I’m not sure  if this will become a SWTOR blog or remain dormant. I wasn’t going to play SWTOR. Not the worlds greatest fan of the franchise but I was  ’persuaded’ to sign up for the beta and got to play in both the stress weekends and appear to be hooked.  So I’ve pre-ordered it and intend to give it a real go. At least until April when the game I’m really interested in should launch.

Not that I haven’t been gaming in the intervening months I just wasn’t in Azeroth but in that ‘other’ place.  I never seemed to be inclined to blog about it though.

I’m still umming and ahhing about having subs to two games running.  Financial restrictions, no reflection on the games involved. Like a lot of people I’m living under the threat of redundancy so come April I may be giving up on all subscription games and moving into the F2P.

So this might be the final post on this blog or it may be the start of a much wider remit for it. Only time can tell. I never say never but for now my Moonkin has definitely ridden off into the sunset.

I made the right decision not going into beta, so much to see and do and so little time to do it all. I love new quests. When they revamped Dustwallow Marsh Ari was dispatched there to experience every quest even though she massively out levelled the zone.

With the revamping of Azeroth there are just too many new quests for a single character to experience them all. Blethyn didn’t last long, disliked the face so rerolled and gave her a new name Bethnal. Seems everyone is going with the wolf theme so I decided to go with a London theme instead. Finally a character who can speak mockney and not be out of place in Azeroth.

It’s rather annoying that if you want to give your Gilnean a haircut you only see the Worgen form. I wanted her human hair to match her skin colour but went a bit too red on the first attempt which meant having to use the character creation scheme to figure out how many times to click to get the mousy brown and see which human hairstyle went with which Worgen hairstyle.

As Elly levelled via Kalimdor  Bethnal was meant to level via Eastern Kingdoms. She’s in Felwood because I hit the Badlands, Searing Gorge, Blasted Lands bit of EK and from past experience I don’t like them. She’s going back though because the zones I remember aren’t the zones today and I might enjoy them after all.

We’ve  just finished the plaguelands on her and they are very different and much more fun. Truth is all the zones are more fun now.

I have a dwarf shaman and a gnome priest waiting in the wings to quest in the zones that Elly & Bethnal miss.

Horde haven’t been forgotten either, I have a  blood elf hunter who has done the starter forsaken zones. I cannot play Forsaken, every time I try the simple fact that they turn all their gear into rags annoys me. I like creating sets even if its just for wandering around town.

The storyline in Trisfal Glades & Silverpine Forest has been completely redone and continues some of the storylines started in Gilneas. It’s a bit odd that you need to roll Horde to get more of the Worgen storyline, certainly doesn’t seem to be any Goblin storyline on Alliance side, though a lot more Goblin towns around.

I’m now at the ‘calm down’ stage. I don’t need to gobble up all this new content in the first month of release I have at least two years till the next expansion and possibly longer before old Azeroth is revamped again.

As Bethnal approaches 50 (and the speed she’s levelling with heirlooms and guild perks it won’t be long till she hits 60) I realise that I’m facing Outland to get her to 70 and Outland isn’t new and fresh its just a grind I’ve already been through on four characters. Blizzard have drastically reduced the XP  a character can get in Azeroth once they hit 60 to force encourage players to level in the appropriate zones, but I find myself wondering if I can level to 70 via a combination of PvP, archaeology and herbing. We’ll see I may be able to grit my teeth and do Outland for one more character but I suspect any more are doomed to stick at 60

Oops nearly forgot to mention Elly is 83 and should probably be given some attention before I go back to Bethnal

Well not quite, there were so many people running around the  New zones that we were fighting over mobs so I rolled a goblin on a low pop server to  try out their starter area. She’s called Chavette. She’s not a serious alt but she did mean I could see the starter zone and I admit it’s hilarious. I have a feeling on wet Sunday afternoons I’ll be rolling goblin alts just to play around with my homies for a few hours. The zone and the quests are just downright funny.

Not giving too much away as I know some people are STILL waiting for their copies to arrive in the post. It seems from different companies but all using the Royal Mail rather than other carriers and honestly it must suck seeing all the oohing and ahhing going on when you’re stuck on the wrong side of the expansion.

Then I rolled a worgen rogue to see Gilneas (this one on MG as she is meant to be a keeper). I was going to make her male. Then I looked at the human male options and went back to rolling a female.  She will spend a lot of time in human form.

The two starter zones couldn’t be more different. Even though both races are fighting for their continued existence. It rains in Gilneas all the time, even on the character log in screen. Thank goodness we don’t have smellorama all those wet dogs running around.

I like both zones, one high jinks and comedy the other  all emo and moody but it did occur to me that a brand new player would have very different expectations of what came next based on their experiences in the Goblin & Worgen zones.

