t have to do all the zones with one character.

So far most of the classes have been working out okay.  The protection paladin and blood deathknight have no problem tearing through overland leveling content.  Likewise, my hunter was just fine once I remembered to spend the pet talent points as well… though he wasn’t having any problems before I did that, it just made things go faster.

The feral druid is a little squishy… but always was I suppose.  They made an odd change to thorns, which is now a short buff with a cool down.  And I also got Chad the rogue out, though that is a play style I need to be in the right mindset to pull off.  After stomping through the brush with the pally and DK, being a little circumspect takes some effort.

Trade skills… are in progress.  It took me a bit to realize that, with the alts who only have gathering professions only, that they have the tracker on for both.  So I was out with Irondam, who has both mining and herbalism, thinking I was only tracking herbs and wondering why I kept finding mining nodes.

When it comes to cooking however, the cult of dailies has taken over and you are at the mercy of Robby Flay and the currency he offers, which are required to buy recipes.

Robby Flay in Stormwind… have to visit him every day

This is offset a bit by Darkmoon Faire moving to its island instance, which means once a month you can go there and get a 5 point boost on your trade skills with a quick quest.  That doesn’t seem like much, but sometimes 5 points will be just enough to get you past a dead spot.

Overall, not a bad first week I suppose.  Popularity is obviously nowhere near where it was with the launch of WoW Classic nearly five years back, nor even the arrival of Wrath Classic 18 month ago, but it is trucking along.  This is similar to the player arc you might see with EverQuest retro servers, where the launch is always huge, but after a few expansion unlocks it tends to be down to those invested in reliving the raids or other aspects of the experience.

Even if it is just 50K players, they are all subscribed and, judging by what I have seen, a certain percentage even bought the special mount pack.  So probably well worth the time invested.  Not a gold mine anymore, but making money.

And, for all the complaints above, I have spent most of my gaming time playing it and rediscovering what the expansion brought.  Expect more opinions I suppose.

Rather by chance we all ended up online and in WoW Classic yesterday.  There was no plan.  We all hadn’t been online together for a few months at this point, probably not since we attempted Shadowfang Keep in Season of Discovery.  And it was a timely meeting as we were close to the eve of Cataclysm Classic.  It was time to start getting ready.

Can you re-run a cataclysm?

We spent a bit of time getting everybody together and making sure we all had flight unlocked in Azeroth proper.  There was some fumbling about to get characters together and working with their changed up specs.  Ula, a frost mage so far in WoW Classic, read that frost was dead in Cataclysm, so swapped out to be a fire mage.

There were other change ups.

Beanpole was done being a gnome warlock and paid for the race change, which includes a name change, so became Liftkit, a worgen warlock, largely on the strength of the built-in speed traits.

Then Potshot, who dual-boxed a pally healer and a hunter DPS through Wrath for us decided to swap out the hunter for a Deathknight.  He leveled his new DK up over the last few weeks and even did a bit of Wintergrasp with him to gear up a bit.

So our new lineup for Cataclysm is now

• Wilhelm – Protection Pally
• Fergorin – Holy Paladin
• Kharageenan – Blood Deathknight
• Ula – Fire Mage
• Liftkit – Demonology Warlock

Having gotten all that together in about an hour, and still having daylight to burn, Potshot suggested we ought to do a practice run.  So we started planning to go back to Northrend and travel to an instance, once we figured out which instance would be suitable… when somebody noted that we could just use the Dungeon Finder and teleport our collective asses into an instance.

The Dungeon Finder had limits on where we could go as level 80s, so we decided on heroic Utgarde Keep.  That is a pretty well known instance to us and we have a history there.  So it was off to Utgarde… pop, and we were in there.

The group inside Utgarde Keep

Once in there was a bit more setup time to figure out what we had to do and what buffs still applied and all of that.  Small things changed.  Warlock health stones, for example, now heal a set percentage of your health rather than a specific number of hit points, no doubt a reaction to the hit point inflation that the Northrend gear stats brought about… and which the Cataclysm stats will no doubt inflate further.

Eventually we got ourselves set and faced the first mobs.

They have been patiently waiting for us

That went pretty well.  We were sloppy on the first pulls no doubt, but we were overpowered enough to account for that with trash mobs.

