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.