Expansion Lull
Our Moonkin has called it quits on WoW. The downside to a really close knit 10 man guild is that when people leave, you feel it more. Back when I was in a 25 man tBC semi-Hardcore guild, people came and went and you barely noticed. Lakini was a guy who was in Heroes when I joined then, pre-BC. We’ve been playing together for years. He’ll certainly be missed. We hold out hope that he’ll return at some point, maybe for Cataclysm, who knows.
His departure got me thinking about some of the people that I used to spend a ton of time with online but have now moved on. (If Ferth, Sameth, Dora, Ryken, Raistlan or Celoria still read the blog, I’d love for you guys to drop me an email and say hi sometime. Email is on the right hand side of the page.)
It also has left a gaping hole in our raid group. Lakini was a rare player that could top the DPS charts one fight and switch into a critical Raid healing role the next fight. Other people in our group are playing less or just stopping, it’s pretty much killed any further Hard Mode progression. Most of us are PuGing, or working on alts, and PVPing. I’m doing a little bit of each. I’m working on my Warrior a little bit. 16 unsuccessful tries for the Needle Encrusted Scorpion. I saw it once, but lost the roll to a Hunter. I’ve been PVPing on my Hunter and got him up to 1600 in 5s. We’d fight a 1400 team, then two 2300 rated teams. They get 1 point, we lose 0. This gets really old after a while.
And I’ve started to try to learn how to PVP as Holy on Honorshammer. It gives me plenty to work on.
But this Expansion Lull is very different from the last time the game was in this kind of transition. That was the end of tBC, and I was still pushing progression almost right to the end. The 25 man guild I was in at the time was slogging through Black Temple, trying to get to Illidan. He was the Arthas of Burning Crusade, the final boss that we all wanted so badly. I had ground out all the badges for a set of Fire Resist gear to be a Flame Tank. I even did this crazy quest chain in Blade’s Edge to get one of the few Fire Resist Cloaks available. We had just started working on Illidan, maybe had two nights in on him, when the Great Nerf of 3.0 hit. I firmly believe we would have killed him without that Nerf, but honestly, I’ll never know, and really I don’t care. I killed him, and ‘finished’ tBC. Well sort of. They added another raid well before we got to Illidan, and after killing Illidan, we started working on Sunwell. We didn’t get much past Brutallus. I never saw Mu’ru or Kil’Jaden. By the time it was finally over, Wrath was basically on top of us. I was also going through the whole Guild transition which made the Expansion transition very different, and I got a Beta key.
I’m hoping to get into Beta again like I did for tBC and Wrath, but it’s up to the luck of the draw. I’ll have some thoughts on the new 31 points talent trees when they are released. I’m going to be concentrating on the trees that interest me: Paladin, Warrior, Hunter. I’ll also be watching the Shaman and the Mage as those are toons I’d like to start to see the ‘new’ leveling game. I’ve been thinking of making the Shaman a Dwarf. Truth is, I miss being a Dwarf. I want to see how the Cataclysm has affected those zones that I leveled through when I was still wet behind the ears in WoW, especially Westfall. If you happen to know a nice PVE server where I could roll a Dwarf Shaman, leave a suggestion in comments. With RealID, I can let my team know when I’m on the Shaman and they can grab me if they need me. It’ll work. I just wish you could mail Heirlooms cross server/cross faction so I could start him with something.
His departure got me thinking about some of the people that I used to spend a ton of time with online but have now moved on. (If Ferth, Sameth, Dora, Ryken, Raistlan or Celoria still read the blog, I’d love for you guys to drop me an email and say hi sometime. Email is on the right hand side of the page.)
It also has left a gaping hole in our raid group. Lakini was a rare player that could top the DPS charts one fight and switch into a critical Raid healing role the next fight. Other people in our group are playing less or just stopping, it’s pretty much killed any further Hard Mode progression. Most of us are PuGing, or working on alts, and PVPing. I’m doing a little bit of each. I’m working on my Warrior a little bit. 16 unsuccessful tries for the Needle Encrusted Scorpion. I saw it once, but lost the roll to a Hunter. I’ve been PVPing on my Hunter and got him up to 1600 in 5s. We’d fight a 1400 team, then two 2300 rated teams. They get 1 point, we lose 0. This gets really old after a while.
And I’ve started to try to learn how to PVP as Holy on Honorshammer. It gives me plenty to work on. But this Expansion Lull is very different from the last time the game was in this kind of transition. That was the end of tBC, and I was still pushing progression almost right to the end. The 25 man guild I was in at the time was slogging through Black Temple, trying to get to Illidan. He was the Arthas of Burning Crusade, the final boss that we all wanted so badly. I had ground out all the badges for a set of Fire Resist gear to be a Flame Tank. I even did this crazy quest chain in Blade’s Edge to get one of the few Fire Resist Cloaks available. We had just started working on Illidan, maybe had two nights in on him, when the Great Nerf of 3.0 hit. I firmly believe we would have killed him without that Nerf, but honestly, I’ll never know, and really I don’t care. I killed him, and ‘finished’ tBC. Well sort of. They added another raid well before we got to Illidan, and after killing Illidan, we started working on Sunwell. We didn’t get much past Brutallus. I never saw Mu’ru or Kil’Jaden. By the time it was finally over, Wrath was basically on top of us. I was also going through the whole Guild transition which made the Expansion transition very different, and I got a Beta key.
I’m hoping to get into Beta again like I did for tBC and Wrath, but it’s up to the luck of the draw. I’ll have some thoughts on the new 31 points talent trees when they are released. I’m going to be concentrating on the trees that interest me: Paladin, Warrior, Hunter. I’ll also be watching the Shaman and the Mage as those are toons I’d like to start to see the ‘new’ leveling game. I’ve been thinking of making the Shaman a Dwarf. Truth is, I miss being a Dwarf. I want to see how the Cataclysm has affected those zones that I leveled through when I was still wet behind the ears in WoW, especially Westfall. If you happen to know a nice PVE server where I could roll a Dwarf Shaman, leave a suggestion in comments. With RealID, I can let my team know when I’m on the Shaman and they can grab me if they need me. It’ll work. I just wish you could mail Heirlooms cross server/cross faction so I could start him with something.
Comments
For me, it'll be in Europe, though.
I applaud your choice :-)
As for a good PvE server, I'd say go with Eldre' Thalas. It's a nice place for Alliance: we consistently win WG (and hopefully other world PvP objectives in Cata) and have a much better economy than Horde. I can't say much for guilds though; our solid 10-man team is on hiatus/rebuidling after we lost some DPS who are on break :(
I have a fully Heirloomed horde Warlock on a PvP server, though my main is Alliance PvE.
I levelled a Horde character (a rogue, for no apparent reason) on my server to 10 (the minimum for server transfer), put all the BoA gear in his bags (as well as some nice Frostweave bags, using the neutral AH), and server transferred him to where my Warlock was waiting.
So you can do that, or if you're on a PvP server, grab any character of level 10 or higher (or level a new one), stick whatever items you want on him, and then server transfer him to wherever you like. Then he can mail the BoA stuff cross-faction.
DKs also work, and make nice alts because of their mounts and knowledge of flight points, I hear.
I would say it's more like the move towards tBC from vanilla. In that lull, there were 3 BGs (WSG, AB, AV) and arenas were talked about on in what they're going to be like in tBC (since they weren't even around). Druids were given Tree form, mangle, and alot of other goodies. It was an exiciting time, but we all held our breath too.
Raist still reads daily..well almost lol
Drop me an email or let me know what server you guys went to.