We made our way through the trash to the first boss, the legendary (to our guild at least) Prince Keleseth.  We knew how to fight him, it was just a matter of holding it together and doing the right thing… which basically means all standing on Keleseth so AOE will take care of any ice block issues.

As it turned out our group in Cata spec melted Keleseth so fast that ice block wasn’t an issue.  We even got the achievement for not breaking any of his ice blocks.

Keleseth down, achievement up

We rolled on from there pretty confident.

We managed to screw up the fight with Skarvald the Constructor and Dalronn the Controller, slaying Dalronn too quickly, leaving us fighting Skarvald at almost full health while Dalronn’s ghost beat on us.  But we powered through.

We drove on to Ingvar the Plunderer and, knowing the trick to that fight, also got him on the first try.  The only hitch was one fight where we picked up four trash mobs, only to have another three wander in on the side where I didn’t see them.  If I had been more aware I could have laid hands or used a healthstone.  And, even then, it wasn’t a wipe as Ula and Fergorin finished off the fight, then Fergorin ressed us.

So we got through our first instance with the new specs pretty well.  That also got us our first guild dungeon achievement, as guild achievements are a thing with Cata.

Having done that in a rather short time, we decided to do another, this time picking the heroic version of The Nexus, another dungeon well known to us.

In The Nexus once more

Our main issue in The Nexus was simply forgetting all the mechanics of the first fight with the heroic only mini-boss, Commander Kolurg.  The whole thing where his group will fear you and you’ll go run into a bunch of other mobs, pulling them into the fight, which is a pretty sure fire way to get a wipe.

So we wiped.  But by that time we had remembered the warlock soul stone and had one up on Fergorin, who revived himself.  The trick was that I died way on the far side of Commander Kolurg, such that there was no way to get close enough to ress me without aggroing the boss again.

That was when the new pally spell, Absolution, came in handy.  That revives the whole group at once, bringing them to the pally, while having a much greater casting range (100 yards vs. 30 yards).  That was enough to pull us all in safely.

We went back and pulled Commander Kolurg around the corner, far from other mobs, and dealt with him there.  Then it was onward, clockwise around The Nexus, picking off all of the usual suspects.

Anomalus waiting his turn

We got all the way around to Keristrasza, where we managed to remember to jump frequently, bringing her down, finishing the instance and garnering our second guild dungeon achievement.

Posting with defeated Keristrasza

So we did pretty well with our warm up, and even got Kharageenan a few upgrades… not that they won’t be immediately replaced by superior green gear in the first zone in Cataclysm.  But it is always nice to get an upgrade.

We were also looking at the transmog system in Cata Classic, which as I think I mentioned, is actually the version in retail, which only sucks somewhat, and not the original version from Cata, which sucked a lot more.

As part of that some of us were interested in acquiring gear “looks” from stuff that dropped.  You might be able to see that I am wielding the Mace of Unrequited Love, a drop from that fight, because I wanted that in my transmog options.

I do like that they went with the more modern transmog mechanics… there is no reason to relive the original versions, that doesn’t help anybody… but I am a bit miffed, as always, that it totally ignored anything you had in the past.  That means we might be going back to some old instances to seek out some looks… or old raids.  We’re high enough level now that we could probably smash and grab raids through Outland at least.  We’ll see.

Anyway, we had our warm up.  Now to see if we are prepared.

On Monday at 3pm Pacific time the launch of Cataclysm Classic begins… and I am honestly not even sure where I need to be to best experience it.

Can you re-run a cataclysm?

I mean three years ago… was it really that long ago… with Burning Crusade Classic everybody went to the newly upgraded black gate and waited for our chance to rush through into Outland.  There was a crowd.

Nobody was wearing a mask either

Then, with the Wrath Classic launch back in September 2022, we were all on the dock eager to get on the first boat to Northrend.

Going ashore at Valliance Keep

But with Cataclysm Classic we are getting into the post-Classic era in more ways than just, say, the before/after era of dungeon finder.  We’re now into the era of expansions I didn’t really play much when compared to Wrath.

My memories are pretty vague, but I know we went into Cata back in the day by re-rolling new characters with an eye to experiencing the new world of Azeroth only to find it had been dumbed down to the point of being quite dull compared to our original experiences.  We ended up leaving and didn’t come back until Mists of Pandaria was wrapping up and Warlords of Draenor was warming up.

