This past week was Thanksgiving so I didn’t do much gaming, which means that it was terrible timing for me for the shattering to happen. (The shattering is the event leading up to the next WoW expansion, which comes out December 7th). I’ve avoided posting about WoW for this long despite how much I play, but I figured this event (and the associated changes) was worth a post.
I had several things left to do before the shattering changed the world and made them impossible/more difficult, but I did manage to finish the ones that I was most worried about. I finally got my ZG tiger mount (after farming for over a year and a half) a week and a half before the shattering removed ZG, but I didn’t manage to take the time to use all the coins and bijous that I have in my alt-guild bank (I intended to get another character exalted with the Zandalar Tribe, but since my main is exalted I wasn’t too worried about it). I also managed to finish farming Bloodsail Buccaneer exalted on November 16th, but I was about 2k rep short of repairing my Booty Bay rep to exalted (the rest of Steamwheedle was exalted) when Knot (of the Free Knot repeatable quest) was removed by the shattering.
Besides changing the world the shattering also updated the achievements to include the Cataclysm achievements, updated the old world quest achievements, and generally reorganized a few things. I went from having every achievement category except pvp and raids (and feat of strength of course) completed to only having world events completed. Only world events can currently be completed due to Cataclysm not being out yet, but most completed quests from classic got wiped and replaced by new versions (or completely new quests), so despite the fact that I’ve got loremaster for both classic continents I now don’t have the individual zone complete achievements (which are new).
Since the quest achievements are the main ones that I can work on before cata (I still have no great desire to pvp for what I lack there or put together achievement raids) I’m working on those. It’s pretty much just a time sink since they mostly did a good job on the questing flow, but I have gotten stuck a couple times where I couldn’t find the last quests I needed (temporarily at 92/100 in azshara, gave up looking in ashenvale at 74/80). They really did a good job on a number of the new quests. My favorite so far was the goat blaster in Badlands for pure entertainment (launching the goat infestation off the cliffs surrounding the town), and the final quests in Stonetalon Mountains were my favorite for lore.
Other new achievements that can be worked on include “loot x gold”, the new fishing achievements and daily quests, and the new cooking daily quests. The achievement for looting 100k gold would take some serious raid farming (if I try to do that the same way I did 25k), or I can just give it time and assume that everything in cata will drop more gold to speed it up (I’m at 64k since WotLK came out, so I should have it easily within 2 years without trying if I can be that patient). The cooking quests should be done for the tokens more than the achievement since cata recipes can be bought now with those tokens. Hopefully I’ll have all the ones I need to level cooking before cata is out, but I never got in beta and haven’t looked too closely at them yet to figure out which ones I’ll level with. Realm first max cook would be wonderful, but not likely to happen since I’ll be focused on first druid to 85. Fishing dailies don’t give a token type reward, but perhaps there’s something in the bag it gives you that’s worth trying to farm for. I’m just doing that for the achievement currently, but I’m also trying for the “fish up every type of fish” achievements as far as I can get without going to cata zones.
Since Booty Bay and Bloodsail Buccaneers are opposing factions most things that give rep for one take away from the other. Despite the fact that they made Bloodsail rep easier to get with the shattering I’ve been careful not to damage it. I was very pleased to discover that the Booty Bay quests in Swamp of Sorrows had no impact on rep, and that the Gadgetzan quests in Badlands increased all Steamwheedle rep without damaging Bloodsail. I was doing all the questionable quests on my paladin first to see what the rep would do (I don’t trust wowhead or the other sites to be accurate yet), which meant those zones took a good bit longer than just the quest counter would indicate. I have had to skip quests in southern Stranglethorn that wanted me to go kill Bloodsail pirates, and I didn’t even bother going to Booty Bay since alot of their quests were directly against the Bloodsail and would impact that rep if anything does. That zone can wait till I’ve finished the rest of the achievements, which will probably be sometime after Cata comes out.
Besides quests I intend to have rep for the Bilgewater Cartel (the new horde faction) to exalted before Cataclysm. With the introduction of city tabards for rep (and the availability of the goblin tabard before the goblin race is available) that will be easy to do in heroic dungeons, but there were a bunch of changes around a month ago so my druid is only feral dps currently. Since the queue time is terrible for dps I used to queue as a tank, but I haven’t set up that spec or my action bars for it yet and the changes are enough that I’ll have to think about it (probably not the spec, but the rotation and action bars for sure). I’m still sub-optimal as dps (though far above the people I was grouped thanks to my gear) between being used to solo questing and not experienced enough with the changes to be able to maintain an optimal rotation without thinking about it. It also doesn’t help that even mobs in heroics die so fast now that combo points are hard to use, but some other classes are affected negatively by quick target switching too.