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.