So, as I said already, I am not even sure where everybody is going to be on Monday, and the three weeks of the pre-patch were not much help.

Though, part of me thinks the pre-patch started as an involuntary beta given how much was broken the day it launched.  I got in there and had to figure out how to spec and play my paladin on day one, only to come back later and find all of our talent points had been refunded because things still needed to be fixed.

And then we had three weeks to do… what?

Was there a Cataclysm launch event or quest chain that I missed?

I mean sure, if you wanted to roll up a goblin or worgen character, you had some runway to get that done.  And I guess there is the new archaeology trade skill to work on… though I always found archaeology dull and somewhat less rewarding than many of the already dull and unrewarding trade skills in the game.  I mean, I guess I could still catch up on that, but I would need to find the motivation.

On the trade front, I was pleased to see inscription and glyphs were actually expanded with Cata.  I totally forgot about that.

More glyphs, and now you can collect them all

Then again, I know inscription will be nerfed into irrelevance eventually… doesn’t Warlords of Draenor pretty much kill all crafting… but for the moment it is pretty good.

I was also a bit pleased to see that we got transmog that was closer to current retail transmog than what we got back in the day.  I mean, I think transmog in retail is fraught and over complicated, but it suck at least 80% less than the original pass at it.

So, with three weeks to kill, the first thing I did, of course, was head to the flight master in Stormwind and spend the 200 gold to get flying in Azeroth.  Best gold spent ever.

Then I spent some time running the Children’s Week quests on multiple characters.  Might as well beef up my companion pet roster in advanced of pet battles in Pandaria… which should be released before the next Children’s Week rolls around.

By my third tour I had optimized my routes

That done I… poked around and tried to learn my classes a bit.

I am actually somewhat pleased with how the protection paladin plays now, at least solo.  I have no memories about specs after Wrath, mostly because Blizz just got in the habit of throwing everything in the air and shuffling specs after that.  But this time around it worked pretty well.  I am definitely more OP than I was with the Wrath spec.  I base this on the fact that I could never quite solo Chillmaw on that one Argent Tournament quest.  I came close, but could never quite swing it.  I always needed a bit more DPS.  And this kind of bothered me because I have distinct memories of soloing Chillmaw.

Well, after getting into the Cata spec, Chillmaw was soloable.

That is how it is done

I guess those memories are more of early Cata than late Wrath.  Maybe?  Anyway, I could go earn 10 champions seals daily, which I am saving up to buy the tournament pets.  Again, gotta fill up that pest roster.

I did also run around and get the achievement for doing the quests in Icecrown.  I was only a few quests shy.

Been there, done that now

I now just need Storm Peaks and Zul’Drak.  Storm Peaks I am also close on, but Zul’Drak… le sigh.

I did strongly consider starting a new character just to experience some of updated Azeroth… to the point of rolling up a dwarf shaman and getting into the starter area… but then thought better of that.  I have done the whole loremaster of Kalmidor and the Eastern Kingdoms before.  I don’t need to do it again.  Plus I have six characters at level cap already.  Seven isn’t going to make me feel better.  Now I regret spending some champion’s seals on some heirloom gear for him.

I did get ahead of the game on one Cata ritual.  While running around during Children’s Week I got blasted by Deathwing and got the obligatory “stood in the fire” achievement for dying.

Waiting for the fire to take me

So that is out of the way.

Now we have a weekend left before the big unlock and I am not sure what I should do, if anything, to get ready for it.  I’ll probably run the Argent Tournament dailies… and maybe work on finishing up the Storm Peaks.

Wrath of the Lich King Classic is effectively over now.  The Cataclysm Classic pre-patch has been on the servers for two weeks, the initial chaos of that patch has been mostly resolved, and now I’m hanging out, doing a few clean up things in Northrend as I get to learn how the new specs… old specs… new old specs… work for a couple of classes.

Calm down Lich King, you’ll get used to it…

Back before Wrath Classic hit, I had put a lot of weight on the idea that THIS was going to be the peak of the classic experience for me.  It wasn’t that we didn’t love vanilla WoW Classic, grindy though it could be, relatively speaking at least, it was just that Northrend lives larger in my memory than any of the expansion.  My head canon is that this is peak WoW for me.

So how did that play out?

