Cataclysm Heroics

After the first weeks of Cataclysm I, there are two things I noticed:

1.) Cataclysm is awesome
The leveling experience is great. The quests are fun and you level more in a flow instead of getting 10 quests at once in different areas. The dungeons are really fun, especially heroic Deadmines and Shadowfang. I like the new way of healing really much, it´s not like players lose 80% of their life in 2 seconds except there a one-shot-mechanic. Also mana is important again, which means that dps is also something important again, even in heroics.

2.) 90% of the players fail at heroics
It´s really sad what I experience everyday in random heroic groups. Of course I have no problems runing heroics with guildmates, but almost everytime I have a completel random group it´s a disaster.
Most times people didn´t read guides for heroic bosses. But that wouldn´t be a problem. The problem is that people even don´t mention it. Once a heal complained that he was killed because he didn´t know what the boss can do and that noone explained it. But of course, when the tnak asked if everyone was ready, he wouldn´t say anything.
Furthermore people don´t know that fire is bad for you. Seriously, people often don´t even bother to move. "The healer has to heal me, regardless of how fast healers go oom at the moment." What has WotLK done to players?
People are also unable to use CC and interrupts. On the other hand there are tanks that have to think something like this: "So there´s a shaman, a rogue, a hunter, a mage and me. So we have at least hex, bin elements, sap, freezing trap and sheep... well, whatever, charge+thunderclap... why am I dead???"
I like when a tank is fast at pulling, but he shouldn´t break cc. What´s also really bad is when a tank seems like he has to prepare himself mentally for the trash/boss "I can do this... I can do this... I can WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS DD DOING???" Or when tanks wait for a DD to kill the next trash mob.
So I´m really happy that my rogue is finally full heroic equipped.

Hope I can tell you how raiding feels like in a few days. I only had the chance to do the new PvP boss in Tol Barad. In my opinion he´s too easy.

WoW - serious business

I hate these stereotypes of people who play wow always being sad virgins with acne and no friends... Obviously, there are only a few people who are like this, and one of them tried dancng like a undead male on blizzcon. See what happened...

Cataclysm Login Screen

Here´s the new login screen for Cataclysm. So much better than the one we have right now.

Patch 4.0.1

So I had some time to play my rogue, pala and shaman.
First of all, playing a mutilate rogue is so much fun now! Using rupture is finally back and I love spamming backstab in the execute phase. Damage increased much, already make 8k dps on dummie after regemming and reforging every crit rating into haste.

When I first played my Protadin, I had big problems holding aggro. But after a while it´s much more fun than before. I do have to use taunt really often, maybe because I rushed several heros with an arcane mage doing about 20k dps on bosses. But using taunt more often is actually fun.
Also played my Warrior tank, the change to heroic strike and cleave is nice. Holding aggro is a little bit harder, but not as hard as with my paladin.

Don´t know what to think about my resto shaman. Healing surge would be great, but I think it costs a little bit too much mana, healing wave is cheap, but it casts sooo long and isn´t really healing very much. I really miss lesser healing wave. Chainheal is also really bad now :/ So I don´t really like the way I have to play resto shaman now.

Also played my hunter twink, don´t really like focus. Feel´s strange now.

What are your thoughts on 4.0.1
Btw I know everything is more or less balanced for 85, but we´ve stil almost 2 months until Cata hits the stores.

Cataclysm released on December 7th

Long story short, Cataclysm will be released on December 7th.

IRVINE, Calif., Oct 04, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft(R): Cataclysm(TM), the highly anticipated third expansion for the world's most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game*, will be released starting on December 7, 2010. The expansion will be available on DVD-ROM for Windows(R) XP/Windows Vista(R)/Windows(R) 7 and Macintosh(R) at a suggested retail price of $39.99 and will also be offered as a digital download from the Blizzard Store. A special Collector's Edition packed with bonus items will be available exclusively in retail stores for a suggested retail price of $79.99.

"Cataclysm includes the best content we've ever created for World of Warcraft. It's not just an expansion, but a re-creation of much of the original Azeroth, complete with epic new high-level adventures for current players and a redesigned leveling experience for those just starting out," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "With the help of our beta testers, we're putting on the final polish, and we look forward to welcoming gamers around the world to enjoy it in just a couple of months."

Flexible Raid Lock System in 4.0.1

Maybe you´ve already heard that the loot from the 10-player and 25-player version of a raid will be the same in Cataclysm. Furthermore, there´ll be a new flexible raid lock system in 4.0.1 :

Almost six months ago we announced that Cataclysm raids were being redesigned to make both raid sizes the same difficulty, drop the same quality of loot, and exist in the same lockout. This evolution in raid philosophy is built on the belief that the size of your raiding group should be a choice based solely on what's more fun and enjoyable for you, and that you should not have to complete the same raiding content twice in a week to maximize your character's progression. These systems are the culmination of a great deal of design and player feedback from the last few years. With the release of the 4.0.1 patch, the new Flexible Raid Lock system will debut in Icecrown Citadel and The Ruby Sanctum.