One think about Gilneas and players behaviour made me smile. It was just as overrun with people trying to do quests but where in Mount Hyjal there was ninja tagging going on in Gilneas people were  queuing politely. I think being surrounded by all those fake London accents and the rain must have affected peoples behaviour, for the better.

Okay it probably had more to do with the fact no one in the starter zones was trying for server firsts and every second delay counted but I didn’t see the same willingness to queue in the Goblin area. Fortunately the ninjaing  mobs calmed  down after the first 48 hours and the Cataclysm zones began queueing or forming impromptu groups to get things done.

Ari hit 85 last night, or early this morning about 1am. We went

Mount Hyjal – loved the zone, so much Night Elf and druid lore. Druids of the Talon out in force and Thisalee Crow was very much Arianthorn’s type of druid . Got the quest achievement

Vashj - Didn’t bother finishing it the  whole underwater thing got old very quickly for me, will probably go back at some point. In fact I have to to unlock a dungeon

Deepholm – Lovely intro to access the zone, shame once you’re there its all bleak and multiple shades of earth tones. Not somewhere to go on a wet Sunday afternoon unless you want to be depressed, didn’t finish it.

Vashj and Deepholm got me enough XP to go to Uldum. Lots and lots of cut scenes to move the story along or the archaeology sub-plot  anyway.

The cut-scenes are new for Cataclysm, well okay WOTLK  had Wrathgate. They really come into their own in Uldum  and hats off to Blizzard for using them. One thing you notice in all the zones the story is much more personal. The NPC’s recognise you and respond to your past deeds, which is phasing not cut-scenes. I really enjoyed this zone and the  feeling that my character was making a difference. Got the quest achievement before moving on to

The Twilight Highlands. In some ways the same theme as Mount Hyjal & Uldum “go seek out allies for us” but it didn’t get old because  it was well done and fits the theme of the expansion. Dinged 85  during the retaking of Grim Batol and kept going to finish the storyline. Well worth it.

Here’s Ari in her quest rewards and one  piece of reputation gear (the gloves from Mount Hyjal). her health has almost tripled from 33k to 95k. Clearly something is going to hit hard. It currently takes  three Healing Touches to fill up her health bar. Heh her strength and agility has gone up by one whole point. Good job she doesn’t rely on them to get the job done.

Intellect  has almost doubled from around 1.9k  to 3.5k though the spellpower hasn’t jumped quite as much. The rest of her stats are ‘wonky’ we’ve been taking what we could get as we moved along (around level 83 you start replacing T10) rather than doing dungeons for slightly better gear. The dungeon trawling starts now. Well unless I take Briar into Vashj for some skinning. Prices for  mats on the AH is currently at an all time silly  people are asking over 100 gold for  green BOe drops that given the speed of levelling and the quest rewards will probably been worn for a few hours at most.

(the viewing is restricted, you may have to go to Youtube direct)

By BeeblesTV on youtube to help  raise awareness  the  moonkin hatchling  vanity pet. If you purchase him between now and December 31st, 50% of the proceeds go towards the Make-A-Wish foundation!

I really like the choice of music to go along with this video. It captures the mood of Azeroth after the shattering

I’m not that fast a leveller normally, I dilly and dally and RP along the way. The new quest flow really helps, and I think the mobs are tuned to not hit as hard as they used to.   Certainly Elly is the least squishy mage I’ve ever rolled. though Shadowmeld helped a lot there.

Ellylldan barely set foot in the Eastern Kingdoms (apart from Pilgrim’s Bounty) I’ll save that for my next alt. Though I will skip heirlooms and aim to dilly dally as I go with that one.

I even had time to take some screenshots along the way.

This is Elly hitting level 40. The new complete a quest and pick up the next one ‘on the run’ meant we were mid air in Thousand Needles when she dinged. I just thought it funny and a bit different to the usual standing in front of a questgiver.

You should really do Thousand Needles for a bunch of fun quests and a preview of water walking, which looks a lot like moon walking on a Night Elf. There’s a questline that starts with saving pridelings, who then follow you around and eventually help you out with the final quest in the chain. Very chucklesome

I went to Tanaris next, which hasn’t changed much,  so retraced my tracks to visit Felwood. Which has. There’s a Worgen outpost and goblins are chopping down trees. I also got to see the early story of Illidan play out

thought there’s a bit of a continuity error there as Malfurion was a normal looking Night Elf when this happened as it was before his transformation in the Emerald Dream.

There is so much new content it’s probably going to take me the next six years to familiarise myself with it and while Ari does a bit of exploring every evening my main focus between now and the 7th is pushing Elly as close to 80 as I can get.

Though Ari did the new Shadowfang Keep for the druid staff quest. It’s the same model as the Draenic Wildstaff from Auchenai Crypts but comes in a handy caster version, and as you probably noticed I got distracted enough last night to log on to Ari just to have a dance with my moonkin hatchling