On a gut level, I think it made the mark.  I am certainly less inclined to play when I am not engaged, but that was also the case with The Burning Crusade Classic, where we bailed as a group once we were not having fun, which was pretty quickly.  And, in Northrend, once our group had done what it came to do, we ran off and did something else.

The desire to grind out every last thing wasn’t as prevalent.

It may even be that Blizz let the expansion run a bit longer than it should have.  I was on the first boat to Borean Tundra more than 19 months ago.  The thing about the classic experience is that it is also supposed to be a more condensed experience.

Original Wrath ran for 754 days, which was a smidge over two years.

Wrath Classic will close out on May 20th having run for 601 days, which was probably a good 90 days too many for the experience.  Retro servers always run at nearly 2x speed, so running Wrath Classic at 1.25x speed meant people were done before Blizz was ready.

I know, Blizz has to balance a release schedule and doesn’t want one thing to interfere with another and also had its whole Season of Discovery shtick going and there was the possibility, given the way the pre-patch landed initially, that they simply were not ready to go to Cata Classic yet.  Lots of things go into the timing.

But, also, I haven’t played all that much since the new year.  Actually, if you go back, you will see we were playing Season of Discovery for a while even.  Now, we all stayed subscribed, so Blizz won the economic victory, but dead servers and people not playing your game is an issue on its own.

Anyway, we’re now at the end, our group is waking up back in Northrend, taking stock, and getting ready for Cataclysm.

Back to my subjective feelings about Wrath Classic, I think it was both more and less than I expected.

A lot of it is fun and interesting and all the classes I played felt useful and a bit over powered, which I don’t think is a bad thing.  Generally speaking, feeling a bit OP makes me play more aggressively, which means I am often more likely to get in over my head and end up with a fun fight than if I feel I am out of my depth and expect that if i get more than one mob on me that I need to flee.

The zones… I’ve probably done a few of them too many times for there to be more than the joy of competence, the feeling that I know where I am and where I need to go to accomplish my assigned task.  This is not nothing.  One of my favorite zones in LOTRO is the Lone Lands because, after all these years, I know it like the rangers do.  It is a place that makes me feel a part of the story and land I know it so well.

There is also this flat spot in leveling… something accentuated by the fact that when you roll into Borean Tundra at 68, the 68-70 ride is very fast… that makes things feel like they are dragging around 73-75.  Maybe I just don’t like those middle zones.  But once you hit Sholazar Basin things seems to start to pick up and the drive to 80 feels like it goes by more quickly than the previous few levels.

Looking at my achievements… which are now unified across characters since the pre-patch… the only zones I did not get the “did all the quests” update for were Zul’Drak and the Storm Peaks, and I am close on the Storm Peaks.  I might go finish that.  Zul’Drak though… how badly do I want that “Loremaster of Northrend” achievement?

The dungeons were good, and while we got into heroics with our group, none of them were complete push-overs on the first try.  We had to figure things out.  I was also happy enough to see Blizz pushing the envelope with extra hard modes for dungeons, so that there was a challenge for those sharper than us.

I also played a lot of Wintergrasp.  Again, my memories of it are probably a case of rose colored glasses.  I enjoyed it, but it also at times could feel like a solved problem on some rounds, where a core people could show up and drive victory.  But it was fun and chaotic at times and an absolute fountain of honor points.  Our guild message of the day is something like:

How much honor for a shameful defeat? Oh, wow, that’s a lot!

I am interested to be reminded how much Blizz reigned all of that in when it came to Cata.

So, subjectively, here at the far end of Wrath Classic, I am pretty happy with the experience.  There are, and always be, purists stomping their feet about this detail or that, but overall it lived up to my expectations… except for the draw distance thing.  That still irks me and I don’t know why it is such an issue, but it has been there since day one of WoW Classic, so that is hardly just a Wrath issue.

Flipping that around, I was digging for things that might objectively indicate I enjoyed Wrath Classic.  I expect the biggest sign is the fact that I got six characters up to level 80.

Six to level cap

I will grant you that I took full advantage of the various points where Blizz turned on the Joyous Journeys xp boost, along with a bit of heirloom gear, and that at least three of those characters were around level 60 at the end of vanilla Classic.  But that is still a pretty good run for me, especially for the rogue, a class I often don’t like, and one that Blizz likes to alternately buff then mess up with spec changes, who was around level 40 when Wrath Classic hit.

There is also the factions in Northrend, at least the ones you encounter on the overland journey.  I did pretty well with them.