With the Flexible Raid Lock system, instead of being locked to a specific raid size or raid group, each character will have the opportunity to defeat each raid encounter once a week. You could kill Lord Marrowgar and Lady Deathwhisper with a 10-player raid on Wednesday, join a 25-player raid to kill Festergut and Rotface on Thursday, and then lead a completely new 10-player raid to kill The Lich King on Friday. Every raid has a list of encounters associated with the zone. For example, Icecrown Citadel has twelve encounters. After you defeat Lord Marrowgar, you can open up your character's raid information dialog and see the list of encounters in Icecrown Citadel with Marrowgar marked as defeated. You may no longer fight Lord Marrowgar with any raid size or difficulty until the weekly raid reset for your region occurs.

Another key change is that if you join someone else's raid in progress, you are no longer locked to that raid after merely zoning in. Your raid status will only change when a boss is defeated, at which point it will be updated to reflect the state of the instance in which you are currently participating. So, let's say you have killed the first four bosses of Icecrown Citadel, and you then join a raid that has defeated the first four encounters, as well as Festergut and Rotface. The dialog that displays upon entering Icecrown Citadel will show that the raid has defeated 6 of 12 encounters. If you help them defeat Professor Putricide, then you would be marked as having defeated not only Professor Putricide for the week, but also Festergut and Rotface. If instead after joining the raid you then proceeded to wipe ten times to Professor Putricide, you could leave the raid with only the first four bosses marked as completed.

To help communicate to players which bosses are dead in the raid leader's raid, there is new functionality to link in chat a list of the encounters the raid has defeated. So before you join a raid, you can see what they've already defeated. If a raid leader advertises in chat that she needs another healer for an 8/12 Icecrown Citadel run, you can see precisely which bosses are still available to fight. If you were only looking for that one item from Queen Lana'thel that never drops for you and this raid already defeated her, you will know not to join that raid.

Let's look at another example of the Flexible Raid Lock system. A guild schedules three nights for 25-player Icecrown Citadel raiding on Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday. On Wednesday, the raid defeats Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Saurfang. On Thursday, five people cancel their raid attendance due to real life emergencies. The raid leader knows that if he cancels Thursday raiding, there's little chance they'll have enough time on Saturday to defeat the other eight bosses in Icecrown Citadel. So he splits the remaining 20 Thursday raiders into two 10-player raids. Each new raid enters Icecrown Citadel and defeats Rotface, Festergut, Blood Council, and Valithria Dreamwalker. The next Saturday with all 25 players online, they reform as a 25-player raid and enter Icecrown Citadel once more. Only Professor Putricide, Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and The Lich King remain. After a tough fight, the Lich King falls and everybody celebrates. Without the Flexible Raid Lock system the entire raid probably would have missed out on a night of raiding, and likely would not have reached the Lich King.

While players can freely move between raids of different sizes in normal difficulty, there are some additional rules for Heroic difficulty. If a 10- or 25-player raid defeats a boss on Heroic difficulty, then those players may now only raid additional Heroic encounters with that specific raid. If your Heroic 25-player raid defeats the first four bosses of Icecrown Citadel on Heroic, then they may not split up into two 10-player raids and continue to fight in Heroic difficulty. You may also not join someone else's raid if they have defeated a Heroic encounter.

But let's say you are a member of a Heroic raid in Icecrown Citadel, and after killing Lord Marrowgar on Heroic you have Internet connection issues that prevent you from raiding for two nights. During those two nights, the rest of the raid kills everything. Without the Flexible Raid Lock system, you would be done with raiding Icecrown Citadel for the week. Ouch. With the Flexible Raid Lock system, you can join someone else's raid as long as they are doing Normal difficulty. This would at least give you the opportunity to earn your Justice Points for the week. If this raid attempted to switch to Heroic difficulty for Icecrown Gunship Battle with you in the raid, the raid leader would receive an error message stating that she cannot change to Heroic, because someone in the raid (i.e., you) is already locked to a different Heroic instance.

All of the new Cataclysm raids will feature the Flexible Raid Lock and Dynamic Difficulty systems, and when the Cataclysm occurs the other Wrath of the Lich King raids will also have these features. It's important to note that this system doesn't affect Heroic dungeons, they will work as they always have. We look forward to feedback for this new system after 4.0.1 is released. As a reminder, Icecrown Citadel and The Ruby Sanctum are the only two raids that support the Flexible Raid Lock until the Cataclysm occurs.

Here´s the link to the Thread in the WoW-Forum:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27026324753&sid=1

Cataclysm Release in Decembre?

A while ago people assumed that Cataclysm would be released at 2.11.2010, but apparently it was postponed to early Decembre. It´s not official, but Boubouille from MMO-Champion got this inside information and he´s a pretty reliable source :D

I think it´s good that they postponed it, I couldn´t believe right now that they would be ready to release Cataclysm in one month, there´s a lot to tweak right now, people don´t want to buy a buggy addon.