Wrath Factions

On my main, my paladin Wilhelm, I managed to get 10 out of 11 to exalted.

The Wyrmrest Accord… getting faction with them is right in the start of that flat spot for leveling, where I am always trying to get to the next zone, so I fear I do not hang around in Dragonblight very long.  You have to be there long enough to unlock the dailies to get them up to exalted, and I am never quite up to that. [Edit: I went back and got them to revered after writing this post.]

I also did enough of the Argent Tournament to get Wil exalted with all of the alliance home city factions and become the exalted champion of each.

Overall, I feel pretty good about Wrath Classic.  I enjoyed my time going back to Northrend as it was… or as it mostly was… and playing through it fresh with the correct specs and rewards.  My memories of it are not all just filtered through a heavy curtain of nostalgia.  It was some good stuff.

Did it run too long?  Probably.  But it also sounds like they won’t be making that same error with Cataclysm Classic.  So it is on to the new specs and the reborn old world.

Blizzard would like to keep the WoW Classic party… and revenue stream… going, lest that team appear next on Phil Spencer’s every increasing list of layoff targets, and they need some help.

Can you re-run a cataclysm?

Having split WoW Classic into four different flavors at this point and facing the peril of the main thread heading into what was once considered one of the worst WoW expansions… at least until Shadowlands came along… with the coming of Cataclysm Classic, they really need some more people playing… and paying.  So they are giving it away for free, at least for the weekend.

Or at least that is my take.  Your mileage may vary.  Either way, WoW Classic is free to play for the weekend… but only the Cataclysm Classic flavor according to the news piece.  So come enjoy the pre-patch!

The instructions are:

• Download the Battle.net® desktop app
• Launch the app and log in to your account.
  • Need to recover your account information?
• Within the app, click on the World of Warcraft tab, then either Install or Update.
  • Latest system requirements
• When the installation or update is complete, click Play.
• Play free through May 13, 2024, at 10:00 am PDT!

Also, Blizzard would very much like you to buy some things and they have a new WoW Classic focused shop as a vehicle for your virtual good needs… again, they want to stay off of Spencer’s list, because the word is that he is far from done on his cutting spree.  But I guess they won’t need developers once they develop an AI that can do more than parlor tricks.

Related:

• Blizzard – Join the Welcome Back Weekend May 9-13

Blizzard would like to keep the WoW Classic party… and revenue stream… going, lest that team appear next on Phil Spencer’s every increasing list of layoff targets, and they need some help.

Can you re-run a cataclysm?

Having split WoW Classic into four different flavors at this point and facing the peril of the main thread heading into what was once considered one of the worst WoW expansions… at least until Shadowlands came along… with the coming of Cataclysm Classic, they really need some more people playing… and paying.  So they are giving it away for free, at least for the weekend.

Or at least that is my take.  Your mileage may vary.  Either way, WoW Classic is free to play for the weekend… but only the Cataclysm Classic flavor according to the news piece.  So come enjoy the pre-patch!

The instructions are:

• Download the Battle.net® desktop app
• Launch the app and log in to your account.
  • Need to recover your account information?
• Within the app, click on the World of Warcraft tab, then either Install or Update.
  • Latest system requirements
• When the installation or update is complete, click Play.
• Play free through May 13, 2024, at 10:00 am PDT!

Also, Blizzard would very much like you to buy some things and they have a new WoW Classic focused shop as a vehicle for your virtual good needs… again, they want to stay off of Spencer’s list, because the word is that he is far from done on his cutting spree.  But I guess they won’t need developers once they develop an AI that can do more than parlor tricks.

Related:

• Blizzard – Join the Welcome Back Weekend May 9-13

Blizzard would like to keep the WoW Classic party… and revenue stream… going, lest that team appear next on Phil Spencer’s every increasing list of layoff targets, and they need some help.

Can you re-run a cataclysm?

Having split WoW Classic into four different flavors at this point and facing the peril of the main thread heading into what was once considered one of the worst WoW expansions… at least until Shadowlands came along… with the coming of Cataclysm Classic, they really need some more people playing… and paying.  So they are giving it away for free, at least for the weekend.

Or at least that is my take.  Your mileage may vary.  Either way, WoW Classic is free to play for the weekend… but only the Cataclysm Classic flavor according to the news piece.  So come enjoy the pre-patch!

The instructions are:

• Download the Battle.net® desktop app
• Launch the app and log in to your account.
  • Need to recover your account information?
• Within the app, click on the World of Warcraft tab, then either Install or Update.
  • Latest system requirements
• When the installation or update is complete, click Play.
• Play free through May 13, 2024, at 10:00 am PDT!

Also, Blizzard would very much like you to buy some things and they have a new WoW Classic focused shop as a vehicle for your virtual good needs… again, they want to stay off of Spencer’s list, because the word is that he is far from done on his cutting spree.  But I guess they won’t need developers once they develop an AI that can do more than parlor tricks.

Related:

• Blizzard – Join the Welcome Back Weekend May 9-13

My addons need to be updated and my joyous journeys xp buff is gone, the Dalaran portals are all gone save one, and I have to figure out how to spec into six character at or close to level cap. Wrath Classic is now waning, but at least we’re on the road to the next thing.

Can you re-run a cataclysm?

I can now fly around Stormwind and Ironforge… for just a couple hundred gold no less.  That is not nothing, even if the city is a shambles and the old world has been redone and every good old dungeon has been sliced up into easy to digest bits.  But I wasn’t going to go re-run those anyway, I am moving forward.

We have all sorts of things, from new races to guild perks to archeology, to reforging to transmog to account-wide achievements.

Some of them are a little odd… not like I remembered them or straight up different than they were back in the day and called out in the patch notes.

There have long been complaints about WoW Classic not being pure in one way or another, not being a true return to the old game.  Often that has been about details that only the diehards would likely notice, though there have been the occasional dumb call outs for things that never were.  Some days it boggles the mind.

But getting into Cataclysm Classic it feels like not only have we passed out of the true “classic” era, but even Blizz is now willing to make some changes from the strict retro path.  Probably for the better, and we are talking about Cataclysm, one of the most controversial expansions in the history of the game and not one that many people get choked up with nostalgia about.

I have one last character to get to level 80 before the whole thing goes live… though I have three weeks to get from mid-79 to 80, so I am not exactly stressed.  And I have five other characters at level cap, so I’m covered no matter what.

I’ll get around to summing up how Wrath Classic felt at some point soon.  But the change is upon us.  Time to move forward.

Addendum:  Also, a bunch of things seem broken or wrong.  I am told a bunch of issues from the beta that were reported were clearly not yet fixed.

For example, after my first visit to the ink vendor with my inscription character, the currency changed to the Cataclysm ink, which you cannot yet make, which means I have to go whip up inks for the updated glyphs the old fashioned way.

Also, didn’t Cataclysm have launch events back in the day?

Related:

• Blizzard – Cataclsym Classic pre-patch notes

So we know Cataclysm Classic is on the way.  We have the timeline, with dates already pinned down for all the major milestones.  In a little over a week the pre-patch will arrive and it will be time to decide if we’re in on another WoW Classic adventure.

WoW Classic 2024 Roadmap – April 9 revision

I find it a bit amusing that on social media Blizz has been pushing the idea that this will be a speedy experience… as opposed to the original which, in addition to pissing people off by destroying the vanilla world, felt like it languished too long for a five level expansion.

Fast Cata, Best Cata…

Granted, in the grand scheme of things the wait from the launch of Cataclysm to the launch of Mists of Pandaria was actually at the short end of the scale, even if it felt long.

• WoW Launch to The Burning Crusade – 784 days
• The Burning Crusade to Wrath of the Lich King – 667 days
• Wrath of the Lich King to Cataclysm – 754 days
• Cataclysm to Mists of Pandaria – 658 days
• Mists of Pandaria to Warlords of Draenor – 779 days
• Warlords of Draenor to Legion – 656 days
• Legion to Battle for Azeroth – 714 days
• Battle for Azeroth to Shadowlands – 832 days
• Shadowlands to Dragonflight – 734 days

But it was also the first time when WoW began dumping subscriptions dramatically mid-way through an expansion.  That seems normal now, the second half slump, and Blizz still hasn’t figured out how to abate it, but back then it was the first time the company had experienced the line going down rather than up.  Losing a couple million subscribers… more than four times the peak subscriber numbers of most of the breakthrough generation of MMORPGs that preceded WoW… was shocking.

In a panic they offered WoW players a free copy of Diablo III (once it launched, which is a whole different story) if they would just sign up for the annual pass, a one time full year subscription to WoW.  Very much worth it if you stuck around and played Cataclysm through its second half… but how many people did that?  I mean sure, more than played Shadowlands after even four months, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Our group ran up against a lack of interest in the expansion, though that was because we believed the hype… and I’ll have a whole hype retrospective post at some point, as it was in many ways the peak of my hype for WoW… and wanted to start fresh in the revamped new world… only to find it really not very much fun.  Overland solo zones were better, but as a group, the dungeon content had all been neutered, chopped up into little, digestible bits guaranteed to be runnable in 30 minutes or less with even the most half-assed grab back of dungeon finder despicables you could imagine.

Add in the dungeon finder and it became the “sit in town and queue for the next dungeon” game that made many question whether or not accessibility had gone too far.  This is why, when drawing the line between “classic” and “modern” WoW I usually point at the dungeon finder rather than Cataclysm.  Oh, and there was only five levels of content, the dungeons were not really all that memorable, and if it wasn’t for the heroic five person versions of the vanilla troll raids I might argue that this was a completely skippable expansion on the road trip through expansions that WoW Classic has inevitably becomes.

So there was very much a question in the air in our group as to whether or not we were going to bother or how much effort we were going to put into it.  We had fallen off the Wrath Classic train back in January and have been on vacation from Azeroth pretty much ever since, spending time looking for Valheim alternatives, then playing Valheim, and then spending some time in Conan Exiles.

Looking at ManicTime tracking, I spent almost not time in WoW Classic in February and March.

But now we have a date for the pre-patch and another for the expansion, so the time to decide is upon us… and we appear to be leaning towards playing.  We have had a nice vacation from Azeroth, but thoughts have begun to return there and, in doing so, seek a plan.

Specifically, Potshot started looking into what classes might best suit his dual-boxing play style as he continues to do the heavy lifting to get us to five people for dungeons.  He has the healers job, and had had a hunter as his secondary, auto-shoot and the occasional special attack at range being somewhat manageable.  But his research indicated that for Cata, a DK might be another option, so he has set about leveling one up.

Fortunately they start at level 55 and with Joyous Journeys still active you are apparently level 59 or so when you exit the tutorial.  So he is off to Outland and was heading into Nagrand last I checked.  All of which is preferable to giving Blizz $60 to $80 to get a level 80 character boost if you have the time.

Seeing him back, I started poking around with my rogue who I had run through Outland and into Northrend late last year with an eye towards getting one more level 80 ready for Cataclysm Classic.  I was always going to do the five levels of Cata, the question was the level of commitment.

So we’re waking up in Azeroth again, warming up some characters while we wait for the pre-patch to drop and screw up our build.  I forget which classes were most screwed over by the Cata respec, though I am tempted to say “all of them” because one of the great aspects of Wrath was that most classes were pretty OP.

Blizzard has a consistent through line of hating it when we all feel comfortable with our classes.  It is as though if the players feel good, they feel bad, something that carries on to this day… see the great Diablo IV nerfing.

It is a cold Friday in March, I turned a year older this week, and I am in a bit of a mood for no good reason besides being a cranky old guy.  So perhaps it is time for some bullet point bile, broken up into three categories.  Can you put each in its correct place?

• The New York Times to Impose Its New Wordle Order

The self-proclaimed “paper of record” took a bit of time from its nearly non-stop headlines about President Biden’s age to go after anybody who was out there peddling any games that seemed even Wordle adjacent.

A bit on the nose, eh Wordle?

The New York Times bought the game from its creator about two years back.  The game wasn’t original, the concept wasn’t original, and even the name had been used before.  But it became a hit during the pandemic and the Times wanted to expand its word games.  One does not live by the Sunday crossword alone I guess.

This week their lawyers began sending out copyright based take down notices to “hundreds” of Wordle-like titles.

This should have been no surprise.  The Times has a long history of sending its lawyers after any hint of what they consider infringement.  I remember back in the 80s when Infocom‘s company newsletter was called the New Zork Times.  They too received a cease and desist letter threatening legal action and had to change the name lest somebody mistake it for a product of the New York Times, which might cause confusion in the marketplace and tarnish the brand of the paper.

None of the regular sites I hit has gone down yet, but I will keep an eye out.

• Nintendo Shuts Down Yuzu

Elsewhere out on the legal front, Nintendo won its lawsuit against Switch emulator creator Yuzu, who acceded to the mounting pressure from the video game giant who had been framing Yuzu’s intent as being to circumvent DRM, which would put it in line for violating the DMCA.

In addition to ceasing all development and support of its emulator, Yuzu also had to agree to pay all of Nintendo’s costs, which totaled up to $2.4 million by their calculation.

Nintendo has long been as fierce as the New York Times in sending its lawyers after anybody using their intellectual property, including some innocuous fan projects, and vigorously stomping out anything that might cause one less hardware unit to sell.

Anyway, I am kind of sad I missed out on Yuzu because, for me at least, the worst thing about playing games on the Switch is actually being required to play them on the Switch.  I’d much prefer them on my PC.  Alas, no longer and option.

• Apple and Epic at it Again

Epic went spoiling for a fight with Apple and Google a few years back because… well, Tim Sweeney wants to be as rich as possible I guess.  As with his fight with Steam, he just wants to be the person collecting the tax and resents other who got there first.

The fight with Apple has gone back and forth since then and it had looked like things had settled down with Epic getting some of what it wanted, including the ability to have its own storefront.  And then Apple banned Epic’s developer account in the EU.

Sweeney was immediately out with histrionics, but Apple was also declaring that Epic was “verifiably untrustworthy” and would not live up to the developer agreement they had signed.  This will all draw the attention of EU regulators again, who will be wielding their Digital Markets Act, it “tax the US tech companies” regulations.

How do I feel about this?

Survey say… let them fight!

It is hard to feel sad when rich people are fighting to be incrementally more rich.

A follow up about how Apple is embracing the drama and that the EU is its real foe in this battle.

• Elon Invents Blogging

Having chased away all serious, paying advertisers on the Twitter platform… we have Cheech & Chong, Crypto scams (still!), and nazi ads left, and I block all of them besides Cheech & Chong… Elon has been thrashing around trying to find SOMETHING that will make money for his $44 billion boondoggle.  And so they have announced Articles.

From the @write account

You can have BOLD, ITALIC, and STRIKETHROUGH text.  And images!

Freaking amazing, right?  RIGHT?!?

Oh yeah.  Who needs quote blocks or inline links, just give us money and we’ll let you do long form and give them a special icon and tab on your profile.  We totally won’t change our mind in three months and disappear the whole thing the next time Elon has a brain fart, we promise!

I am just waiting until he finally gets around to re-inventing Twitter… a version without him on it.

• EA Jumps on the AI Bandwagon

I mean, EA has a long tradition of being dumb, or at least not being able to read the room.  And they are ramping up to lay off 5% of their staff.  So they have to give the investors SOMETHING to be positive about, and AI is the magic wand currently.  Just say that and Wall Street will love you, right?  So how did EA CEO Andrew Wilson do on that?  Let’s go check over at PC Gamer… and… oh my!

Truth in Headlines

I am not positive the bong hit was verified, but Andrew did ramble on about 3 billion people using EA tools to make games while he painted a picture of a future where EA simply didn’t have to pay any of those pesky creative or technical people who actually make literally everything they sell today.

There was some law of hiring I recall where bad managers only hire people dumber than they are, so when we’re at a point where the CEO of EA wants to fire everybody and I am starting to suspect that we are seeing this in action.  Dumb guy achieves life goal, promoted to CEO and fires everybody.

That is probably being too hard on him.  As we all know by this point, as a public company you must meet the infinite growth demands of Wall Street, and when you’ve got nothing you have to make shit up.  This is a classic “making shit up” performance.  He’ll probably get a huge bonus and lay off even more staff.

• Cataclysm Classic Closed Beta Begins

Finally, Blizzard announced that Cataclysm Classic, which will remake the WoW Classic progression servers now lingering in Wrath of the Lich King into a new world, has started its closed beta test.

Can you re-run a cataclysm?

I’ve actually been waiting for this to show up, having worn out on Wrath Classic after five characters.  However, closed beta doesn’t mean we’re close to actually getting it, and the roadmap that Blizzard put out at the beginning of the year made it seem like we would be into summer before the cataclysm hit.  Still, it is nice to see it is finally in motion.

And on that bit of upbeat news, it is off to get through the day and to the weekend.